6 Ways to Increase Female Leadership in Your Company

Despite the fact that companies with greater gender diversity tend to experience more financial gains, less than 5% of Fortune 500 company’s CEOs are female. According to recent studies, that number is even decreasing and has been since 2017. Recent findings also stated that for every 10% increase in workplace diversity, earnings before taxes increase by 0.8%. So why aren’t more companies becoming more diverse, especially in management positions?

Habits die hard, but progress is being made albeit slowly. Companies can’t change overnight and need to learn how to attract and retain competent female leaders and foster their talent. Take a look below at 6 impactful moves your company can make to increase the prevalence of female leadership.

Diversity Initiatives

There needs to be a conscious effort made by everyone in the company to seek out, hire, and provide opportunities for promising or established female talent. Most goals fail due to a lack of prioritization. Embrace diversity by making definitive plans and goals for the company and incorporating them into the overall business plan. Then, take steps to ensure their sustainability by enforcing those goals with positive actions.

Increase Visibility of Goals and Plans

It’s much harder to enforce and build upon your goals if no one knows about them. You can’t brag about your company’s diversity successes if your practices are not transparent even to your employees. Publish reports, post on your company’s blog or social media, or otherwise make your goals public. This will keep your company in the spotlight and motivated to persist with incorporating diversity in all levels of the organization.

Encourage Employee Feedback

Employees are the ultimate resource in discovering where a company’s strengths and weaknesses lay. They must work within the community and can provide unique and truly insightful information an outsider cannot. Asking your employees for feedback also helps to make female leaders more visible and shows a commitment to your employees’ happiness and prosperity within the company.

Revamp Policies and Procedures

What worked 50 years ago may be completely outdated and holding your company back. If you have no female representation within the leadership echelons of your company then it’s time to reassess. This doesn’t mean you tear down policies and procedures overnight and rebuild from scratch. Reassess which procedures need a refresher and if they are holding female employees back. Then, establish new procedures that benefit everyone in the company, not just one group. This will assist with retention as well as attracting new talent.

Incorporate Mentorship

Mentorship is key when determining which employees have a high potential for both promotions and leadership roles. Pairing up and coming female employees with higher-ranking members of the company, so they can both benefit from the shared knowledge between them creates an environment that is inclusive and encourages others to seek more education and improvement. Mentorship provides a pathway directly into leadership roles while also allowing for supplement training.

Recognize and Rectify Bias

Bias tends to be the number one barrier between women and the leadership roles they have earned. Men are more commonly given praise, promotions, and raises than women regardless of the industry in which they work. Recognizing women and the equal quality of work they perform is essential. Create a work environment that does not reward prejudice or bias in order to foster female leadership. Focus on implementing on-going strategies that combat workplace bias and more opportunities for female leadership roles can come as a result.