Allan Blair, Head of Strategy, Tribal Worldwide London, on lack of senior female talent, apprenticeships, and positive discrimination

In our latest Token Man interview, Bridget Beale, MD of BIMA interviews Allan Blair, Head of Strategy, Tribal Worldwide London:

Perhaps a good place to start is for you to tell me what you understand about the Token Man initiative and why you wanted to be involved?

Out of any industry I’ve worked in, advertising seems to be the one with the least diversity — across gender, ethnicity and class. I think we do a pretty good job at Tribal but we could do better. But I think it’s time that people start talking about it and actively change the way the industry hires.

So you’re pinning it directly on hiring practices?

It starts with hiring. But also well before, in schools and the way we teach people. It’s ultimately about culture within organisations and about empowering people to make change.

Let’s pick up on hiring and start there with Tribal. What’s your headcount at the moment?

We’re between 120 to 140.

Do you have insight into the ratio of male to female hires, say in the past year?

Not off the top of my head! I would say it skews much more towards males and I would say that’s true across the digital industry. It probably also skews in different departments: creative and tech are skewed much more masculine and account management, product management and strategy tend to have a larger ratio of women. That tends to be reflected in the candidates we get as well. There are not a lot of women in digital and that’s a problem in itself.

In terms of that flow of candidates, what steps is Tribal taking to try and improve the flow of female candidates into your creative and tech roles?

It’s quite difficult to find new places to hire from. We’re trying to hire from more diverse backgrounds — so not just taking people from agencies but taking people from client side, consultancies, larger tech organisations — to try and increase that diversity pool. We’re also trying to hire people younger and train them. We have an apprenticeship programme and a grad programme that we’ve just started. It seems to be a stronger way to bring people in, to attract people who don’t necessarily have the skills but have an interest and then train them into the job.

Do you know where your candidates for those programmes come from?

They come from all over. The apprenticeship programme is run from a Government-approved scheme, who source people from schools, job centres, things like that. It’s about identifying people who have an aptitude and desire to work in this industry but who haven’t had the advantages to go to university and don’t come from the typical ‘agency’ background.

So am I hearing correctly that apprenticeships are a powerful tool for you in tackling diversity?

They’re really important. Agencies tend to be very white and middle class, as well as having a gender diversity issue. Apprenticeships allow us to bring people into, say UX or strategy or social media, who wouldn’t ever usually have had that opportunity. I think we’ve had nine apprentices over the past two years and we’ve hired six. Two or three years in they’re now doing the level of job that someone with three or four years university would just be starting. We’re bringing people into the industry and they’re getting a head start.

Just bringing it back to gender specifically — with those six apprentices you’ve hired, how many have been women and what roles were they hired into?

I think a third of the candidates have been women and we’ve hired two of them. They’ve gone into UX and Social Media Strategy. UX tends to be a role that is very male-focused, very scientific, very mathematical. So it’s good to hire someone like that into that role.

Back to a macro level, why do you think it’s important to be doing this, for the agency and the industry?

We work globally and we help brands sell their products or make their products and services better. The people who use them come from all different backgrounds and having just white, middle-class men come up with the ideas makes the work quite narrow. Having broader diversity makes our work better.

It also makes the workplace better. A diversity of people means a diversity of culture. It’s more interesting. It’s important to bring different people into the mix. Agencies tend to be run by white, middle-class, middle-age men — if you have those same people making the decisions all the time then the decisions are always going to be the same, and always favour the same people. When you start to mix that up you see the culture changing and working in different ways.

That’s happened at Tribal — by trying to create a more diverse mix we definitely have a more collaborative and less competitive environment. It’s a more modern way of working and — for the type of work we make — it definitely means we make better work.

OK you’ve mentioned two reasons why diversity is important — the quality of the work and the agency culture. Maybe if we start with the agency itself, do you know what your gender split is across your leadership? You have a mixed management team, don’t you?

We have a management team of eight or nine people and three of those are women. Which is probably better than most agencies but not a perfect 50:50 split.

And we’ve talked about your tech and creative teams being more heavily weighted towards men, do you have a feel across the agency about your male-to-female ratio?

No, I’m not entirely sure to be honest. I would say that the split in the management team is probably a fairly accurate reflection of the agency.

In terms of your role within the agency and what you personally could be doing to address diversity, what size is your team at present?

I manage 10 people.

And what’s the gender diversity?

I have two women on my team.

And in your hiring practices, is diversity in your mind when you’re recruiting outside of your apprenticeship programme?

It’s definitely in my mind that we need a more diverse mix. I try not to bring people in who have the same backgrounds, whether that is gender mix, or class mix or culture — I try to look for people who aren’t a cookie cutter ‘agency’ mould. I would like to hire more women but the level of female candidates that we see in strategy is just really, really low at the moment.

And for those roles, where are you sourcing your candidates? Are you using recruiters, are you advertising? For the last hires you’ve made, where have your candidates come from?

It’s a mixture of advertising and recruiters.

So word of mouth, through networks?

Yes, word of mouth, networks, social media. We try to use as many different channels as possible, as if you use the same channels you get the same types of candidates.

So if diversity is in your mind when you’re hiring but your team is heavily weighted towards men, do you feel there is more that you personally could be doing? And if so, what?

The type of work we’re doing as an agency is changing and it’s becoming much more ingrained in business strategy and less in just communication strategy. On my team it means I need to hire more senior people who have a lot of experience and I’m not seeing a lot of female candidates at the moment who have that level of experience. It’s becoming increasingly hard to make sure you have that gender diversity, and it’s not for want of trying. I’m not entirely sure how you can do more to encourage those candidates.

In terms of bringing up the next generation, do you have apprentice roles on your team?

One of those apprentices is on my team and she’s become a bit of a star in the agency. She’s progressing very quickly.

Coming back to leadership within the agency, what do you think the biggest challenge is for women when they are in the minority in those senior leadership roles?

Seniority comes with age and women on the management team tend to be mothers and, whether explicit or inherent, prejudice in the workplace that comes with working mothers. Whether it’s ability or even just presence/time — you can’t always work a full week. I think that’s a real challenge. Not necessarily in this agency but in other workplaces I’ve seen prejudice against working mothers. Or working mothers put pressure on themselves to perform or they feel there’s a perception that they’re not pulling their weight, when in fact they’re actually doing two jobs. So I think that’s a challenge: that women on the management team tend to be mothers at the same time and the challenge that comes for working mothers as opposed to working fathers.

I think also that agency culture can be pretty macho, quite combative and confrontational places. Quite often women find that hard because they relate to circumstances in different ways. I think we talk about equality a lot when we talk about gender diversity but I think equality should be about opportunity, not about treating everyone the same — as that tends to mean ‘treat everyone like a man’ when it should be about treating people they way they want to be treated in different circumstances. The patriarchal nature of agencies doesn’t necessarily make all women feel comfortable. Especially in a management team situation where you have blokes and a woman sitting around a table arguing about budget or whatever.

I think those are the two main challenges: issues for working mothers; and the behaviour that is engendered in agencies that makes it difficult or challenging for women to be in a management position. There are probably others, around skills and training and so forth but I think those are the main ones.

Taking the first one — what it means to be a parent in a leadership role and the different pressures for mothers and fathers — do you know what Tribal’s policies are around parenthood and whether the agency is actively trying to make itself a positive place for a working mother?

We have very flexible working policies. Two of the women on our management team are mothers and have flexible working arrangements, whether that’s working three days a week or working 10am till 4pm. We also have a lot of fathers — single fathers or fathers with an equal split of childcare — and they come in late or leave early, so it’s not just for women. As agencies go we’re very good at being accommodating and allowing people to be flexible with their working hours to suit their needs and their family needs.

One of our most senior creatives has been here 13 years and she helps lead the creative team. She’s a working mother and she works reduced hours. There’s that challenge where a lot of women who work reduced hours feel the pressure to have the output of a full week. I’m not sure men working reduced hours feel the same pressure — that’s my perception but I’m pretty sure I’m right.

Is this commitment to making the agency a positive place for parents overtly stated? For example, in peoples’ contracts and in your employment policies?

Definitely. It’s not just for parenthood either — people have flexible hours if they live far away or have health issues as well. It’s not something hidden or just between that person and their boss. It’s very open and if we see someone in that position we actively offer it to them. It makes our staff more loyal and makes them a better member of staff and it’s just the right thing to do.

In your tech and creative teams, do you feel parenthood is a barrier to increasing the gender diversity of those teams — for example, if you’re expected to stay late to work on a pitch but you have to get home to your kids.

I don’t think it is. So our Creative Director who is a working mother, she’s probably one of the hardest working and most respected members of the team. It definitely hasn’t held her back in any way.

But I guess there is a challenge working on pitches, working late. Also, I think for women there is definitely a challenge around creative feedback and the way feedback is given — and the way creative teams are expected to be so competitive with each other. The way creative feedback is given tends to favour a certain type of man — not even all men — it’s definitely much more aggressive than the psychology of a lot of women are used to. I don’t know how to phrase it but the way that women react to certain circumstances is different to the way a certain type of man reacts to it. It’s definitely set up to favour those men.

As an agency we’re trying to get away from it. We have a female Creative Director and we mix our teams up and try to make people more collaborative and get them to work and think in a different way.

And that’s a conscious strategy to address diversity?

Not necessarily gender diversity — it’s about diversity of ideas.

I’m really interested in the point you made around stereotypically male and female way of doing things and how agencies are typically set up to favour the male way. When you look at the gender pay gap, a lot of people will say ‘we don’t have one, we would never pay people less on grounds of gender’ — but there’s a school of thought that women and men are paid differently because of different approaches to negotiating at the point of hire.

Because men will ask for more money and women will expect to be paid their worth?

Yes. With your knowledge of salaries, do you see any indication of this?

I can’t talk for the industry but in my team I think it’s possibly equal — but that would probably be because I have few women in my team and one is incredibly senior and one is relatively junior.

As with all agencies we have our issues but pay is not one I hear mentioned a lot. I think digital is slightly different — it’s so in demand at the moment, there’s a shortage of skills and people and so you kind of have to pay well to get the good people. I don’t think negotiation is necessarily hard in the hiring process at the moment.

You’ve said that another reason diversity is important is in reaching diverse audiences and in the quality of the work you’re putting out there — what responsibility do you think the industry has for positive gender portrayals?

Do you mean how we portray men and women?

Yes, and how advertising influences culture and peoples’ opinions.

I think advertising people like to think they affect culture but I don’t necessarily think that is true. I do think the representations of culture need to be more diverse though, as advertising sets expectations with people about the things they can have and the things they want. If you portray the same aspirations all the time it skews the aspirations you set for your audience.

Does advertising have a responsibility to make the world more diverse? I don’t know. I think we have a responsibility to make our industry more diverse — but you can argue that advertising reflects society as it is.

I don’t think we have a responsibility to make society more diverse — our responsibility is to sell more products for our clients. We should do that in an ethical and responsible way but we’re about reflecting society not creating it.

It should be an accurate depiction. Extremes of aspiration — like that stupid bikini beach body advert — are just ridiculous. The responsibility is to make sure that extremes of aspiration aren’t portrayed as real life.

I snapped a photo of this campaign on the tube this morning. I don’t know if you’ve seen it but I want to get your take on it.

I haven’t seen these.

It’s a campaign to get girls immunised against HPV virus, which can cause cancer. So it’s definitely a very worthwhile campaign but…

Gender stereotypes play a role. When we talk about diversity we have to split gender away from sex. There’s a difference between being woman and being female. The problem with advertising is that we often mix that up.

What do you mean?

We talked about this earlier — that people respond to circumstances differently and that advertising is set up for a particular male mindset. Sex is a fixed thing — you’re female and I’m male. But sexuality — or gender — is more of a spectrum. You have your ultra masculine male and your ultra feminine female but as you get close to the middle it’s not so fixed. In our workplace we have some women who are more masculine and aggressive than a lot of men but we also have men who are quiet and laid back. They’re not gender neutral but they’re more fluid.

Advertising works on stereotypes — so women are incredibly feminine and men are incredibly masculine. Those stereotypes play an important role in a piece of advertising like [the HPV advert] because it helps say “this is talking to women about women’s issues” so we’re going to make it pink.

I guess the bigger argument is whether that type of advertising plays as strong a role in society as it used to do. So if you look at the type of work that we make, we make much less advertising but much more around enabling products and services and helping people use brands in a way that meets their needs, as opposed to a brand telling them how to think or feel about something.

So that fixed gender role plays less of a part in what we do. So the way people react to advertising is changing but those stereotypes play an important role — especially in a poster advert in a tube station. You’re walking past it and you need to get that point really quickly.

Is it a bad thing or a good thing? I don’t know — I think you can read too much into some of these things. I mean something like [the HPV advert] the semiotics inherent in it are about making you stop, making you realise that it’s either for you or not for you. You use stereotypes to do that. I don’t think it’s a bad stereotype. Not all stereotypes are bad, some just exist whether they’re true or not. I don’t think in that circumstance it’s a bad thing, it’s just the ease of communicating a message.

OK, moving on. In a business setting, have you had an experience of being “other”, being the odd one out? For example, being the only man in a board room.

My career started in PR which is much more female heavy than advertising and I used to work for tech companies which are much more female too. I don’t think I realised at the start of my career but I’ve become more aware of it as I’ve got older. For example the other day we had a meeting of maybe 20 people and nearly all of the agency people in the room were men and almost all of the clients were women. I guess big corporations are set up better to be female friendly. It’s quite sad really.

Would you worry about losing a pitch, having female clients walk into a room of all-male agency representatives?

Definitely. I think a lot of agency men peg themselves as Guardian-reading liberals but the way they act is completely different. If I was a female client, selling a female-focused product and I walked into a room with all men I would question whether they were the right agency. Any product in fact. Although I think it becomes apparent anyway in the work, your viewpoint on the world.

You talk about coming across people who pay lip service to these issues but display sexism; can you share a horror story?

I’ve worked with some old school sexist pigs in my time. The kind of behaviours I see a lot of are things like people saying ‘oh yes, I’m liberal, I believe in gender diversity’ but then a lot of incredibly sexist comments, whether it’s things like how short a girl’s skirt is or whatever — you see a lot of that.

You also see a lot of people who probably are liberal-minded and believe in diversity and try their hardest to do it but if there’s someone senior who is an unreconstructed, traditional man who makes a comment like — and this is a real comment I’ve heard — ‘I don’t understand how someone can be on the management of an agency and only work part time’, talking about a working mother. And you’ll say to your boss, ‘oh X made that comment and I don’t think it’s right’ and your liberally-minded boss will say ‘oh he’s just an old school type of person, there’s no changing him’. And I don’t think that’s right. That, to me, is really shocking because one of the most important things a workplace can do is empower people to say ‘this behaviour isn’t acceptable and I’m not going to accept it’.

Ad agencies and agencies in general are quite bad for having a liberal policy towards hiring women but if you look around all the women are good-looking and not very senior. You only have to look at Mad Men to see that! There’s definitely an issue with that, even to this day in a lot of agencies.

Empowering people to deal with unacceptable behaviour — because you sit on the management team here, how are you helping push that forward?

I’m a loud-mouthed Glaswegian so I’m not afraid to speak up. It’s about protecting people and making them feel safe. It runs through everything, you’ll be sitting in a meeting and the most junior person will say to the MD ‘I don’t think that’s right’.

So how does the management team make that felt throughout the agency, that it’s safe to challenge?

We actively tell people they can do it — it’s the only way. And demonstrating it in action. I think we do it relatively successfully but we’re probably terribly British and we don’t like to talk about the issues. We probably could be more open in talking about diversity. But we definitely make people feel they can speak up if they’re not happy about something.

People should be afraid to say the wrong thing, not be afraid to point out that someone has said the wrong thing — I think that’s where we want to get to.

Coming towards the end of our time, if you could do one thing differently in your career to support diversity further, what would that be?

It would be about bringing more young women into the industry and encouraging them to stay in the industry. I definitely see a lot of women come into the industry quite young but leave it quite quickly too because it’s not for them — or they come into the industry and stay at a certain level because it’s quite difficult to rise if you’re not aggressive.

And helping women rise through the ranks, what are the three things that you think the industry, or the agency or yourself could do better?

An equal hiring policy would be good; creating a culture to help people work they way they want to work — not just doing things the way they’ve always been done; the third one would probably be helping and encouraging people to reach their potential and not give up easily.

When you say hiring policy do you mean parental leave policy and flexible working or are you specifically talking about hiring?

We should be actively trying to hire more women and trying to make it more equal.

Positive discrimination?

Yes, positive discrimination at a hiring level, I think is important. I think once people start then I think it’s about changing the way we work to make the workplace more equal. As opposed to trying to achieve equality by making everyone work in a certain type of way, which usually means like a man.

So would you be in favour of targets — for instance, how it’s been talked about having gender diversity targets on boards?

I definitely don’t think it’s a bad thing. But the challenge we have with hiring in general is finding good people who are a good fit for the agency — the problem with targets is you quite often have to fill a quota for the sake of filling a quota. I think it’s better to be aware of the lack of diversity and be actively seeking to fix that, as opposed to saying you can’t and using lack of talent as an excuse.

I’m just interested because hiring practices is the first thing you mentioned that the industry, Tribal and yourself could be doing to improve diversity — but when we were talking about hiring earlier you said lack of female talent was the reason why your team and your hires aren’t more diverse at the moment.

It’s lack of talent in general. There’s definitely a lack of female candidates coming through. I don’t know what the solution is, certainly in getting senior people. I’d like to see some!

Are you simply not seeing CVs from female candidates?

Not at a mid to senior level.

So when you’re hiring — certainly around disability I think that in the public sector you can be guaranteed an interview if you meet certain diversity indicators and then the organisation will mentor you and develop you into the role, to positively try and influence their diversity — is that something you would actually consider?

We do it with our graduate and apprenticeship scheme, which is about bringing more diverse people into the agency world and training them up. Which is great but we do need senior people too.

I think what you’re saying, and correct me if I’m putting words in your mouth, is that the solution is long term and it’s about doing things with our young people and our hiring of young people now to improve things over the long term?

I think that’s fair. Bringing a more diverse pool of people into the industry is the right thing to do. I think it will change the industry longer term. And also what I’m seeing is a lot of younger people — by which I mean people in their early twenties — coming into the industry who have a very different approach to the world to people even in their late twenties. They’re a lot more entrepreneurial and they have a less fixed view of their role within an organisation. They believe they can work a strategy one minute, do creative the next, do a bit of tech — and I think that will change the industry in a good way long term and how we relate to each other.

OK penultimate question — what would be the one thing if any that you’ll commit to doing differently off the back of this interview? Has there been anything we’ve talked about that has made you think ‘actually I (or we) could do that differently or better’?

Yes, actively looking at our hiring policy and thinking how can we address diversity. I think we implicitly address it but it should be explicit. I can’t tell you how many women are in the agency and what that ratio is and I should be able to — well it should be 50:50 — but I should know, and I should be actively trying to address that.

So I don’t know if you know but the concept of Token Man is that we’ll speak again in a year’s time and revisit that. So is that something you want to publicly commit to, to look at Tribal’s hiring policies?

Oh OK — and yes, definitely!

Is there anyone you would like to nominate to do a Token Man interview? As in, who do you think we should speak to next, across the industry?

That’s a good question. I don’t know anyone specific but I’d quite like to understand the point of view of someone who is not as aware of the issue and who actively thinks ‘why are we even talking about this?’ A proper unabashed sexist pig. Also just to see if you can change their minds.

If you think of anyone just quietly drop me a line!

There might be one!

This is part of a series of interviews in which high profile women get the opportunity to ask high profile men some key questions about the gender diversity issue. Find out how to get involved here.