The Girls’ Lounge Davos: Day 3 Digest

After two days of presentations and discussions about gender balancing the workplace bringing some of the top thought leaders in business today together, we reached the next step — action. The simplest things are the most necessary; creating a culture of care, focusing on growing and developing employees as a means of growing and developing businesses, and engaging leadership at every step for the bigger picture. With visits from incredible individuals and executives like The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington and Twitter’s Adam Bain, our third and final day in Davos left us inspired and activated, ready to bring the changes we’ve designed to companies around the world.

IPG’s CEO Michael Roth kicked off the first panel of the day with the question of the moment: what’s your next step toward gender equality? Everyone has been talking about this for a long time, and the scope of big-picture equality in the workplace often distracts from choosing that next step and taking it. Michael suggests that it starts with the leadership, whether that’s a board, a CEO or a boss. “Diversity — put it in your DNA,” he said. “It must be a part of your corporate objectives.” After defining workplace diversity as an economic goal with social benefits, it’s up to the leaders to ask the question, “does this meet our overall objectives?” about every action taken. When every action’s reaction is considered, the ripple effect has great power in determining progress.

Mike Perlis of Forbes connected entrepreneurship with social innovation. The President & CEO is focused on telling the stories of success in business, and today, a year before Forbes’ 100 year anniversary, those stories are increasingly focused on entrepreneurship. The model and mindset in startups and small businesses allows for steps to be taken to make changes without, or with fewer, constraints than in big companies. This understandably accelerates this movement for women, whether or not they’re founding the companies that are redefining the norm. Granted, recent years have seen a mass increase in female founders and entrepreneurs. “People want their own business and ambitiously [those people] been more women,” shared Mike.

Pat Milligan, Senior Partner and Global Leader of When Women Thrive and Multinational Clients at Mercer shared a comprehensive report on women in the workplace. “When Women Thrive” explores not only the statistics around lifetime numbers of women in business, but also focuses on where they tend to exit the workforce. By pulling this specific data, Mercer is able to zoom in on the problems that need immediate correction. “What gets measured matters.” Pat asserted. The report shows that while gender parity has been reached in recruiting and the top tier of executives are in agreement about the business necessity of equality, it’s middle management that is bottlenecking. Women leave the workplace at three times the rate of male counterparts at their first professional promotion. To retain an equally male to female workforce, coaching and culture at this level is paramount.

The lounge concluded with an open conversation about culture and the keys to progress. Moderated by Stephanie Ruhle, Managing Editor and News Anchor, Bloomberg Television & Editor-At-Large, Bloomberg News and joined by Dan Tarman, Chief Communications Officer at eBay, Bob Carrigan, CEO of Dun & Bradstreet, Priv Bradoo, Co-founder and CEO of BlueOak, Adam Bain, COO of Twitter and The Girls’ Lounge’s own CEO Shelley Zalis, the group drove home the theme of the week: urgency and action. “Find practical things you can do in the company and find your tone to fix gender equality,” encouraged Dun & Bradstreet’s Bob.

The power, passion and sometimes daunting feat of achieving gender parity that’s been discussed at The Girls’ Lounge Davos is the first step towards corporate transformation and better business. It’s shaped by the behaviors of individuals at every level of the corporate ladder, especially the CEO, but also beyond the workplace as well. Armed with that knowledge, three days worth of inspiring conversation, proven research and collaborative thought, the guests and attendees of The Girls’ Lounge have core action items to implement change. Rather than viewing the undertaking as a mountain of a project, achieving gender parity in the workplace is just practical business sense, as said by Adam Bain. “I’m not sure it has to be scary. One of the things we talked about this morning [at the UN #HeForShe event in Davos] was that there’s a whole body of research that shows that more diverse companies are more successful. There was a catalyst study recently, and it’s proof positive, every operating metric of companies that they’ve studied performs better given a more diverse culture.” The Twitter exec summed up, “I don’t think that’s correlation, I think that’s causation.”