Work is a funny thing these days. For some, it’s less of a priority than it was before the pandemic. For many, it’s a battle between the back-to-work types and those who prefer to stay remote, or at least have the option. But for most, it’s a country that needs to provide much more than a salary and basic benefits for people to continue devoting such an important part of their lives to it.
As such, companies looking to maintain a successful and content workforce are finding new ways to serve those who work for them, especially when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion.
And some are doing better than others.
In Parity.org’s recently released 2022 list of “Best Companies for Women on the Move,” only 43 companies made the list, and of fashion, only Ralph Lauren Corp. was counted among them.
The so-called ParityLIST, a nonprofit effort focused on closing the gender and racial gap in corporate leadership, was launched in 2020 to recognize organizations whose policies and benefits advance opportunities for women in the workplace rather than barriers. present, as it happened. it has long been the case.
“Equality in leadership is essential, but we know that representation alone is not enough – we must create conditions that are purposefully designed to support women’s ambitions, well-being and freedoms,” Roseann Lynch, Ralph Lauren’s Chief People Officer and Director of Ralph Lauren Corporate. The foundation said in a statement.
In 2020, Ralph Lauren announced that it had already met its 2023 goal of equal gender representation between men and women at its vice president level and above, confirming that women hold 50 percent of those positions in the company—a a fact that she has tried to preserve. .
While more broadly, women make up 48 percent of the total workforce, according to Parity, however, the average executive team is 67 percent white men.
According to Parity, 88 percent of companies on the 2022 list regularly measure and report on gender equality metrics, 86 percent report their gender equality values to employees, 98 percent offer flexible working hours and 95 percent encourage men to take their full parental leave.
Only 31 percent of companies, however, have at least 50 percent women on their executive team – although this number is up from 21 percent of companies on last year’s ParityLIST. Efforts appear to be moving somewhat in the right direction, with 91 percent of companies asking recruiters to include at least one qualified female candidate for open executive roles.
Airbnb, Best Buy, Nasdaq and The Clorox Company were among others named to the Best Companies for Advancing Women list.
Benefits were a big part of the ranking.
“There were so many incredible benefits of the companies that made our ParityLIST, but a few in particular stood out in my mind,” Cathrin Stickney, founder and CEO of Parity.org, told WWD. “One company has made parental leave mandatory for everyone who gives birth or adopts a child, and most employees are paid full wages during that time. This means that men will not receive pay and promotional advantages over women who in the past took their full parental leave out of necessity so that their male counterparts who become fathers only get a few days off.”
And, she added, “One company has created what they call Basic Work Hours. All employees are expected to work certain hours (based on their time zone), but can work overtime whenever it works best for them. This allows flexibility, especially for women, to attend doctor’s appointments, drop their children off at school or attend to other caregiving responsibilities.”
While there have been advances in the way the modern workforce works for women in it, there is still a long way to go to achieve equality, especially because men are still hired and promoted into top jobs at much higher rates than women.
“It’s really disappointing that the wage equality needle hasn’t moved as quickly as it should have by now. The average woman still earns about 20 percent less than the average man — and has been for about 15 years,” Stickney said, citing Pew Research. Since Parity.org launched in 2017, the amount a woman makes for every dollar a man earns has grown by a paltry half a percent each year, today to 84 cents to a man’s dollar, she added.
And none of this has been helped by the pandemic’s impact on women in the workforce.
The National Women’s Law Center said in a March report of this year, “While men have returned to their pre-pandemic workforce, more than 1.1 million fewer women are in the workforce today than in February 2020. As a result , many women – especially Black, Latina and other women of color – are still struggling to make ends meet.”
So what should companies with a long way to go for gender equality do now and going forward?
Stickney says it’s two things (the same two things many companies have been forced to realize they need to do when it comes to racial representation): make public commitments and measure their progress.
“More companies should publicly commit to interviewing qualified women for every open leadership position,” she said. “Companies have been making private commitments for decades with few results. A public engagement is different. This not only gives employees visibility into the importance the company places on diversity and equality, but enables company leaders and managers to hold the organization accountable for proactively working towards equality.
From there, it’s about recognition and responsibility.
“You can’t fix what you can’t see,” Stickney said. “Companies need to measure not just representation and pay equity, but the entire employee lifecycle, from recruitment to termination, if they are to fully understand where the barriers and opportunities lie. When they start measuring, they will discover all kinds of previously invisible patterns. For example, do women leave the company at higher rates than men in the first five years of employment? If the answer is ‘yes’, you have a problem.
“Or, if you’re recruiting more women than men at the entry level and more men than women at the management levels, you’re going to have a pipeline problem when you look at your high-potential employees to fill senior jobs and you may find only men. “, she added. “You won’t even know you have these problems if you’re not measuring and reporting on the right things.”
