You’ll have heard about the 2010 Harvard Business School case study where the same professional’s CV was presented as either that of a Heidi Roizen or Howard Roizen? Sight unseen, biased judgment interpreted the same CV in radically different ways. Opinions about Heidi were much harsher than Howard across the board. Just as competent and effective but deemed aggressive rather than assertive. They just didn’t like her or wanted to hire her.

This study led to changes, e.g. blind auditions for orchestra recruitment. It was amazing how many great female musicians were identified when applicants were chosen for their sound rather than their gender. No-one believed they were favouring men over women until that playing field was levelled.

What lies below

Being a woman is still a real Catch 22: lack confidence, you likely won’t succeed. If you display as much confidence as many men, you likely won’t succeed.

The problem with unconscious bias is, of course, that it is unconscious. If we bring one deeply held and outmoded belief to the forefront of our minds and challenge it, we have no idea how many others exist just out of sight. Political correctness also plays its part in obscuring what people truly think. People mind what they say so there is no opportunity for challenge.

Every now and then, however, something just slips out and shows what lurks beneath. A client of ours, a senior banker working at a strategic level transforming the bank on the high street, decided to leave for a lower stress job, with a different culture, that was prepared to pay her even more.

A male peer greeted the news with: “yes but you must just work for pin money. Your husband has a good job”… 

And there it all was, out in the open. Deep down, he didn’t really believe women needed or wanted the money. They had men, despite the vast number of women who are in single parent families, divorced or the main breadwinner in their family. Consider the implications for recruitment and retention if you hold odd or outmoded beliefs about women’s ambition, commitment, loyalty and need for money. This could also be why, despite the lower ratios of women, they are often the first ones to be ‘let go’ when redundancy strikes. Well, there must be a man somewhere paying their way…

Perhaps recruitment issues start even earlier. In conversation with women bankers in private wealth, they talked about what a good career it was for women, especially as there is an increasingly greater number of women wealthy in their own right (though divorce and inheritance might have played a part for some). They described how all the adverts, websites, reports they saw used stock images that implied it was a job for very traditional, public school, wood panelled males. As a result, women, due to their own unconscious bias, saw that it wasn’t the place for them. 

How to change this unconscious bias? 

Improving the ratio of women starts with the adverts, job specs, interview process, just to make sure you start fishing in the entire talent pool. Sometimes you have to go out and entice women before they realise the opportunities they could have with you. 

It is worth the effort for some of the following reasons:

• There is strong evidence of high female performance in the industry. For example a recent Goldman Sachs report showed that all-women or mixed gender fund teams have outperformed all-male portfolio management teams so far this year. 
• Over the 10 years since we published our research with the London School of Economics and the book Coaching Women to Lead, men have learned to talk a good game about the need for higher diversity but, in many sectors including Investment Management, this is just skin deep: deep down, the CEOs and senior executives don’t really believe in women’s ability to do as well as them. They still have unconscious bias about risk attitude for example (long debunked).

• It is the Board’s responsibility to push the executive team to do something about it and go beyond a box ticking exercise: it is just good business sense.

• Our research clearly shows that what is good for women is good for ‘diverse’ groups: ignore this at your peril as diversity becomes the norm.


Therefore, not actively recruiting, promoting and developing women looks like a wilful act of negligence or a deliberate exclusion. Time for the Board to hold execs to account.


It is expensive to recruit and then lose women to your competitors. How do you ensure they stay and rise through the ranks, effectively balancing your gender profile as they go? If you don’t truly understand why they leave, nothing changes. If you don’t have a plan and make people accountable, you will fail and fall behind your competitors.

Do you, like many firms, start off with a good proportion of women at entry level, then rather carelessly lose 50% every 5 years? Are you as profligate with other precious resources? Has your focus been on buying in women at the most senior levels in order to hit gender diversity targets?


I have been talking about this since our original research 15 years ago revealed the extent of the waste. The business case has been made repeatedly for having women at every level in the organisation. It is not about being nice and fair. It is about the bottom line, the different thinking, creativity and the increase in profits that come with a more diverse workforce.

Where do the women go?

Why can’t you keep your women and grow them up through the business? Why do they leave you? Where are they now?

Well, they certainly aren’t at home making cupcakes. Most likely they are working for your competitors. They probably left because they did not see a future with you. It may have been a lack of female role models, or the lack of feedback or an unfair raise or bonus, or because their line manager never explored their ambition or built a development plan with them. These are just some of the reasons women give for moving on. We sometimes feel they didn’t give their employer the best chance. They did not communicate their rage. They just left. 

We encourage women to make their ambition and desire for development explicit. Often, they feel let down that no-one took the initiative or encouraged them to stay. So, they just left.

Women lie

The other thing we discovered is that many women do not tell the truth in their exit interview. Most men probably don’t either. If you don’t understand why you haemorrhage women, you are not well equipped to staunch the flow. As an outside consultant, speaking in confidence, I get the real story. Culture plays a big part. Relationships and opportunities account for the rest. If women do not see the signal that this is the place for them, they will leave and never give you the benefit of that insight.

Grow your own

It is much less expensive to hang on to the excellent women you have already appointed than to try and keep backfilling as they fade away. Rather than focus on expensive external hires at executive levels, focus on talent management of your women from the moment they join your company. Grow them up in the business, building loyalty and commitment, by giving them a vision of the possibilities in their careers.

What does it take? 

First, commit to a plan to achieve gender parity at all levels. Most people have it in writing in a policy somewhere. Make it real.

Second, understand when and why you are losing women. What are the variables? Discover where the leaks occur and what needs to change for women to want to stay with you.

Third, invest in coaching and development to ensure women are ready for the next promotion. Women’s ambition may not look exactly like their male counterparts. 

Remember that the organisation was probably designed by and for men. Things may need to change. For more information about the business case for diversity, equity, and inclusion, please click here.

The maths of gender diversity:

Evidence from the City is that women are performing at least as well as men in fund management, the law, insurance, and banking. It is equally true in ‘real’ industries outside the City. So how do you convince those in power to pay more attention to recruitment and retention? – Simple: show them everyone stands to gain.

From macro to micro

In our new edition of Coaching Women to Lead we show, once again, that there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that gender-balanced teams perform better. Somehow this fails to resonate at individual company level, so we need to dig deeper.

Sector behaviour

Some sectors are more traditional than others and some are better at extracting cash value from diversity policy. Banking – investment banking in particular – has a high-fear environment, making it more difficult for diversity policies to take hold unless there is very strong sponsorship.

Companies within sectors will rapidly copy each other: when we worked on gender in oil engineering, the sector was willing to ‘do something’ but our clients were the first global company to really invest in the development and retention of women in all its activities, giving it a head-start but then also spurring others to emulate them. The same is true in City law firms or insurance for example.

Each talent pipeline is different

Even though all law firms start with a majority of female newly qualified lawyers, the timing and speed at which they lose them along the way to equity partner varies greatly: if you don’t understand where and why you are leaking talent then you won’t get the benefits of greater diversity, no matter what your sector.

Modelling for results

When we started modelling the cash impact of gender diversity – simply tapping the full talent pool and retaining high performers – we calculated that in a professional services firm a balanced blend would give every partner, male or female, an extra 10% net profit. This far outweighed the cost of introducing more flexibility or technology in the firm.

When we tried our model in real life we were faced with the usual pushback of “we are a meritocracy”, “natural female talent will emerge”, “we don’t do positive discrimination” and so on. A firm we worked with also confided discreetly that female partners were actually underperforming men. This was a bit of a challenge, so we really crunched the numbers with their HR team. Much to the surprise of the managing partner, the female performance data were inaccurate and women performed at least as well as the top male quartile. What weighed the average down was actually a long tail of underperforming men who had fallen below the radar. By then the business case for more women partners was compelling.

Adding bias to recruitment

Each industry, each company has a history which is reflected in the profile of incumbent managers. Not only gender but also race, education, social aptitude and so on. Many industries at the junior level have been working hard to remove bias with nameless CVs, providing aptitude tests independent of academic qualifications, etc.
The challenge for most companies is at a more senior level: how do you get top female performers as the number of candidates dwindles with seniority? – With a clear bias: demand females on every list, ask for an equal number of male and female candidates for promotion panels, use female networks, etc. Given the low numbers of senior women on the market, you’re highly unlikely to be accused of discrimination and you will do everybody’s take home pay a favour.

Conclusion: follow Tolstoy

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy

You really need to understand the unique way in which you are still failing to attract and retain female talent. Only then can you do something about it. Creating a quantitative model of your talent pipeline will help you build a clear business case, including the level of investment required to write a happy ending…

Getting it right scores across multiple dimensions:

Getting ESG right is complicated as so many factors and activities are intertwined. You need to be seen to do the right thing. Acting on Gender Diversity is highly effective and has a high signalling value. We will show you why.

It’s complicated to get it right

The basic principle of ESG is simple enough: does your organisation create value in a sustainable way? (And what should you report on that is important and not part of your financial statements?)

Reporting on ESG however is a bit like playing 3D chess: you need to decide which law applies to your business, which reporting framework to adopt, the level of depth of reporting for each category, how categories influence each other and who will help you to improve performance.

Three pillars

Although there are many frameworks, they typically rest on three pillars:

• Purpose and Governance
• Planet (in your firm and across your supply chain)
• People (in your firm and across your supply chain)

Gender is everywhere

Although there are 104 women for 100 men across the OECD, women represent the largest ‘minority’ in organisations. It is therefore not surprising that gender is tracked across all ESG dimensions. Ignoring Environmental reporting for the time being, here are some gender specific areas:

Purpose & Governance

• Gender balance of Board
• Gender balance of Executive team

Comment: we know that diverse teams perform better. They also are less subject to the kind of groupthink that leads to bubbles or unethical behaviour.

People

This is where most of the metrics reside, such as:

• Wage ratio by gender
• Employee turnover by gender
• Hours of training by gender
• Employees receiving regular career development reviews by gender

And many other direct and indirect measures of fairness…

Dynamic rating: you need to be seen to act

The challenge is not just to report on ESG: it is to express it in the context of your own activities and then to demonstrate convincingly that you are taking constructive action.

The FTSE Russell ESG framework measures both the management of a given theme but also the exposure specific to your company. So if, for example, your firm is staffed with a large majority of male computer specialists, you will score low on Diversity but you will also have a long term risk, e.g. never to close the Gender Pay Gap. Unless you actively invest in STEM graduate schemes or attracting and retaining women via a range of training and engagement activities, this will be scored as a high long term exposure.

The GRI standard uses a similar approach: it lists topics and then defines if a topic is material to your business (usefully providing sector-specific lists).

Gender interventions to the rescue

There is no silver bullet to ‘do’ Gender Diversity. It is a multi-dimension, multi-year activity which is best characterised as a ‘complex’ problem: one with multiple feedback loops that keeps coming back the minute you stop paying attention. There is no real ‘tipping point’. However, having a coherent set of interventions can help change culture and retain a high proportion of motivated, capable women and score on all the dimensions above.

Ready, Fire, Aim

If you are a large organisation you probably have D&I specialists, and have taken the time to analyse your talent pipeline. You therefore know where the best interventions lie – a top-down approach. For the rest of us however, it is more important to take action first: identify a group of women, typically at the ‘emerging leader’ category and sign them up on a good programme. This will be a great opportunity to both signal action and analyse which aspect of culture and processes need attention (for example by collecting feedback from the first cohort of attendees).

What is good for women is good for everybody

Obviously women are not the only Diversity you need to report on, but what we have found out through 20+ years working on gender is that women interventions bring greater fairness and transparency to all business processes, slowly changing the culture for everybody. Beyond this, what is good for women is also appreciated by the younger generation millennial managers, a key to overall retention and people risk.

Conclusion: as simple as 1, 2, 3

When I was a young consultant I was encouraged to write the draft of my final report on day one, and then look for the evidence to support or modify it. ESG reporting is a bit like this:

• Write down a list of dimensions which you think are important for your business to report on, from Governance and people risk to diversity and general fairness (plus environment of course)
• Figure out quickly what your starting metrics are and which interventions will help ‘move the needle’ (hint: gender should be high on the list!)
• Measure action taken/progress while you refine the framework and how you will report

Ignoring it will hurt your pocket:

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) value drivers first emerged from a UN conference in 2005. Over time it has become an important filter for investors and employees. But what is it exactly and who does it apply to? What are the consequences of ignoring it? This post sets the scene and helps you act.

A bit of history

There has been a long battle since Adam Smith between ‘blind profit’ objectives and running a responsible business. Recent iterations have included the Capital Asset Pricing Model (1960s) which evolved into concepts of value creation/destruction and an orthodoxy about how to run businesses based on hard corporate finance principles. This went largely unchallenged until the financial meltdown of 2008. Since then, there have been numerous attempts to redefine capitalism (‘stakeholder centric’), creating ecologically sustainable practices throughout the supply chain and, since the pandemic, questioning the wisdom of long distance travel for manufactured goods – let alone executive travel…

What is ESG?

ESG reporting has become a mainstream requirement for listed companies: it covers a variety of topics from resources use, human rights, health and safety, corruption and transparency. Originally it was limited to specialist ethical funds: fund managers would only invest in those listed companies with good ESG reporting. It has evolved to now cover all listed businesses. It will soon cover most medium sized businesses including unlisted/family owned down to 250 employees.

Is ESG the new CSR?

Corporate Social Responsibility is a general model (i.e. unregulated) where companies present themselves as socially accountable to all stakeholders. It helps the company to both have a social impact and improve its image to the public and employees. Because of its unregulated nature, there has a considerable amount of ‘CSR-washing’ with companies taking token action at home while keeping a blind eye on their supply chain for example.  ESG is more regulated, even if a clear standard has yet to emerge.

Pushed by investors and Governments

Another key difference between ESG and CSR is that ESG has become a requirement for fund managers and covers all asset classes: shares, bonds, private equity… Governments are pushing for this too, with the UK adopting both EU and OECD requirements. Perhaps a better analogy for ESG is Socially Responsible Investment (SRI), a precursor which screened out those companies that operated in certain industries (e.g. tobacco, military equipment) or countries (e.g. apartheid South Africa).

Burden of the proof is with the business

Every company falling under the remit of ESG must report on it yearly (normally as part of their annual report if listed). They need to indicate both where they are in each area but also how they intend to do to improve. If the answers are absent or unsatisfactory, they may be rejected by investors and regulators.

It’s complicated to get it right

Reporting on ESG is a bit like playing 3D chess: you need to decide which law applies to your business, which reporting framework to adopt, the level of depth of reporting for each category, how categories influence each other and who will help you to improve performance.

A jungle of rules and frameworks

There are two schools of thought: formal reporting (e.g. ISO 140010 for environmental reporting) or ‘framework’ reporting (e.g. the UN Global Compact). In Europe the most widely used is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Another is the FTSE Russell ESG rating model – used to rate investments for inclusion in indices. In addition some industry bodies are doing their own thing (e.g. Lloyd’s insurance market).

To make things worse these frameworks then cross with local initiatives. For instance in the UK the various Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) frameworks and the legal requirement to report on the Gender Pay Gap.

Far beyond Environmental reporting

Many companies have tackled their carbon footprint first as well as labour conditions in their supply chain. They have not worried about the mental health of their UK employees, their tax transparency, their community impact or managing people risk. The FTSE framework contains 300 indicators with an average of 125 applied per company!

Make early choices, refine later

The first thing to do is to choose which components of the reporting are relevant to you today or will be in the next couple of years. Then decide which indicators you want to supply and where. We suggest that ESG reports into the CFO, even if a lot of information needs to be supplied by HR, Legal, Operations or Supply Chain. In each case, think about what you already have (Learning and development activities, anti modern slavery monitoring, tax reporting…) and investigate the gaps with best practice. Then decide who will own which topic both in terms of reporting and improvement. Get it wrong early so that you can improve it the following year: this is a messy business and you may need outside help in various areas. 

Conclusion: pay attention now or pay later

The cost of being seen as slack in this area (ESG-washing?) falls into four categories:

• For listed companies, being rejected by fund managers will have a direct impact on the valuation of the business as well as the cost of capital. ESG accounts for over 70% of all assets under management in Europe. You don’t want to be left out. 
• ESG has a strong brand impact: in each sector customers, employees and investors carry out peer comparisons:: being the ugly ESG duckling will hurt your attractiveness to all stakeholders (and your share price if listed). 
• Short term performance: companies with lower environmental standards pay more fines; companies with unhappy employees incur more absenteeism and disrupted production.  Customers are prepared to pay a modest price premium for ethical, true-green companies’ products
• Long term performance. To quote Larry Fink, CEO of investment giant Blackrock: “The more your company can show its purpose in delivering value to its customers, its employees, and its communities, the better able you will be to compete and deliver long-term, durable profits for shareholders.”

So it’s worth paying attention to ESG. Each case is different. Contact us to discuss yours.