GETTING INSIDE MEN’S HEADS ON THE GENDER TOPIC

Over 11,500 employees with just as many unique backgrounds, life plans and points of view: “This mix makes us successful”, as we like to say throughout our Group. But how? For our Swiss operations, with more than 3,500 employees, we decided to work with qualitative data to complete the quantitative picture and dig deeper to see where and how we can improve.

data pillars for a sustainable approach

For two years we have been transparently tracking our progress towards better diversity using an HR dashboard with gender diversity figures such as, for instance, share of women overall, in leadership positions, in hierarchical levels and in sales functions. Further, we track the net fluctuation rate, recruitment, entry salaries and the promotion rate. This gives us insights into how women are progressing.   
 
We soon realized that we also need qualitative data on inclusion to develop a sustainable approach to increasing the share of women in management positions. Therefore, Helvetia participated in the study ‘Leaders for Equality’ from the University of St.Gallen with the aim of involving male managers in fostering equal opportunities. As the majority of our line managers are still male, we are convinced that we can only make progress by getting their buy-in and commitment and by having joint discussions on actions. In other words, we can only improve in gender equality by gaining male allies.
 
We were also intrigued by the fact that it was the first time ever in Switzerland that a study mainly addressed male managers in the gender equality discussion. We wanted to get inside men’s heads!

listening to what men really think

The first part of the study focused on finding out what male managers think about gender equality, what they are willing to do to support women in management positions, what they have already done, and what equal opportunities mean for them. Prof. Dr. Julia Nentwich and Dr. Gabriele Schambach, co-heading the study, conducted group interviews with both male and female manager groups. Further, all line managers were invited to complete a survey. While male managers were asked specific questions, female managers were asked on their perception of their male colleagues’ involvement and motivation with regards to these specific questions. The goal of such an approach is to surface potential gaps between male and female perceptions in areas that are key for an inclusive culture.
 
Perhaps not that surprising, yet highly interesting – and a great conversation starter on top – was that the self-perception of the managers on certain topics differed widely from how the female managers rated them. Female managers had a more critical assessment of their male managers in terms of motivation and reasons to engage in the equality mission. This was a great basis for discussion and enlightenment on both sides.

group dialogues with ceo and head hr present

In the second part of this initiative, we ran group dialogues with both female and male managers to foster an inclusive work environment. In the first virtual dialogue with more than 100 managers participating, we presented the results of the study and split them into groups to discuss the findings and come up with proposals for taking action. Both Martin Jara, CEO Helvetia Switzerland, as well as Hamiyet Dogan, Head HR Switzerland, underlined the importance of this discussion and their commitment by participating in person.

translating insights into process improvement

The main topic of the second group dialogue was the yearly employee appraisal process with a view to optimize it in terms of building an inclusive company culture: How can we develop our employees’ skill set, what attitude is crucial, what stumbling blocks and unconscious biases do we face? This time, we had an even higher participation rate. Our CEO closed the session by sharing his personal learnings and concrete findings, which he will integrate in his appraisal process. To further anchor the message, CEO Martin Jara dedicated his weekly blog to all employees on the topic of diversity as a matter of course. In the following, an extract of his thoughts:

There are further dialogues planned along this year, among others on the topic of work-life integration and managing change.

men want to engage for gender equality!

We were extremely pleased to see how willingly our managers participated. There was no big marketing campaign needed. We perceived a great openness to progress on this topic. Both formats, the survey and group dialogues were communicated via emails. In the survey, we had a 50% participation rate! Top management commitment was highly important in setting the scene on how seriously we take gender equality.

mission accomplished on increased awareness and shared ownership of gender equality

We aim at awareness and buy-in from all 600 female and male managers and joint decisions on actions to increase gender diversity in our organization. We believe this makes change sustainable. Therefore, a high participation rate is one of our KPIs. At the end of each event, we collect managers’ feedback. The first-round feedback indicated that the managers really appreciated the mix of information and time for exchange. In gender-mixed groups, participants openly addressed questions and learnings.

concrete actions from dialogues and launch of our diversity council

The ‘Leaders for Equality’ initiative addresses company culture and leadership principles. Apart from measuring participation rate and feedback, what is most important is measuring the impact of implemented actions ensuing from the dialogues. As a concrete result that has already been implemented, we post all jobs with the opportunity to work between 50% and 100%, in job sharing or top sharing as of July 1, 2021. We intensify our blog stories about male and female role models. Furthermore, seeing the incredible interest and commitment of our managers also led to the decision to launch a Diversity Council within Helvetia. In this Council, headed by a Board Member of the Executive Board in Switzerland – in 2021/2022 Ralph Jeitziner, Head of Sales – we will decide on further initiatives, sound ideas with the business and develop programs.

sharing is caring

We are proud to have been invited to the Diversity & Inclusion Week of the University of St.Gallen in 2020 to share our learnings on Leaders for Equality from a participating company’s view. To readers interested in researching men’s opinions and ideas, the replay of this online session is still available.
click here to watch

what’s next?

The positive participation rate and commitment of our leaders have been really encouraging and we are continuing our regular exchanges on diversity and inclusion specific topics. We are convinced that the newly launched Diversity Council as well as the growing communities will inspire discussions on all hierarchy levels and further anchor gender equality in Helvetia.

Find more information about Diversity at Helvetia by clicking the button below:
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Further information about Leaders for Equality can be explored by clicking the button below:
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Manuela Bärtsch Forster kindly offered her availability for an exchange to interested Advance member companies. Feel free to contact her at manuela.baertsch@helvetia.ch

#ceoactions #inclusion #maleallyship #shapetheculture