Women ‘must lead from front if Britons want more female execs’

WOMEN must take centre stage and move into commercial roles if the UK wants more female chief executives, according to the outgoing boss of Premier Inn’s owner.

Alison Brittain, chief executive of Whitbread, said the key to having more FTSE women bosses is ‘in growing the pipeline’.

The 57-year-old said there is a ‘talented cadre of women waiting’ to take over as chief executives, but too many of them work in ‘functional roles’ such as human resources.

When she leaves Whitbread in the new year, just nine of the UK’s biggest 100 listed companies will have a woman in charge.

Brittain is taking on one of the biggest jobs in football, a world which has been traditionally dominated by men. The Manchester United fan will become the Premier League’s first female chairman.

Brittain has spoken of the importance of companies setting targets for diversity, but said she is ‘not a great fan of quotas’. And she said yesterday: ‘The key to it is always the pipeline. It is encouraging women to come through the commercial sides of our business and into the senior executive cadre, not just in functional roles, but in commercial roles as well.

‘I think we need a bit of encouragement, as well, from the perspective of having a few people out here showing that it can be done, that you can manage your work and your family life and everything else.

‘It’s never easy, but it is doable. I think there’s some great [female] role models now in the FTSE 250.’

Gwen Rhys, chief executive of Women in the City, which champions women in business, agreed that women tend to either put themselves, or are put by men, into ‘softer skills’ areas including human resources and training. She said ‘they do not have responsibility for profits and losses early enough’.

Whitbread, meanwhile, unveiled a £307m profit for the six months to September, recovering from a £19m loss a year ago. Sales were a quarter higher than pre-Covid at £1.35bn.