Being inclusive
A program aims to help women gain positions on corporate boards.
Women occupy only 14 percent of corporate board seats in the U.S. and only 15 percent globally. Anne Taylor, a managing partner of Deloitte Houston, is out to change that. She helps women executives gain positions on corporate boards through a Deloitte effort called Board Ready Women. She spoke with the Houston Chronicle about the program, which premiered in Houston last spring.
Q: Could you explain the BRW program?
A: Board Ready Women is an invitation-only program held over the course of several months (one session per month). Each session focuses on a different topic, such as the changing landscape of corporate governance, shareholder activism, or how executives can hone their personal brand with board candidacy in mind.
Our goal is to help prepare talented women executives for board service, and to lay the groundwork for future placements on public and private company boards of directors. We aim to achieve this by coaching the executives to effectively position themselves for a board seat; helping them understand the factors shaping corporate governance; introducing them to sitting board members who can serve as mentors; and connecting participants to board recruiters from executive search firms.
I attended Board Ready Women (as a participant) in New York City, and saw great value in bringing it to Houston. The limited number of women board members here underscored the need to offer this program in our market.
We’ve been very pleased by the feedback we’ve received from program participants. Thus far, one of our program participants has secured a board seat, and we know others have been interviewing, so we are looking forward to seeing more women leaders at the table in the future.
Q: What are the advantages of increased diversity in corporate governance?
A: Companies with inclusive boards typically have higher performance metrics, as well as stronger talent pools inside the business. Companies with the highest percentage of women board directors outperformed those with the least women by 53 percent when looking at return on equity, by 42 percent when looking at return on sales, and by 66 percent when looking at return on capital. Also, research has shown that companies with more female employees have higher net profits.
The benefits of inclusive boards run deeper than financial gains. When corporations appoint women to their boards, it can set a positive tone that strengthens organizational culture and contributes to a stronger talent pool. Higher percentages of women on a board are associated with both greater percentages of women executive officers in subsequent years, as well as greater percentages of women in key profit-andloss positions that are often required for advancement. Over time, a 10 percent increase in female board membership is associated with a 21 percent increase in female executive presence in companies
Q: Does increasing board diversity help organizations deal with societal and technological shifts?
A: Boards that lack a variety of perspectives run the risk of missing valuable insights that could impact the company in the long run. Given the risks that companies face today — activism among board members, cyber risks, talent shortages — it’s good business to create a board that’s diverse in thought and primed to add value. Truly inclusive teams can deliver stronger ideas, encourage more debate, bring broader experiences to the table, and ultimately make better business decisions. There is also a trickle-down effect when corporations appoint women to senior positions. Placing women on corporate boards helps set the tone for an organization’s recruiting and hiring practices. And consistent access to senior women role models shows more junior professionals that their employer values diverse teams and an inclusive culture.
It’s critical that employers realize how much their people value an inclusive culture. Nearly eighty percent of surveyed Americans said that inclusion is important when choosing an employer, and that 40 percent would leave their current organization for one with a more inclusive culture. Twenty-three percent of respondents indicated they have already left an organization for a more inclusive one — including 30 percent of millennials
Q: How much progress has there been in Houston?
A: We have seen some positive momentum at the corporate board level, though Texas still lags behind other states when it comes to the percentage of board seats filled by women. According to the most recent 2020 Women on Boards Gender Diversity Index, across Texas, about 17 percent of board members of the Fortune 1000 are women. However, the number is roughly average when compared with other states. It places Texas around seven percentage points behind Washington, which tops the list of states with the most female directors.
While there’s clearly more work to be done to increase fairness in pay and build more inclusive leadership teams, there is some good news. In addition to having recently had a female mayor, the local business community seems to be increasingly comfortable with women in charge. Search firm Spencer Stuart’s Houston Board Index reports that 71 percent of Houston-based companies had a least one female director, while 27 percent had at least two women on the board. And, for the first time, all Big Four professional services (Deloitte, PwC, E&Y and KPMG) firms here in Houston had women serving as the managing partner.
Q: What are some of the greatest challenges that you and other women face in the corporate world?
A: When I began my career at Deloitte, at times I was the only woman at the leadership table. Fortunately, this didn’t faze me because I grew up with only brothers and was one of only two women in my undergraduate engineering program.
I chose to build a career at Deloitte in part because I felt its culture would empower me to succeed. I found sponsors here who gave me the opportunity to show what I could do. As my career progressed, I became the first woman on Deloitte’s U.S. executive committee, and the first on the global management committee of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. Later, I joined the board of Deloitte U.S. in a year when two women were nominated and our former chairman, Sharon Allen, and I joined together. Since then, we have become an organization of “firsts” (e.g., first female chairman of the board at a Big Four organization, first Hispanic and female CEOs in the Big Four, etc.).
It is clearly important to be a successful “first” or there would never be a second or third. One of the challenges can be the visibility, but this visibility presents great opportunity. When you do well, you get noticed and are remembered.