Women still being passed up for leadership roles, new study finds
WOMEN ARE being passed up for promotions in healthcare as few make it to leadership roles, according to a new survey.
More than half (55%) of nearly 200 hospital and health system executives said women in their organizations have been overlooked due to gender, executive search firm Korn Ferry found. Nearly two-thirds ranked their development programs for women as fair, poor or non-existent, and 76% said their company does not have sponsorship programs to help women advance.
About 80% of the healthcare workforce is made up of women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But less than 20% hold key leadership roles, said Katie Bell, Korn Ferry global account lead for the healthcare sector. Only 19% of hospitals and 4% of healthcare companies are led by women, Korn Ferry found in a related paper.
“The status quo isn’t working,” she said. “Organizations need to be transparent in how the promotion process works and what they are evaluating.”
There’s a broader push to boost female representation in healthcare management roles. More health systems are appointing chief diversity officers, who are in part tasked with ensuring gender diversity. Time’s Up Healthcare was also recently launched to address similar disparities and injustices in the industry.
But shifting from how things have always been done in healthcare has proven to be difficult and slow.
“It is a hard switch, so it has to be intentional,” Bell said. “Intentional and systematic processes need to be put in place along with the recruiting piece, talent promotion, development and incentives for top leaders. But that takes time.”
The transition may be quicker if the case can be made that gender diversity is profitable. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said their organizations would be more profitable with greater gender parity in leadership, while 64% believe there would be less turnover. When there is less turnover, patient and employee satisfaction typically go up, which can translate to more revenue.
Renton, Wash.-based Providence St. Joseph Health has both informal and formal programs to help women advance including mentorship programs, leadership formation and a social networking group for women leaders that system executive Debra Canales jokingly calls “chicks in charge.” Five out of eight of executive leaders who report directly to the system’s CEO are women.
“Women in leadership have a responsibility to pay it forward by identifying the next generation of women leaders and doing what we can to bring them up,” said Canales, executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Providence St. Joseph. “We can’t wait around for the industry to catch up to the rest of the world—female leaders and our male allies need to make change happen ourselves.”
Healthcare executives must evaluate the root cause of gender disparity within their organizations and possibly reframe job descriptions or performance reviews to emphasize the purpose and meaning behind the work, which seems to resonate with women, Bell said.
Typically, more men are exposed to finance and operations development than women, which can lead to lopsided leadership representation. Organizations also need to be transparent in how the promotion process works and what skills they are looking for, Bell said.
Once efforts are in place, leaders need to be held accountable, keeping track of how many women are promoted. Managers need to do a better job of identifying someone with potential and women need to tout their own achievements and ask for a promotion, Bell said.
Fifty-four percent of those surveyed believe that women do not self-promote as strongly as men do and 62% said that women get promoted by working hard and being recognized for their efforts rather than asking their boss directly. An advocate, which is more than a mentor, can be particularly helpful in that arena, Bell said. ●