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In-person event

Women Leaders Series: Building a Talent Pipeline

How can Whitehall and the public sector ensure that there are enough talented women building their careers to become future leaders?

This event, part of the Institute's and EY’s Women Leaders Series, explored current efforts to build the talent pipeline of women in Whitehall and considered what more can be done.

Simon Fraser, Permanent Secretary, Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Civil Service Diversity Champion pointed to two key issues at hand in efforts to increase diversity in Whitehall: recruitment and promotion. Fraser noted that although the Civil Service has done well in its efforts to recruit more women to the Civil Service, promotion has proved a more difficult issue to tackle. He pointed to the fact that women hold only 38 percent of Senior Civil Service positions (despite making up 53 percent of the Civil Service overall) as clear demonstration of the work to be done to help women rise higher in the Civil Service.  

He also expressed concern over recent backward trends on the proportions of BME and disabled people in the Senior Civil Service.  He highlighted a network of other permanent secretaries who would help him in his championing role:  Sharon White (HMT) would champion gender, Richard Heaton (Cabinet Office) disability and Sue Owen (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) LGBT.
On increasing women in leadership roles specifically, Fraser noted that there are a number of schemes currently in place to support the advancement of women in the Civil Service. Fraser credited Francis Maude with prioritising this issue, reporting that Maude recently commissioned an external investigation and assessment of the barriers preventing women from reaching leadership within the public sector. Fraser stated that a forthcoming diversity action plan will be released in coming months and will be based around the findings of this research.

Siobhan Benita, Chief Policy and Strategy Office for the Department of Economics and co-Director of the Warwick Policy Lab noted what, from her perspective there has been very little progress in this area since she left her position working on diversity issues in the Cabinet Office several years ago.  She said there are three areas to consider in building the talent pipeline within the Civil Service.

  1. Recruitment and retention: while recruitment efforts are good in the Civil service, there is a significant drop off at senior levels. Only 8 of 37 permanent secretaries are women.
  2. Strategy and planning: Francis Maude could have done much more on diversity from the beginning of his post. While it is encouraging that there this issue has received some recent attention, Benita asked why it took so long.
  3. Determining what support is needed: Benita pointed out that efforts to build the talent pipeline should be reflective of women’s experiences and obstacles in the Civil Service. She pointed to women’s return to work post-maternity leave – a point at which many women’s careers stagnate – as an area for improvement that has received little attention so far.

Emma Howard-Boyd, Board Member of the 30% Club Steering Committee, discussed the 30% Club’s efforts to change the conversation on building the pipeline of women in leadership from a women’s issue to a business issue. She stated that increasing the number of women in leadership is about more than fairness, it is about building leadership teams that make the best decisions and lead to the best outcomes, pointing to literature that suggests that diversity in leadership is actually profitable.

Howard-Boyd said that some in the private sector have caught on to this idea and that she has seen some promising trends emerge. Publically listed companies are now required to publish diversity breakdowns within their leadership and some companies have proactively set public goals to for increasing their representation of women in leadership.
 

Audience discussion
When an audience member commented that efforts to support women’s career advancements don’t tend to be applied consistently across government, Fraser agreed that some departments posed bigger diversity challenges than other. He pointed to his own department as one whose male-dominated culture may make it particularly difficult for women to advance. While things like pervasive cricket and military references in the workplace may not intentionally disadvantage women, they contribute to a departmental culture that is less inclusive of those who do not share the same frame of reference.

In response to an audience comment that diversity schemes often appear to try to change women to fit the workplace rather than the other way around, Fraser agreed that this is the wrong approach. He pointed again to his own department, noting that tackling the kinds of workplace culture and unconscious bias issues he sees in his department is where the real work is in cultivating diversity at all levels in Whitehall and beyond.
 

Publisher
Institute for Government

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