Pandemic `opened the minds of traditional thinkers to the art of the possible`’

The latest Skills Bulletin from state further education and training agency Solas revealed that female participation in the Irish workforce reached a record level at the end of 2021. Despite a decline at the beginning of the pandemic, female employment grew by 93,000 or 9 per cent in the two-year period from the end of 2019 to the end of 2021. That brought the overall female participation rate to 60.1 per cent. An improvement but significantly below the male participation rate of over 70 per cent.

That lower figure represents a clear untapped opportunity at a time when organisations are faced with an extremely tight labour market. The challenge for companies as they seek to attract talent and improve their gender balance is how to encourage women to enter or re-enter the workforce.

According to Julie Sinnamon, co-chair of Balance for Better Business, increased flexibility may go some way towards providing a solution. She notes that while the pandemic did in many instances exacerbate the unfair share of caring responsibilities borne by women, there have been some positive outcomes.

“The huge experiment in remote working that we were forced into opened the minds of traditional thinkers to the art of the possible,” she says. “Many companies are still grappling with the new normal. They haven’t decided on the number of days in and out of the office. Others are looking at more flexible arrangements where people might spend part of the day working from home and other parts in the office. Every company I speak to is still trying to work out what the best mix is.”

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Culture is a key issue. “It can be lost over time when people are remote working,” she explains. “Who are new recruits learning from? How are they onboarded? But from a female participation perspective, the greater flexibility has allowed some women who found the commute to work difficult to continue working or return to work. Flexibility is increasingly a differentiator for people when they are looking for new jobs. Talent is one of the biggest issues facing every business. They need to attract and retain talent and if they want to do that they have to respond to people’s needs.”

Another risk with flexible working is proximity bias. “Presenteeism can be a problem”, Sinnamon points out. “People who are present in the office are more visible and can get better assignments and promotion. Organisations need to make decisions based on impact rather than presence. They have a responsibility to ensure they have the recruitment and promotion processes to track that. There is also a responsibility on the individual to make themselves visible, of course.”

Companies also need to go the extra mile to make themselves attractive to female candidates, according to Eileen Gregory, vice president people with the Adroll business unit of marketing technology company NextRoll.

“There are a few strands to what we do,” she says. “It starts with employer branding. We put the spotlight on women who are already in the organisation. We highlight learning and development opportunities and our diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives. We utilise very targeted messaging in our recruitment campaigns.”

Those messages include “ambitious women wanted” and “start strong, finish stronger”.

Role modelling is also important, with recruitment ads featuring women who have developed their careers with NextRoll. “They may have started in entry-level roles and progressed to more senior positions or moved to other areas of the business,” she points out.

“We have always been very transparent about our equality, diversity and inclusion statistics,” she adds. “We produced an annual report on them in 2021 and will continue to do that.”

That report showed that the percentage of women in leadership roles in NextRoll has grown from 41 per cent to 45 per cent since 2016.

“The next stage is talent acquisition,” Gregory continues. “We place a lot of focus on the process. We ensure that we use inclusive language and avoid words that might turn off women. We have a highly standardised interview process, and all interviewers must undergo behavioural training covering areas like unconscious bias and so on.”

Development is another area of focus. “Our women in Leadership programme has proved very successful over the years,” she says. “The other piece is mentoring. We partnered with the IMI and the 30% Club on their mentoring programme some years ago and we have run our own internal programme for the past three years. I am still a mentor on the IMI programme. About 30 people take part in our mentoring programmes every six months. It’s hugely beneficial for everyone involved.”