Ten Steps to Achieve 30 by 30 in Ten Years, by Julia Muir

The focus of our 2019 conference was how we will assist our members in reaching our shared goal of 30% of women in key leadership positions by 2030. Below are Julia's '10 Steps to Achieve 30 by 30 in Ten Years'.

1

Know your data & be accountable for progress

• Collect your gender balance data for all current roles.
• Monitor this data within your board’s business KPIs.
• Analyse your promotion rates, external hires, turnover and returner rates by gender. 
• Conduct pay gap audits annually and take action to close the pay gap. 
• Ensure all gender data is also supported by ethnicity data to identify intersectionality.

2

Identify the size of the task

• Identify the key roles based on their importance as pivotal career roles.
• Identify the gender gap and therefore the size of the task for each of these key roles.
• Identify if there is a particular “revolving door” role through which women are entering and then swiftly leaving the business. 
• Identify if there are particular managers that seem to be unable to recruit and retain women.
• Create a plan to address each role.

3

Invest in future profitability

• Allocate a realistic budget to achieve the task.
• View this as an investment in the future profitability of the business.
• Make a public commitment to achieve change to investors and key stakeholders. 

4

Identify sources of skills

• Identify the new skills you need for future business transformation. 
• Update job and person specifications. 
• Identify the potential sources of women with these skills - both internal and external. 
• Know your female managers and their career goals - never assume or listen to hearsay.

5

Recalibrate

• Recalibrate your working practices to accommodate a wider variety of employees.
• Remove out of date 20th century working practices.
• Young people and women choose to work in flexible and empowered environments.
• Flatter structures and opportunities to progress swiftly are preferred by higher performers.

6

Focus on productivity not presenteeism

• Improve productivity through flexible and agile working and shorter shifts.
• Use effective people management and leadership to motivate teams to achieve tasks. 

7

Reach Out

• Reach out to new talent pools to encourage more women to apply for roles in the business.
• Employ specialists in female and diversity recruitment rather that automotive recruiters.
• Ensure your communications and digital platforms make your diverse female employees visible - and not just on careers pages.  

8

Welcome In 

• Write job adverts with language that is not off-putting to women.
• Ensure criteria is realistic and absolutely necessary.
• Be transparent about flexible working policies and salaries. 
• Remove names and photos from application forms.

9

Pull Through

• Spot potential and encourage senior management sponsorship of high potential women. 
• Ask women for feedback on what are the barriers to progression, and take action.
• Ask women to apply for promotion rather than waiting for them to apply.
• Implement equal paid parental leave for men and women to ensure women do not pay a motherhood career penalty. 
• Moderate for the fact that success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. 

10

Hold On

• Ensure effective reintroduction after parental leave - discuss career plans.
• Do not put women returners in the career slow lane on the assumption they want to “lean out”. 
• Celebrate successful women and give them visibility and appreciation. 
• Ensure you have equal pay and introduce transparent remuneration policies. 
• Ensure bonus and merit pay policies do not penalise those working shorter hours.
• Ensure all the ten steps are sustained and consistently implemented.