Speaking at the latest Diversity and Inclusivity Finance Forum (DIFF) leadership briefing, Barbara Schönhofer, founder and chair of ISC Group which aims to improve representation of women in senior leadership roles in the insurance sector, said that progress had “fast-forwarded a lot of things” in the diversity and inclusion sphere.
One thing that had progressed was male allyship, as male leaders had to work from home and “they saw more of their family, they understood more of what was going on”.
“Male allyship has come on leaps and bounds in the last two years and more and more men are now wanting to know how to support and how to make this right.”
Schönhofer said that this helped women as there has been a “step change”, but women were “still playing catch-up” when it came to building community and allyship.
She said that in the insurance market, men had been doing this for years. She explained: “They’ve got to know each other. They’ve got to know how they operate, where they come from and how they all interact. They make deep and meaningful long-term relationships.”
“It’s not that they’re keeping us out of that club. It’s that they have no idea how to invite us in and we have no idea how to invite ourselves.”
She continued that it was vital that women create their own spaces where they felt safe, have security, can share experience, be transparent with each other and provide role models.
“We have to get that glue. We have to build that community. We have to build that allyship with women first, because then we’ve got something to offer. We’ve got insight, we can do research into what’s going on and we’ve got data to support that insight.”
Schönhofer continued that once groups were created, it created a community and then allyship followed.
Companies need to look at female-focused processes
Regarding actions that companies can take to improve the representation and inclusion of women in their organisation, Schönhofer said that firms should look at their hiring and promotion processes.
Companies need to look at whether they are “fair”, “robust” and “appreciate difference”. She added that it was important to look at people’s answers, collate the data and see how women or different groups were answering questions to see if they could be improved.
Another key thing that organisations can do is offer female-only development programmes. She pointed to a pilot the ISC Group did with insurance broker Marsh where they did online coaching of 19 women that was “extremely successful”.
The women were broken into smaller cohorts, and each group had a psychologist. It created a space where they could speak freely to one another about issues, and they created allyship with one another. Schönhofer said that within the first year three had had major promotions.
Another key action was to be transparent about paternity and maternity leave, flexible working and other employee benefits, adding that it was best to put it out there so “nobody has to ask the question”.
Mentoring is a must
People should also be “be prepared to do [their] bit” with mentoring, sponsorship and allyship.
She explained: “Mentoring someone is when you tell them your experience and you help them up through with your experience. Mentoring someone is talking about them [positively] when they’re not in the room as in ‘have you thought about x for this role?’”
Schönhofer added that the market and the employee’s organisation was “probably about five years out of date with who you are”, so having mentors and allies who can advocate for you was crucial.
She said: “It’s really important that senior women are mindful in everything that they do, because the younger women are looking up and they need to see it and they need to see we’re doing something and they need to see they have allies, because some of them won’t even know what they don’t know yet.”
Women need ‘to own the space’
From an individual perspective, she said that women sometime struggled to take ownership for their actions and preferred using “we” rather than “I”.
She added: “We think we’re being a show-off when we’re saying what we’ve done. We also like using we instead of I in some cases, but we need to be using I.”
Schönhofer said that when interviewing a man she found that they would often say ‘I’ve done this and I’ve done that…this is what I’ve achieved’, and she would then have to question them about the set-up for the team, who made the final decision, how it was achieved.
This was opposite for women, who tended to use we and refer to the team as a whole.
“It’s fine to own the space,” Schönhofer added.
‘Know your worth’
Another key aspect was knowing your value to a company and what you offer.
“Know what your worth is and be prepared to share that, not in a boastful way, but just in a factual way. If you go back and you look at your careers and what you’ve achieved and why things have happened around you in the way they have, that wouldn’t happen if you weren’t there, that’s your value,” she said.
Networking is also important, but Schönhofer said it was “important to understand that it’s two-way traffic, you engage with the network, so you have to be prepared to give back to that network”.
She explained: “You may not be able to do anything in that moment, or that month or that year, but you can bet your bottom dollar somewhere along the line you’ll be able to help that person.”
