Across organizations, despite best efforts, persistent disparities remain between women and men, in terms of compensation, representation of women in managerial positions. “Violence and harassment, including sexual harassment, also remains a reality for many women in the world of work”, states the Empowering Women at Work report by the International Labor Organization. While the glass ceiling no longer exists for many women in the industry, fact remains that diversifying and integrating the female employees at work still has a long way to go.
Women have now showcased their talent in every field whether it’s technical, operational, sports, or business. According to The World Economic Forum, “In 2020, the Global Gender Gap score (based on the population-weighted average) stands at 68.6%. This means that, on average, the gap is narrower, and the remaining gap to close is now 31.4%.” The focus hence needs to shift towards an inclusive work environment where skills are valued above everything else. Inclusion in organizations has many plus sides. It includes having a huge talent pool, a diverse range of ideas, creativity, and perspectives that can improve processes, collaborations, and performance.
At Fugo, the employee-oriented work culture and the value system we follow have helped in creating an equal work environment. Across our locations, we have over 40% of our staff as women.
To keep the balance from shifting, we offer women better control over their careers and focus on empowerment through training, mentoring, equality programs, education grants, and justified promotions. While most of the practices are gender-neutral, certain policies and conscious accommodations can help in making women feel safer at the workplace. As a result of our policies, we see that almost 39% of our women staff stay with us for durations ranging from 1-year up to 5 years.
Here are a few key points on how to integrate women at work.
- Ensure that there is no gender bias across all evaluations: Harvard Business Review reasons that, “people give men higher performance ratings than women, even when their qualifications and behaviors are identical. Even artificial intelligence algorithms prefer men.”
This however can easily be turned around. We can reduce the gender inequalities in performance evaluations only by reviewing the performance appraisal criteria while addressing the challenges and productivity expectations with no bias. At Fugo, we ensure that all evaluations are based on performance and skills. We also use structured assessments to reduce unconscious bias.
- Salary & Scale commensurate to experience and value they bring to the organization: According to a PayScale report, in 2021, women make only $0.82 for every dollar a man makes. Occupational segregation is often influenced by gender and racial stereotypes and amplified by the general perception that women are just caretakers. There is also the uncontrolled pay gap driven by differences in pay in different professions.
Fugo has always focused on pay parity by emphasizing on experience rather than past salaries. We also conduct regular pay audits across teams, demographics, and locations to identify any disparities that need to be rectified.
- Encourage women to take on higher roles: While this is easier said than done. A progressive environment is all about encouraging women to take up various roles without any hindrance, this includes leadership roles. Allowing women to be mentors, host training, etc. can be other steps towards the same direction.
Fugo has built a growth mindset in the organization that constantly drives self-development. This keeps all the employees at par and hence every employee can work at the best of their skills.
- Do value their personal space and take cognizance of some inherent limitations: Women are multi-taskers. They mainly have to balance between work and home. The equilibrium here is often gender-specific and hence it becomes important to value their personal space. This also includes understanding the limitations they face. Part-time, job share, and a flexible working environment are often things that give women more confidence to come back to work after a gap.
Fugo has various flexible policies for parents and other programs to reduce burnout. This is has helped us in building an inclusive work environment and also the retention rates.
“The growing surge of support for women in the mortgage industry is a good thing. Women bring a social and economic equity lens to business. This adds value to the industry as women will expand and grow it by leveraging new markets.”, says Marcia Griffin, the president, and CEO of HomeFree-USA.
- Delegating Leadership Authority among Women: According to McKinsey & Company, Women tend to score higher than men on 21 of the 27 challenges that predict high-performing leaders. However, despite gains for women in leadership, the “broken rung” was still a major barrier in 2019. For the sixth year in a row, women continued to lose ground at the first step up to the manager-level positions. Women are promoted at a slower pace and are often called the opportunity gap. Delegating leadership authority among women means overcoming this gap. It all boils down to the promotion practices/rules followed by the organization. How people are selected for promotion and whether everyone gets a fair chance.
At Fugo, we take a few extra steps which include, providing unconscious bias training that instills an awareness about biases and prevents it from unknowingly seeping into organizational behavior. We also take extra care to stop stereotyping mindsets within the organization.
Creating an equal and just system requires active participation from employees and management alike. At Fugo, our work culture focuses on the results and gives due credit to the achievers regardless of gender. We believe in providing all the employees a level playing ground, where we provide training, resources, and tools that assist their work and enable empowerment.
In another way, the best way to promote gender diversity is by not focusing on it at all and keeping all policies strictly merit-based (and not gender-based).
