09 Oct 2008
BOOK LAUNCH IN THE LAND OF BOARDROOM QUOTAS
5 September 2008By Alison Maitland
AFTER Toronto, New York and Abu Dhabi, the latest stop on our international book tour has been Oslo. We were intrigued to hear what egalitarian Norway would make of the book. Thanks to a law introduced by a conservative trade and industry minister, this Scandinavian nation has achieved in a few short years what no other country has managed: near gender-parity on the boards of its leading companies.
Does Norway believe it has taken on the gender issue and won? Not yet. Our book launch on September 4 in the elegant surroundings of Oslo’s HØyres Hus showed that even Norwegians feel they have a way to go.
This was reflected in the high level of interest in the book launch, organised by dynamic entrepreneur Elin Hurvenes, founder of The Professional Boards Forum, and hosted by McKinsey and leading Norwegian companies Orkla, Schibsted and Telenor. Hurvenes told us that copies of Why Women Mean Business had sold out in the local bookstore.
After our introductory talk, there was a civilised but frank panel discussion involving senior business figures, who disagreed about the full impact of the quotas enforced by the government to ensure boards have at least a 40/60 gender split.
Jannik Lindbaek, one of Norway’s most prominent business leaders, said the arrival of women had strengthened the board of oil giant Statoil, notably in the 2003 bribes scandal which led to the ousting of chief executive Olav Fjell. “The problems Statoil faced…were mostly solved by very strong intervention led by women.” He also said he had worked with some very impressive female staff member representatives on boards of directors.
Birger Magnus, executive vice-president of Schibsted, the Scandinavian media group, in Norway, said the arrival of 40-45% women on his supervisory board had done nothing to change the executive board, which remained almost exclusively male. “The quota hasn’t done very much to change Schibsted,” he said. “We have to make these adjustments ourselves.”
Schibsted’s senior management has focused more on the need to diversify the leadership team since an eye-polling poll of its management trainee alumnis last year. The poll found that 80% of the men but only 20% of the women had moved into people management roles. “Why is that?” Magnus asked. “It’s probably related to our culture, the kind of leaders we have, the kind of trainee programmes we have, the way we evaluate and appraise people…It’s a male culture.”
Lindbaek’s answer - with which we would of course agree - is that change has to be led by the executive committee, which should “never accept any slipping [of the numbers] at management level”. He agrees with us that it’s essential for companies to adapt to changes in their marketplace – notably the rise of female consumer power. That’s just business common sense.
Also on the panel was María Fernanda Souto, associate principal at McKinsey, who said the firm faced its own challenges in attracting top female talent. But the issue was about much more than that, she said. “Companies need to commit long term…it’s easy to fix just the recruitment.”
Thomas Falck, founder and CEO of Agenda Capital, an investment firm, and the fourth panellist, emphasised the business imperative. “If you recruit 50% women and lose them, you’ve invested way too much money.”
He told us Norway had taken a step back recently when it moved responsibility for gender parity from the trade and industry ministry to the equality ministry, thus symbolically turning it back from a business to a women’s rights issue. In today’s workplace and marketplace, addressing the gender issue effectively is crucial to business, he said. “It’s about survival.”
Exactly.
Posted at 12:30 PM by Admin Y Women Mean Business in | Permalink