To get more female employees, companies are revising their recruitment process. They modify their job postings to be gender neutral. But this is not the only measure. Four companies explain what they are doing to increase diversity.
Companies don’t just focus on gender in their diversity policy. Nationality, political conviction, orientation and religion also play a role. Bellevues has had a diversity policy since 2015. There are several reasons for HR Director Patrick Davies. “Every scientific study shows that the more diverse the team, the better the decisions. Second, we recognize that we are all equal. Finally, our customers are diverse. With more diversity you can serve customers better. 40 percent of leadership and senior management positions are held by women. We are We aim to achieve 44 percent by 2025.”
Ageas International Insurance Group has also developed a diversified recruitment, promotion and training plan. We have clear KPIs (key performance indicators, editor), says Human Resources Director Eddie Debrol. As for the glass ceiling indicator, the proportion of women in managerial positions compared to the number of women in the company, our aspiration is 70 percent. Now it is 57 percent. The board of directors is 60 percent men and 40 in cent of women, but this will in principle grow to fifty in the short term.”
At Wolters Kluwer, the ratio of women to men is about fifty. “Half of our parent house board is made up of women and the committee that advises the board is 57 percent,” explains Vicki Geismans, BeLux’s director of human resources. This underscores the importance we place on gender diversity. 39 percent of our managers and 47 percent of our employees are women. For a technology company, that says a lot.
Umicore has specific diversity and inclusion goals for senior management. The goal is to employ 35 percent of female managers by 2030. “We are now at 26.11 percent,” says Geert Walchab, Human Resources Director Western and Southern Europe at Umicor.
vacancies
It all starts with an influx of female talent. Belvius uses the hiring process as leverage. In the banking sector, there is a historical split of 48 percent for women and 52 percent for men. In insurance companies, up to 51 percent of women. So the flow is good,” says Patrick Davies. “However, we make our postings gender-neutral and watch our use of words. Some words attract more men or women. You can manipulate that to adjust the comprehensiveness of the vacancies.”
At Ageas, the amount of public posts is evenly distributed. “We’ve been vetting scripts for job postings for some time now to be worded in a gender-neutral way,” explains Eddie DeBrol. “Our starting point is to select the most qualified candidate for the position. No one is appointed because he is a woman or a man, but because of his powers or powers.”
In Diversity, Wolters Kluwer’s employment policy is supported by an outside company. “As a technology company, it’s not always easy to work with women in this sector,” says Vicky Gijsemans. That’s why we articulate our values and the flexible framework in which candidates can work in our job descriptions, which are gender neutral. We also avoid rude language. Research shows that women give up on this. We also refer to our diversity policy. We publish our vacancies on various websites to attract female talent.”
Umicor also draws up more comprehensive texts for job vacancies. The company uses specific software for this. “Moreover, we are taking several initiatives to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) trends.SciencesAnd technologyAnd engineering And mathematicsAnd editor) and thus focus on increasing the refugee flow in the long term,” says Khairat and the young man.
To discover and develop talent and to promote, companies are also looking for a good balance. Belvius promotes women more than men. Our program Young professionals We mainly fill in women. In this way, the base of the pyramid is more feminine and we are moving in the right direction. We don’t just want women at the top, but at all levels of the company. Otherwise, it becomes artificial. We also want more women in management training.”
Belfius makes it more accessible to managerial positions, including part-time and remote work systems. Bank tries to encourage women to take a higher position, even if they don’t think they’re ready for it. “Women are humble and that’s a good thing. We’re not looking for women who act like men,” Davis says. But we need to be more attentive to women who don’t dare raise their hands. They later returned with a list of six names: three men and three women.
At Omicor, relatively more female colleagues have advanced up the ranks in the past year. “We pay conscious attention to female talent during the evaluation process,” Walchab says. “We closely monitor changes in senior management and the process that leads to those changes, so that we make the most of opportunities to increase diversity. We are building a pipeline for senior management by focusing on diversity in the hiring process.”
Umicore has launched several outreach initiatives, such as the D&I Yammer community, Stories of gender diversity on the intranet and support spontaneous internal initiatives such as Focus on Women and Frauen @ Umicore. We also run training courses, for example Unconscious biasSays the young man.
Wolters Kluwer shows senior managers that it doesn’t always have to be a full-time job. “For employees who want to combine their career and family, we offer all kinds of supportive benefits,” says Gijsemans. “Employees can work from home up to three days a week and we also have many forms of part-time work.”
In the headhunting process, Ageas always requires to bring in equal numbers of female and male candidates. “Data is important to our inner growth,” Debrulle explains. “If there is a difference in progression between men and women, we look at why that is and what we can do about it. At the same time, we ensure that leadership programs for young talent include an equal number of men and women.”
wage gap
Patrick Davies of Bellevues is of the opinion that companies sometimes stand further from society, where many stereotypes still exist. Companies cannot eliminate them on their own. We do our best, even if we sometimes have to compensate for the shortcomings of society.” He points to the wage gap between men and women. Ten years ago it was still 24 percent for us, now it’s 11 percent. We use a statistical method to filter out factors “If you discount those things, there’s less than a 1 percent difference between a man’s and a woman’s wages.”
“Some of the practical hurdles have been removed, but you still sometimes have to help people cross the bottom line,” says Ageas’ Eddie Debrulle. “We notice that women are often more insecure about promotion opportunities than men. Men are convinced of their abilities, even if they don’t have all the required competencies and experience. On the other hand, you have experienced, qualified women asking themselves: Is this for me or would I be happy to do We invest in dialogue to persuade them to try We hold sessions with role models We launched the Women in Insurance program in the UK to support women in self-confidence, communication and career counseling We also pioneer this project in other countries In addition, we take measures that allow men to bear Greater share of family responsibilities. We’ve greatly expanded parental leave for men.”
Wolters Kluwer is also trying to clear obstacles. “We are known as a parent-friendly company. If someone comes to the manager with practical problems, we try to find a solution. Even when employees reach a certain age, we provide opportunities so that they can combine their careers with caring for their parents.
