The Barton Partnership’s commitment to #ChooseToChallenge gender imbalances and biases in the workforce.
Each year, on March 8th, businesses come together to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. International Women’s Day serves not only as a day of recognition but as a call to action to accelerate gender parity.
At The Barton Partnership we care deeply about diversity, striving to empower and elevate women in the workplace. As part of this mission, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the work that we do with our clients and our own commitments to building and maintaining a more diverse and inclusive working environment for everyone.
Diversity hiring
Within our core markets women at senior levels remain significantly underrepresented. Increasingly, clients are seeking to attract and retain diverse talent and, as a talent partner, we are committed to investing resources into diversity and inclusion research whilst sharing best practices for businesses looking to attract and retain minority groups.
Our research model and investment in data-driven insight tools allows us to be more forensic in our approach, ensuring we are engaging with, and hiring from, diverse talent sources, widening the scope of industries, companies and schools to diversify talent pipelines.
We celebrate the success stories. As an example, The Barton Partnership's New York team achieved a 47% female placement ratio, with 90% of shortlists having a 50% gender diversity ratio. We still have a long way to go but we are making investments and commitments to drive this agenda across all of our markets and regions.
Compensation Insights
One of the biggest challenges for businesses is sustaining the gender balance that is often common at the junior and middle levels of organisations into more senior and executive rankings. Understanding both preferred working practices and what drives women to move roles, or re-integrate after starting families, is key for businesses looking to achieve this balance.
What do women in senior-level roles prioritise when considering a move, and what will help them stay for the long-term when they do? In November 2020 we launched our Compensation Insight report, globally surveying more than 1,300 senior-level candidates and providing insights into compensation package, preferred working practices post-covid, as well as aspirations when considering a move. We know that having these insights helps businesses to benchmark their own compensation strategies and we hope that these will help employers adjust them to attract female talent.
Women in Strategy
To address the under-representation of women in strategy positions globally, we launched our Women in Strategy initiative back in 2019. In 2020 we hosted a number of panel events as well as publishing our women in strategy white paper. This year we are committing to a number of new insights that serve to highlight what businesses can do to attract more women into the leadership pipeline.
Our Private Equity team recently conducted research into the talent flow, retention and progression of former consultants that pursue an industry career in ‘PE-backed’ business as well as speaking with many of the individuals in the study to gain perspectives around personal experiences, challenges and successful initiatives.
Championing female voices
As part of this ongoing commitment to promote gender diversity within our network we will also be launching a series of interviews with female leaders who are at the top of their field in our ‘Spotlight On’ podcast. We hope that these interviews will serve to elevate female voices within our key sectors; exploring the challenges they have faced, key factors for success and effective diversity and inclusion initiatives that have helped along the way.
Diversity at TBP
We are strongly committed to driving this agenda forward in our own business. We have created an internal forum - Diversity at TBP - to educate, support and ultimately improve diversity within our global teams. Moving forward, Diversity at TBP is committed to three core goals: 1. Supporting the next generation of diverse leadership. 2. Reinforcing the network of allies across the business. 3. Building an inclusive culture where everyone feels that they belong.
Happy International Women’s Day! Let’s #ChooseToChallenge together.
