Brian Wisdom, CEO of People 1st, the skills and workforce development charity for the tourism and visitor economy sector, has criticised the latest Government report on gender in boardrooms for encouraging a narrow focus on non-executive directorships on boards.
His comments follow the Government report’s release, which identified a number of well-known companies with no women on their non-executive board, but did not take into account organisations that were aiming to develop a pipeline of women who could enter these positions.
Brian believes that the focus on non-executive board positions is misplaced, and that companies helping to build women’s skills levels so that they can ultimately reach this level should be applauded.
“The Government report doesn’t take into account the important work that a number of companies are doing to promote women into executive positions. They need to take these steps first so that they can develop the skills they need to move into non-executive positions.
“Just one example of comments in the report that bear no relation to the actual situation within the company are those related to Merlin Entertainments, Europe’s premier visitor attractions operator.
“Merlin has a proactive strategy to develop its female employees across the globe through a range of mechanisms. This includes development, mentoring and networking programmes like the Women 1st Step Up programme, which supports female managers and helps them to transform their leadership abilities, giving them the skills and confidence to move up in their career.
“Merlin is clearly taking a long-term approach because its leaders recognise that they need to build a pipeline of talented women to ensure that they get the right training and support throughout their career – and so that they can succeed at an executive or non-executive director level.”
Brian was adamant that the approach of developing women at all levels is the right approach to build sustainable female talent.
“People 1st released research in 2010 which showed that 61 percent of women see a lack of female mentors as a barrier to their career progression. At the same time, almost a quarter felt that a dominant male culture and attitudes in organisations were holding them back.
“Faced with these results – and the knowledge that the hospitality industry was losing 310,000 women each year – we established Women 1st, a campaign that aims to transform the face of boards in our industries and to support women who aspire to senior leadership roles to fulfil their career ambitions.”
Women 1st has successfully trained more than 1,000 women in management and leadership skills since it has launched and has worked with Merlin Entertainments since 2011.