Talking Talent (www.talking-talent.com), a UK executive coaching company specialising in the coaching of senior women and people taking maternity and paternity leave, predicts that increasing numbers of businesses will start initiatives in 2012 to retain and promote their talented women – at all levels. Here, Chris Parke, CEO of Talking Talent, offers his thoughts on the year ahead:
“In 2011, the Lord Davies review into women on boards, coupled with the new paternity legislation, saw the issue of women in business escalate up the political agenda. Companies started to make progress in promoting women onto their boards, but there is a great deal more work needed. Consequently, it will become an even more hotly debated topic this year. There are a number of ways we will see this becoming more apparent."
- Companies will put in place talent management programmes and incentives that focus not only on retaining women who are just below Board level, but women at all levels of the business – to ensure a sustainable pipeline of talented women throughout the organisation. Businesses which are more sophisticated at identifying talent at lower levels in the organisations and which develop these people in the right way will have a healthier, more robust and more diverse talent pipeline.
- We will also see exciting developments in the use of new technology to reach out and engage key talent, with a growth in demand for webinars, web-based apps and other web-based products.
- We will also see a shift away from coaching programmes which focus on supporting women only. There is a growing realisation that coaching and development needs to encompass the support of line managers as well. Line managers increasingly will be undertaking the same coaching as their reports in order to feel engaged and have real ownership for the team environments that they create – so that everyone can thrive.
- As shared parental leave becomes more widespread, following the introduction of the Additional Paternity Leave (April 2011), we will see a growing interest in support for ‘working fathers’, in the form of coaching and workshops.
- We will also see an increase in the need for coaching at other crunch points in women’s careers, maternity being just one of the points at which businesses lose key talent. Others include: coaching for those employees thinking of starting a family; workshops to help ‘high-potentials’; and helping women to move from survival mode to sustainability.
- We will also see a rise in the need for adoption coaching as a greater number of businesses begin to request this.
Chris Parke adds: “Companies need to work harder at the retention of senior women and firstly look at why and when women are leaving the work place. It still amazes me that so many companies fail to understand why women leave their business and tracking this is key to solving the problem.
“Throughout 2012, I believe companies need to create far more sophisticated approaches to this; to encompass exit interview data and to review levels of engagement across the business. Only then can they begin to focus on retaining their core talent.”
Talking Talent runs coaching-led leadership programmes with its extensive client base, helping to develop future female leaders and senior managers. Topics covered include: managing organisation policies, succeeding in male dominated environments, authentic leadership styles and the ‘impostor’ syndrome.
