#BeBoldtoChange. International Women’s Day

By  Ciara Garvan, founder of WorkJuggle.com. See her reviews for Irish Tech News here.

There is no escaping International Women’s Day, don’t let this opportunity pass by though without taking some time to reflect on your own organisation and the messages you are sending either consciously or unconsciously.

The theme this year is #BeBoldforChange. It is a great theme because the time has passed to bemoan the lack of a pipeline or to sigh heavily and wish things were better. #BeBoldforChange is a call to action. If your company does not have diversity on the agenda then today is the day to start. We all know the pace of change in the workplace is moving faster then ever. One of the few proven ways to inoculate your company from becoming a dinosaur or a has-been is diversity and gender diversity is key.

If you are unsure as to why your need to enable diversity read Gillian Tett’s  “The Silo Effect”, by superbly outlines the devastating affect of Groupthink (http://irishtechnews.ie/the-silo-effect-a-case-for-diversity-and-silo-busting-reviewed-by-ciara-garvan/

So do not embrace diversity for the feel-good factor. Do it because your companies financial success depends on it. According to McKinsey, companies which are gender –diverse are 15% more likely to outperform. Conversely companies in the bottom quartile both for gender and for ethnicity and race are statistically less likely to achieve above-average financial returns than the average companies in the data set.

#BeBoldforChange – take 5 mins today to think about a few simple changes you can action today to enable diversity in your organisation.

• Do you advertise for Rockstars? Status Quo are rockstars, here is a great article explaining why not to do that (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-30/ninjas-rock-stars-need-not-apply-to-gender-neutral-job-listings)
• Do you extoll the long hours of your start –up culture, the all nighters and pizza take-aways? Think about what message a person with a young family is taking from that?
• Similarly the 8am Monday morning meetings? Is that the best use of everyone’s time?

Today the responsibility to be #BeBoldforChange lies with you. It is not enough to sit back passively and wish things were better. Take action.

Life is too short to build something nobody wants, insights with Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean

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