As a HR Executive, I hated being ‘sold’ to
When I reflected on my own 19 years of experience as a Human Resources practitioner in operational and corporate environments working for large global multinationals, I realised that I was totally resistant to approaches by service providers. The sheer volume of providers approaching me unsolicited each week via phone, email, mail rendered them indistinguishable. I didn’t take meetings. I didn’t take their phone calls and pamphlets were all ‘recycled’.
It was difficult to tell who was genuinely credentialed. Who had a track record of performance in similar industries and organisations. And who had a quality service offering and the right organisational culture that meant they practised what they preached.
When I sourced consultants I relied solely on trusted referrals from industry peers
When you’ve done the hard yards with an executive team for months to get a business case endorsed for leadership development or diversity and inclusion initiatives, you’re personally invested in its success.
The credibility and performance of the providers you engage and entrust with your intervention is crucial. The last thing you want is to engage a provider who is a poor values fit, or performs poorly due to lack of capability or ability to connect with the leadership team or workforce.
The repercussions can set the diversity and inclusion agenda backwards years. As well as destroy trust in leadership, and results in leadership team conversations like, “well, we tried that remember and it didn’t work?!”.
When I sought to engage a consultant, my only ‘go to’ was my industry peer network. I’d contact another HR executive and ask for a referral to a trusted provider that they had used and recommended. These recommendations aren’t made lightly. And like professional references, they are invested with the HR colleague’s professional reputation and credibility.
Every organisation is on their own journey to inclusion, diversity and gender equality
Each company has their own distinct culture, and is on a unique journey to advance inclusion, diversity and gender equality. At different stages of the journey, organisations may need outside assistance. This crosses all stages of the employee lifecycle and organisation’s business processes.
It can be as diverse as developing diversity and inclusion strategy, gender pay gap audits, leadership mentoring, policy review, flexible working, recruitment solutions, or increasing cultural diversity. Or looking outwardly at how effectively an organisation’s marketing is reaching its intended audience, if the customers are women.
We want to provide the ‘how’ to advance gender equality
At Femeconomy, we want people, consumers and organisations (who are groups of people) to choose companies that have female leaders to create gender equality.
We also want to be part of the solution. It’s easy to keep discussing the problem, but to create change, we all need to take action towards advancing gender equality. For organisations, this often involves sourcing expert services, product and advice through engaging diversity and inclusion and gender equality consulting services.
So, we’re consciously curating a diverse portfolio of Gender Equality Consulting Services that are Femeconomy approved
By invitation, we are curating a small, diverse portfolio of Gender Equality Consulting Service providers who meet Femeconomy’s approval criteria. Our criteria to include the businesses is that they are established, quality providers in the market. They are industry thought leaders and disrupters who authentically value diversity, inclusion and gender equality who have demonstrated track record of delivering large scale change across industry sectors.
We recognise you need the business case
The way that each offering has been presented, is so that CEO’s, COO’s and HR practitioners have a ‘business case’ understanding of each provider’s offering and results. Then you can decide, if you want more information, to contact these experts directly.
ABOU
T GENDER EQUALITY SERVICES
Many companies use expert solutions provided by consulting and advisory firms to advance gender equality. However, the offering of gender equality services tends to be fragmented.
We are working to identify and promote a portfolio of gender equality services from consulting organisations who meet Femeconomy’s criteria. The criteria to be a Femeconomy approved company is at least 30% of women on the Board of Directors or 50% female ownership. This provides businesses with the opportunity to support gender equality through their procurement decisions. Contact us for more information.
