Shelly Sun had founded BrightStar Care, a home health care and medical staffing agency, 20 years earlier and had grown the business to over 300 franchised locations and $654 million in annual system-wide sales. Sun had spent years working to get "the right people in the right seats" and now had a strong bench of executive talent. Sun loved being an ambassador for BrightStar and spent considerable time with external stakeholders, including policymakers. But there were times she still felt she needed to take the reins-after all, no one knew BrightStar like she did.
Many workers today are stuck in low-paying jobs, unable to advance simply because they don't have a bachelor's degree. At the same time, many companies are desperate for workers and not meeting the diversity goals that could help them perform better while also reducing social and economic inequality. All these problems could be alleviated, the authors say, if employers focused on job candidates' skills instead of their degree status. Drawing on their interviews with corporate leaders, along with their own experience in academia and the business world, the authors outline a "skills-first" approach to hiring and managing talent. It involves writing job descriptions that emphasize capabilities, not credentials; creating apprenticeships, internships, and training programs for people without college degrees; collaborating with educational institutions and other outside partners to expand the talent pool; helping hiring managers embrace skills-first thinking; bringing on board a critical mass of nonÂdegreed workers; and building a supportive organizational culture. IBM, Aon, Cleveland Clinic, Delta Air Lines, Bank of America, and Merck are among the companies taking this approach-and demonstrating its benefits for firms, workers, and society as a whole.
"Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" traces the history of women in management from the early 20th to early 21st century through analysis of Harvard Business Review's coverage of women and gender. The case identifies six distinct phases in the evolution of women's opportunities and barriers as well as attitudes toward professional women. It explores when and how concepts like equal pay for equal work, sexual harassment, female leadership, and the 'mommy track' influenced organizational approaches to hiring and promoting women. Ultimately, it accounts for tremendous progress made in women's status in the workplace but notes that gender parity has not yet been achieved. What will it take for gender gaps to close as the 21st century continues?
Follows the journey of lawyer Marsha Simms from her childhood in racially-segregated St. Louis to the upper echelons of the New York legal community. Describes her education, career choices, accomplishments, and setbacks. Highlights significant moments such as her decision to attend law school; discovering a practice area she excelled at; failing to advance to partner at one firm; moving firms and achieving partnership; and joining her first board of directors. Explores how she navigated a majority-white, male-dominated industry as a Black woman and contextualizes Marsha's career trajectory within the history of racial and gender discrimination in the legal field.
This reading provides principles and practices managers can draw upon to leverage differences in social identities - such as gender and race - to create more effective work relationships, teams, and organizations. The Essential Reading's first section draws upon research to argue that diversity can contribute to organizational effectiveness, but only if managed well. The second section delves into the meaning of social identity and unpacks prejudice, bias, and discrimination in the workplace. The third section lays out how social identity dynamics commonly play out in organizations, and the fourth section presents core principles, with associated practices, to help manage social identity differences. Concepts covered include stereotype threat, implicit bias, tokenism, first- and second-generation discrimination, identity abrasions, and common perspectives on diversity in organizations. The Supplemental Reading addresses three topics relevant to managing gender diversity: work/life balance, sexual harassment, and masculinity in the workplace. The reading has five videos: "Stereotype Threat" presents a seminal study on this phenomenon, "The Invisible Winds of Discrimination" provides a useful metaphor for managers of diverse workforces, "Learn, Unlearn, Learn" shows how identity abrasions can lead to cross-identity learning, "The Impact of Implicit Bias on Leadership Assessment" provides an example of how male and female leaders are often viewed differently, and "Addressing Gender Bias" highlights successful interventions to overcome bias in organizations. The reading includes a link to the Implicit Association Test, enabling them to better understand the concept of implicit bias.
Most companies say they're committed to advancing women into leadership roles. What they may fail to recognize, though, is that systemic barriers are holding women back. As a result, women remain disadvantaged at every stage of their employment and underrepresented in positions of power. Drawing on their own research and the scholarship of others, the authors describe common forms of gender discrimination in seven key areas of talent management: attracting candidates, hiring employees, integrating newcomers into the organization, developing employees, assessing performance, managing compensation and promotion, and retaining employees. Companies can level the playing field by identifying patterns of gender bias in the way they treat people and then systematically making appropriate changes. They can, for example, avoid loaded language in job postings, anonymize the resumes of applicants, cultivate an inclusive culture, increase women's access to mentors, set clear criteria for salary offers and raises, and destigmatize flexible work arrangements. Research has shown the value of all these practices in fully leveraging women's talents.
Ilene Lang started her career in technology at a time when the tech sector was new and women had only recently entered the workplace in large numbers. Over the next thirty years, she built a career spanning large and small tech companies, leading global teams and overseeing products such as AltaVista, an early search engine. After leading three dot-coms in the late 1990s, she was ready for a new chapter and joined Catalyst, a global nonprofit focused on women in the workplace, as CEO. Lang led Catalyst through the aftermath of September 11 and the Great Recession, all while expanding the organization's portfolio and reach, before retiring in 2014 and continuing her advocacy as a corporate director and advisor to organizations focused on increasing women's economic power and leadership.
Ana Paula Pessoa built a career at the largest media conglomerate in Latin America, combining a passion for digital transformation with a commitment to doing work that had a positive impact on society. Having grown up during a dictatorial military regime in Brazil, the value of a free press was clear to Pessoa. She ultimately rose to become CFO of the company's print media arm, before making a career shift to invest in technology startups and later to serve as CFO for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Throughout her varied career, Pessoa sought out connections with interesting people across industries, a practice that paid dividends when she was recruited to join the board of a large public company, which led to additional board appointments. Following her passions and building relationships enabled Pessoa to craft a fulfilling career spanning multiple industries and issues.
Michele Hooper joined the board of the Dayton-Hudson Corporation when she was in her late thirties, becoming the company's youngest director as well as the only woman and the only person of color in the boardroom. Such "firsts" were not unusual for Hooper, who had been tapped to lead the Canadian subsidiary of Baxter International a year earlier, one of very few women moved from a staff to a line role at the company. More board opportunities continued to come Hooper's way, and over time she gained expertise and experience across all aspects of corporate governance, often serving as a lead director or committee chair. Seeing that too few women, and far too few men and women of color, were breaking into the boardroom, Hooper cofounded the Directors' Council to help companies diversity their boards. Widely acknowledged as a leader in corporate governance, Hooper dedicated herself to serving as a role model and mentor for Black professionals aspiring to leadership.
Barbara Hackman Franklin was one of the first women to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School. She went on to break barriers in the private and public sectors, rising to leadership positions in business and government. In the 1970s, she led a successful White House initiative to hire more women into high-level roles, helping to change the makeup of the federal workforce and advance the national conversation about women's roles in public life.
Jack Rivkin's innovative approach to hiring, developing, and retaining employees created opportunities for female analysts to thrive at the equity research department he led, and also made the entire department more effective. Rivkin fostered a culture of gender inclusion and focused on developing the unique strengths of every employee, rather than expecting women to fit a rigid masculine norm. His efforts led to an increase in the department's female analysts and also resulted in more analysts (both women and men) achieving star-ranked status. In just a few years, the department jumped from 15th to 1st place in industry rankings. However, when Rivkin departed, the overarching culture and practices of the firm undermined the inclusive environment he had fostered; high-performing analysts departed and the department rapidly tumbled in the rankings.
Ros Atkins launched the 50:50 Project on a BBC news program he anchored, deciding with his team to start tracking the gender of the contributors and experts featured on the show. Before long, it was clear that monitoring the data led to increased awareness of a gender gap which in turn spurred action - the representation of women and men equalized. Atkins knew the simple process could have a significant impact, so he worked with colleagues to implement the project throughout the BBC. Rather than try to institute a mandate or directive from the top, Atkins took a grassroots approach, sharing the process and its success with colleagues personally. More and more programs adopted the effort, and ultimately the head of the BBC publicly endorsed it. Over time, 50:50 became a self-sustaining program adopted across the entire organization and beyond. Atkins dedication to gender equality in the media offers a compelling example of the potential that lies with male allies.
BrightStar Care was a rapidly growing franchise of home health care agencies. Founded by husband and wife team JD and Shelly Sun as a single agency near Chicago in 2002, by 2016 nearly 300 BrightStar franchises were open across the United States, generating over $300 million in revenue. BrightStar was now a very different company from the one Shelly and JD had started up during their first year of marriage. Shelly Sun, CEO, had decided to franchise the business in 2004, believing that the franchise model presented a relatively low-risk and high-return approach to growing BrightStar. As franchises began to sell, Sun quickly set about building scalable operations and infrastructure, including a centralized technology function and custom software for franchisees. As more and more locations opened around the United States, she focused on growing BrightStar's national marketing profile and putting measures in place to distinguish BrightStar's services as higher-quality than that of its competitors. A shifting regulatory landscape and labor shortages posed challenge, but BrightStar continued to grow swiftly. As the company evolved and Sun attempted to spend more time away from headquarters, surveying the field and building relationships, she knew she needed a strong senior management team. Some members of her senior team had been with BrightStar for years, expanding their responsibilities as the company expanded, while others she recruited from outside. In the early 2010s, Sun was close to filling all BrightStar's crucial executive roles, but had to consider whether some longtime leaders were the right fit for the company's current needs. As she thought through the composition of her senior team, she also revamped her board of advisors and pursued international franchising opportunities and a debt recapitalization. By early 2016, Shelly was looking to the company's next phase of growth while handing management of her executive team to BrightStar's President and COO.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the admission of women to Harvard Business School's MBA program, the authors, who have spent more than 20 years studying professional women, set out to learn what HBS graduates had to say about work and family and how their experiences, attitudes, and decisions might shed light on prevailing controversies. What their comprehensive survey revealed suggests that the conventional wisdom about women's careers doesn't always square with reality. The survey showed, for instance, that: (1) The highly educated, ambitious women and men of HBS don't differ much in terms of what they value and hope for in their lives and careers. (2) It simply isn't true that a large proportion of HBS alumnae have "opted out" to care for children. (3) Going part-time or taking a career break to care for children doesn't explain the gender gap in senior management. (4) The vast majority of women anticipated that their careers would rank equally with those of their partners. Many of them were disappointed. It is now time, the authors write, for companies to consider how they can institutionalize a level playing field for all employees, including caregivers of both genders. The misguided assumption that high-potential women are "riskier" hires than their male peers because they are apt to discard their careers after parenthood has become yet another bias for women to contend with.