Women Leadership – Boost Inclusion and Equality for Women in the Workplace

Of course, the strength of any company is its people. And companies are consistently working on not just keeping their workforce happy but offering thriving culture. They continuously re-check their people strategies and assess what they can do to make their workplace gain global recognition for its people policies. Major area organizations all over the globe are focusing on is gender equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Undoubtedly, women have made major progress in the corporate world. Yet they make up 35% of the aggregate workforce with a steady decline, as per March 2020 NASSCOM report. The pandemic gave a big blow to women’s employment. From shooting unemployment to taking up home responsibilities, it hasn’t been more essential to acquire equitable experiences for women. By assessing data, we shall help you uncover how women have a different workplace experiences and how to drive diversity, equality, and belonging using coaching culture so that women and companies can thrive.

Check the differential views on gender

While the pandemic accelerated women’s decline in the workforce activities, corporate executives and leaders should fast-track gender equality initiatives. And taking the first step towards this, it is essential to know that a vital gap remains between how the leader and employees show progress toward equality in their company. As per research, 68% of leaders feel they can create an environment with a sense of belonging, while only 36% of workers agree.

Creating an inclusive environment where women can thrive is on top of a CEO’s list. If not, the talent gap will persist. The Better to Belong research shows how women’s experience in their office differs and the challenges they face, like not feeling respected by their colleagues and not having a leader in helping advance their careers. If a leader supports women during important moments such as rewards, onboarding, life matters, leaves, and daily operational activities, they leave them Net Better Off. So, if women feel NBO in office, their potential increases 4.7 times.

This is where coaching enters! If you want your company to be sustainably equal and inclusive, an efficient but often ignored means can be coaching. It helps to combat gender inequality.

Executive coaching offers support for the female workforce. It helps to acknowledge and navigate gender differences and foster a gender-inclusive environment. A leadership coaching program helps executives take action to adapt to a better future they visualize.

Effective coaching:

Helps create a vision, set goals, and plan accordingly

When men and women leaders undergo coaching, they can better express their idea. Once their vision is clear, they can draft efficient strategies and goals. Most coaching engages their coachees in conversations regularly. The consistent rhythm helps a coach acknowledge activities and mileposts that their coachees can work on while being accountable.

Work as a thinking partner

A good coach understands their client’s workplace environment to add duties and responsibilities and perform key roles daily. Once the coach understands the workplace culture, they suggest better actions that lead to results. The results help with better gender equality, management skills, and how to showcase efficient networking practices.

Better self-awareness

During leadership coaching, a coach offers clients valuations to gain knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses. Coaches listen to your woes and worries. They pay heed to their clients’ ideas and identify trends the client doesn’t know or acknowledge self-limiting conducts that showcase an internal barricade the client has to make his way through, like their confidence level.

Women, similar to many underrepresented groups, face several challenges in their workplace

Companies choose DEI coaching for their female leaders as they know they can only acquire diversity benefits if their workforce is diverse. Thus, they hire external coaching help to give women leaders a secure workplace, to be honest, active, and candid, making them feel assisted.

Leadership coaching helps:

• High-ranking female leaders who want to consider the next phase of their career

Such leaders can be at the top of the chart, and there may not be an instant promotion available, there are chances for these leaders to coach and explore better ways to lead their careers efficiently.

• High-potential women which a company wishes to engage and retain

While the battle for talent is pretty much available, it is important to know what a company can do to retain and engage female talent. Investing in coaching can be a major chance to unleash their potential while guaranteeing they’re dedicated to their company’s success.

• Women with the goal of succession development purposes

A leader requires focused development to prepare for new responsibilities. Of course, leadership coaching gives women a chance to generate or refine their abilities while they advance.

Of course, the coaching world is filled with people looking forward to support women leader development. To find the right fit, speak to experienced coaches who specialize in leadership growth and can measure Return on Investment on coaching.

Group coaching supports women across different fields to successfully engage and retain

Having a workplace culture that drives inclusion, belonging, and equality is a great way to draft a plan to boost someone’s personal career development.

Group coaching helps women aid each other, develop influencing abilities to work constructively, and offer powerful peer support.

Executive coaching and leadership programs can help women at leadership levels enhance their strength, manage workplace dynamics, and eventually succeed in bargains, promotions, and appraisals.

Using such coaching methods and promoting a group coaching culture can create long-lasting change at scale. It makes group mentoring programs an amazing choice for companies suffering from gender differences.

This helps employees understand each other’s problems and give better opportunities to each other to grow and engage, which further enhances the retention rate.

Advantages of coaching methods

If you haven’t used DEI initiatives in coaching till now, there are a lot of steps you can walk to make your workplace culture inclusive and drive your worker’s personal development and career.

• Know the present barriers that stand in their career progression.
• Know the career-defining opportunities in your company.
• Find out the opportunities that will help you access these opportunities- like harnessing the services of coaches and mentors.
• Hire coaches to influence the skills of your workforce and constructively challenge them for progression.
• Gain feedback to continue the coaching progress.

Develop a diversity coaching program

Diversity coaching helps employees understand how gender and cultural differences affect their work and interaction manners. It helps cover all from the concepts of time management to communication manners and self-identification to handling conflicts.

Companies should train employees according to their specific organization rules and culture and align with broader diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives. Besides using internal resources, hiring a coach that can help leaders with customized coaching programs works for the betterment of the company, workers, and leaders.

Leaders need to share the need for coaching effectively and the problems it will resolve. This will motivate the employees and help them know how learning is tied to wider company goals.

In his book “The Employee Experience Advantage,” Jacob Morgan said a major component of diversity is knowing and learning from different values, voices, experiences, and traditions. Diversity is concentrating on all 64 squares of a chess board rather than getting stuck on one of the aspects.

A diverse cross-section of talent offers a better perspective and creativity. So, if your team is still homogenous, inviting people from other gender or cultural background will enhance your initiative.

Coaching about team diversity boosts innovation and creativity and helps your inclusive culture grow stronger. Multiple perspectives motivate novel thinking, link thoughts in better ways, and present different problem-solving methods.

The path ahead

To enhance the human potential of your workforce, majorly women, leaders should concentrate on making their daily experiences suitable- especially the important levers.

Empowering women through coaching to make work-related decisions that work for their specific situations and adding skills and advancements opportunities to aid their career goals will help set their careers in new directions.

Be intentional about matching women employees with leaders who help them grow. Use coaching platforms to develop community and inclusive environments that secure psychological security and enhance trust and empathy.

Steps to accelerate equality:

• Courageous leadership

In today’s time, women mark over 45% of the workforce in India at Accenture and close to 25% of their MDs. Around 49% of their new hires are women. Launching an inclusive coaching program to offer opportunities to develop entry-level ease to women helps them settle well in their jobs. Also, coaching adds to 92% conversion of women interns into full-time workers.

• Empowering women 

Respecting employees and treating everyone as equal and encouraging individuality adds to autonomy, flexibility, and control. The on-the-job coaching, mentoring, and skill-building sessions work for the professional development of women across all career levels.

Wrapping Up

Making diversity and inclusion a major objective is a winning strategy for organizations and economic strength at large.

Companies can easily retain and gain the loyalty and engagement of their women employees by choosing an effective coaching strategy. Choosing good coaching can help teams acquire the learning of DEI initiatives in their daily office life and offer women employees an environment that aids equality, diversity, belongingness, and inclusiveness. It allows them to share their job-related issues and get a culture that boosts engagement, retention, productivity, and skill development.

Coaching works as a full-fledged and sturdy approach to ensure companies are efficiently groomed to transform their women staff and enhance their skills, confidence, and productivity. With a customized coaching program, you can train your women employee using external coaching to enhance their learning journey and thrive in an inclusive environment. Women leadership and empowerment can be done virtually online, and uExcelerate works exponentially to understand your needs and offers personalized coaching programs to grow and flourish.