Opportunities are improving for working women overall, but mothers are most poorly represented in operations, the NG Supply Chain Summit reports
By Anna Game-Lopata | May 8, 2012
While opportunities are gradually improving for working women overall, older mothers are most poorly represented in operations, the NG Supply Chain Summit reports.
Speaking at the invitation-only conference in Cairns last week Red Bull Australia Operations Director Megan Sunderland told top-level executives just 38 percent of women between the ages of 38-44 return to work in supply chain and logistics operational roles.
Sunderland, is a member of the National Association of Women in Operations (NAWO) a recently formed, not for profit group working to increase the pipeline of women coming through the ranks.
She says McKinsey research in Europe and the Unites States
shows companies with more women on their board have
53 percent higher returns on equity and 14 percent greater
returns on earnings before interest.
“However in manufacturing overall, only 26.3 percent of staff are women, just 21.7 percent are female managers and 22.7 percent
are female CEOs,” she says.
Having
worked with Red Bull
for 18 months after 16 years at Nestle, Megan Sunderland says both companies face the same difficulties attracting the right talent and skills even though Red Bull is a popular brand with younger generations.
“The average time it takes to fill vacancies at Red Bull is four months,” she says.
“Everybody knows women want policies
to be flexible such
incorporating the ability to work from home, and the top 10 percent of companies are doing that already, so why isn’t it working, what is the next step?”
“Nobody really knows what to do about attracting female talent.”
Workshop participants agreed systems for women returning to work after having a family are still too rigid.
“Job sharing and part time hours doesn’t work,” one participant says.
“There is an untapped resource of women who could work two hours a day. It wouldn’t work at a junior level, you would have to bill hours against a person for researching a report or undertaking analysis, as if they were a consultant.
“We do that kind of thing now for consultants, and often that type of work can only be done a few hours a day in the office environment anyway because of all the distractions.”
Other participants
observed the full time nature of operations precludes mothers who are tied to the nine to five shift and pointed to the way women with a family often change their priorities away from competing in the workplace.
Formed in 2009 NAWO originally had a manufacturing focus. Today, it has expanded into supply chain, logistics purchasing and retail operations with over 280 members from over 80 companies gained in nine months.
With a board of nine executives, NAWO makes its focus to ascertain what practices are working well to attract women to operations along with the provision of practical tools and mentoring.
Sunderland says the next step for NAWO is to tackle the diversity agenda at CEO level, to learn what executives are doing to attract women to operational roles.
The organisation has also applied for government funding this year to support its ongoing work, currently undertaken by 35 industry volunteers.