E048: The Gender Pay Gap

This is the world of work podcast with James and James, hi. This is James. Just before we start, all right, onto the podcast.

Hello. This is James, and this is Jane, and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. What are we speaking about today?

Jane, oh, well, we are talking to the very brilliant women from catalyst collective, and we're going to be talking a little bit about their work and their research as well into the gender pay gap.

Yeah, that's right. We're carrying on with our series on inclusion and diversity. And obviously gender is normally a big part of a sort of diversity and inclusion conversation, and we're going to try and focus on the gender pay gap as part of our conversation about this. And this. Yeah,

we recorded this a little while ago, actually. So a big shout out to catalyst collective, because they've been very patiently. I would imagine waiting for this to be really Yeah, that's right, but we've been we thought it was a really interesting conversation, but it also deserved its place in our inclusion series, inclusion, diversity, equality series. So I think that's appropriate, and it feels right that we're talking about it now. So yeah, and it was a really interesting conversation, because it's probably one of the few, well, we've spoken to a couple of people about research and research, but I like it when we do that.

Yeah. And it was really great. I mean, we met Katie and fee, who are the sort of the two main people behind catalyst Collective, we actually, or I actually, met them at a sort of HR presentation speaking event up in Edinburgh, and I just connected with what they said. So it's insensible to pick up with them and see if we could have a chat about them, and we knew it was going to be fitting into something that we were doing. And then here we are with inclusion and diversity, which is a

great place for you, yeah, and they're also quite interesting, like I kind of, I quite like talking to them as well, because they were whilst they are not like us in the sense that they are based about I got, I don't even know how many 100 miles, but they're quite significantly apart. They do work on things together, but in a way that's quite collaborative and thoughtful and reflective about where they are. And then they get together very often and do sort of sessions, which is, like, what we do? Yeah, absolutely. So I also was quizzing about how Mike, I was like, so how do you do that,

and what do you do and help me here? How does it work? Yeah, how can I work with James? It's really difficult to work with James. Is that what it was? No, it was more like, how do I manage myself? All right, yeah, okay. Anyway, cool. So before we get into that time to check in anything, anything going on in your space, you want to check

in on, oh, I am deeply in love, okay, from a professional, I've got one of my work crushers, okay, but this time it is about so I am in another module of my ongoing MSC, which the poor listeners have to hear about. And I am doing a module that I am besotted with called understanding organizational change. And we had a guest lecturer a few weeks ago from a reader in Organizational Psychology from down south, guy called Mark Hughes. And just blew my mind in terms of thinking about what it means to be an academic and what he sees as his role and his contribution. Yeah, he's written. He writes books about managing change from a critical perspective, and it just lots and lots and lots of things. Got me thinking about power dynamics cool in the workplace. So yeah, that's my like happiness piece about that stuff. At some point we

are so talking about it. Let's do that. Can we also talk about prohibited voices? Yeah, we can do that. That's my latest favorite. Anyway. What about you? How are you? Yeah, I'm good.

I'm good. I'm still enjoying the autumn up here in Scotland. It's been, it's been actually really nice. It's been mild so far. I mean, everything's been great, and that's been nice. And then I guess the other big thing is, I think I might have mentioned a while ago, my brother's getting married in China next year, and we're starting to pin down dates, and we've got a view on when it's going to be and so I've been chatting to my mom about China. Figure out how, you know, we get over there, how we do it, what little bits of excitement we can tag on as we we traipse across China doing all this stuff next year. So that's exciting. Oh, listeners, I wish you could see James. He is beaming with excitement about this.

It'll be really fun to do that. So looking forward to, you know, seeing everybody out there, but also seeing a bit of a broader Chinese landscape and culture as well. So that'll be fun. That

sounds brilliant, yeah. Anyway, back to the gender pay gap, yeah. All Things researchy and catalyst collectively, should we let the listeners have a listen to our conversation? Yeah, let's hand

over to our conversation, and we'll check back with you in a little while. All right, everyone. So here we are in the main part of our podcast today. Obviously, we are speaking about female leadership. We're looking a little bit of a gender pay gap. We're looking at for. Portion of women in leadership, and we're looking at ways that we can address some of that. And we've got some great guests. We've got Katie and fee here from the catalyst collective. Why don't we start by handing over to you guys and seeing if you can say a little bit to the audience about yourselves and about your backgrounds, and just generally, have a bit of an introduction. Hi

James, Hi Jane, hi listeners. It's really great to be here with you. I'm Katie, I'm Fauci, and we're from capital collective, so we create and share resources that equip organizations to be more inclusive. So really delighted to come on today and talk about these topics with you. My background is in international companies and humanitarian agencies, and I've been doing that for 20 or so years, worked in more than 30 countries and a bit of community development and youth work prior to getting into more organizational spaces.

And my backgrounds in HR and OD so board level HR and OD jobs, non exec jobs, both in Edinburgh, in financial services and then in the NHS. So two vacant trusts and organizations, and like Katie, we set up our own business 10 years ago,

and a sense for us with Catalyst collective of wanting to really unlock the Yeah, the years of working inside organizations and with individual leaders and making that more accessible. So we have an online aspect of our business which enables a lot of those resources to be to be free and accessible for leaders all over the world, and not just the very well resourced organizations that can pay consulting fees. Well, that's

such a great mix of backgrounds as well. There's a variety in there. And I love what you guys are doing in your aspirations of content that's free, in terms of putting stuff out there and helping people to come forward it. I guess that kind of leads me into my first question, which is around part of what, why? Why why are we doing all this stuff so? So for you guys, why do you think diversion, diversity and inclusion is so important, you know, to such an extent that you're looking to send stuff out for free to help people so talent

doesn't differentiate on grounds of gender, ethnicity, age, or any other diverse the diversity pillars, yet we've created a workplace that is differentiated, and it just it doesn't make sense on any level, and it particularly doesn't make sense as we shift into the kind of the next industrial revolution where we're dealing with massive complexity and massive globalization. So in that increasingly complex world, businesses need to access all the creativity, all the perspective, taking, all the problem solving that they can and so to have created a world of work where huge chunks of talent are not available, it just doesn't make sense. And we are. We're really passionate about shifting that,

and yeah, that sense of talent and potential being universal and having traveled and and I know you, you both have as well in many different parts of the world and engage with lots of people from different communities. I'm really totally convinced around that. And yeah, opportunity and access is not so. What can we do, as as leaders, as HR professionals, as as individuals, to to open up that access for others and make our cultures more inclusive. So it's good for business, but I think there's also something about it's good for the world as well.

So I'm really interested. I really enjoyed reading your report, which came through on my email recently, and you mentioned about it being good for businesses. One of the things you talk about is performing better, which I totally get. And the other thing you mentioned is businesses being more resilient. And I was just really interested in that, because I think that's a really interesting concept. And I wonder what you say a little bit more about why businesses that are champion and better diversity.

There's, I think there's two aspects to that. There is. So let's talk about the gender aspect, and let's talk about the general inclusion aspect. So the gender aspect around resilience is a really interesting study done in the 2000 age financial services crash, which found that across Europe and America. So it's a European and American study, organizations who had more than two women on their board bounce back. So they dropped less far in terms of financial performance, and they bounced back more quickly than other organizations. And we think this is around effectively, women bring an element of enhanced risk sensitivity to the decision making process in boards, and so that there is some additional talent and expertise that comes into boards when you bring women onto boards, and that has a financial impact. So there is something around, for example, what women bring to boards, but then there's also something around when organizations start to develop inclusive leadership capabilities that also then adds a lot of the leadership capability. Katie, do you want to speak to that? Yeah, there's,

there's lots of data about what happens when we hold ourselves back in some way. So data that looks at which of the groups that hold themselves back most in the workplace, and white men hold themselves back in the workplace. According to that data. But if you are from an LGBTQ plus community, if you identify as that, if you if you are a woman, if you're a person of color, you are holding yourself back more. You're bending yourself more out of shape in order to fit in. And there's really, really robust data around that, and we're curious about the impact of that, then, in terms of your own engagement, the amount of energy that that takes to have to try to fit into a mold of of work and a mold of the workplace, and the impact of that then actually on people's mental health. So there's that resilience piece as individuals, as well as that resilience piece for the wider organization. Thank you.

I think that's really interesting, because one of the things that I'm lovely for that at the moment, is how open to challenge leadership teams are from within. And I think there's, for me, the suspicion, and I'm not close to the research at all on this, but this suspicion that organizations that champion and recognize the importance of diversity and inclusion what it can bring will also be more likely to be open to those kind of challenges. So that sort of concept of coming out of financial crash, organizations that were already embracing inclusion and diversity were also more comfortable with challenge coming from within themselves

and Jane what we're finding is that in order to develop inclusive leadership in organizations, organizations need to develop a sense of curiosity, a sense of openness to perspective, taking a sense of capacity to deal with ambiguity and difference. And whilst those and those skills are fundamental to create an inclusive environment, but they're also fundamental to dealing with a complex and unstable business environment, which is increasingly what we're seeing. So I think what Katie and I are finding in our work is the skill set that is required to deal with to create an inclusive working world is also the future skill set that is required to deal with complexity, and it is not the skill set that has traditionally been nurtured and valued in organizations. Brilliant. Thank you. That's really interesting. Yeah,

that's a really interesting overview, or, I guess, insight into some of the perhaps ancillary benefits around focusing on inclusion. I think focusing on the resilience piece is really interesting. James,

can I jump in there? So I think there's something about, what are we talking about when we're talking about diversity and inclusion, and sometimes those two terms are kind of lumped together, and I think it's we found it helpful to sort of tease those differences out. There's something for us. You know, diversity is about who's around the table, like who's in the mix, who's in the room. And I think organizations can spend time thinking about their optics, their mix of roles, the parity between genders and people from different ethnic backgrounds, people with disabilities, or all those different aspects. And we can get into a little bit of numbers, a numbers game around that there's something about and that's important, right? Because we representation is really important, and we know that the benefits of diversity to organizations is that it's more like you're more likely to reflect your customer base, you're more likely to be innovative, all those benefits that come from from diversity. But if we just focus on that, and we don't bring in the inclusion piece, we actually miss the benefits of what that diversity can bring. So we often think about this analogy of of a party, So diversity is like, who's invited to the party? Am I even invited into the room? But then inclusion is about, am I invited to dance at the party? Like, do I have a voice in the room? Where's the power in the room? Am I included in in that piece I mentioned earlier about, am I having to bend myself out of shape to fit in here, or can I break really, bring my best to dance on the dance floor, if you like, or to bring my best into the organization? Does the culture welcome me and accommodate me and make it, make it so that I can thrive? And then there's this additional concept of around belonging, which we see a number of clients and organizations now talking about, which adds another layer to this. It's almost like, am I dancing like nobody's watching? And I don't often do that if I was in real life, but that sense of, Am I really able to thrive here? Am I? Am I so self conscious that I'm getting myself out of shape? And am I able to bring my my best self to work? Of course, we don't bring all of ourselves to work. I think we need some stuff in our private spaces too. But that those different buckets of terminology, we find it helpful to tease those out if we just focus on diversity without focusing on developing a culture of inclusion, clients may well, organizations may well attract a really good mix of people, but we find that people then may not stay. Something about retaining people is when I when I feel I can show up at my best, right? And that's when you get the benefits of of that diversity. So that's why we talk a lot about a culture around inclusion, and what does inclusive leadership look like, and what if you know, when you look at the gender pay report, we're talking about gender pay, but actually one of the underpinning you. Themes that we've looked at when we looked at all the metadata was, what does inclusive leadership bring, and how does non inclusive leadership contribute to the gender pay gap? See, that's

that's really interesting, because I know we we've talked a bit about in previous episodes, about the psychological contract of big organizations signaling that they are diverse through their promotional material and recruitment processes, and then people coming in and recognizing that the culture, whilst being diverse, is not inclusive, or they feel that they have been in some way let down. Yes, absolutely, it's a I think it's big at the moment. Yeah, and people are catching up with that. I

love the analogy you use there. I think that's really good. You know, getting the people in the room is diversity, helping them feel at their best in the room and able to dance, or invited to dance, is the inclusion piece when you're working with people. Did you find this some sort of order to that? Do you prioritize one in front of the other from a time sequence perspective, or do you try and address both at the same

time? That's a really interesting question. So I think that there's a spectrum that we that clients can place themselves on, from completely unaware that there's a problem to beginning to realize there's a problem to then beginning to do the kind of window dressing stuff that we've just talked about, to then understanding it's more than window dressing, and then shifting into a kind of fundamental hearts and minds place around it, where they get very, very curious. And rather than there being an order, I think the work that we do is say, where on that spectrum are you, and how do you move through that spectrum? And the rate at which organizations will move through that spectrum there is, and it's also not linear, so clients often think they're somewhere on the spectrum, and when they start doing the work, they actually realize we're actually a lot further behind than we thought we were, or actually further forward than we thought we were. One

of the one of the personal experiences I've had working with organizations in stuff that's not too dissimilar to this, as you'll do, maybe a bit of an assessment at the start of a process, and people will rate themselves at one level, then you will work with a period of time, helping them get better at it, and yet, they will rate themselves lower later on than others. Do you see the same type of thing in your work? Yeah, become more aware, isn't it? We realize the things that we don't know frequently.

And what I think one of one of the things that we see consistently is as we do work to help women and women call out what's happening in organizations, what we then often see is an increase in grievances and harassment claims, and that's not a bad thing. So some of the I think sometimes, some of the measures that people use to say we're okay actually, actually go up as you do the work. And I think that's what's happened with the 2019 gender pay data. For example, we

I was talking to someone about duty of care in sport, which is my background, and we'd be talking about how you change clients perspectives, particularly the big operators, to to champion small scale issues and recognize that a rise in them is actually a really good sign, because it's actually about being confident about reporting and sharing, and it's really hot. I mean, that's a terrifying thing to acknowledge as a particularly if you're a legislator, saying no, it's a good thing, you're going to see loads more stuff, and that's great. That means that actually this is working, rather than big issues exploding 10 years down the road.

And I think it's totally complicated for organizations if some of those changes lead to cost. So if there are grievance related costs, exit costs, all those types of things, then that's a bit of a challenge for organizations as well. I've got, I guess, a bit of a follow up question. We talked about getting people on board. And you kind of go through that stage where you're, you know, washing your perception in the public and things like that, when you're actually getting to the stage of changing. How important is the buy in of senior leadership and execs in the work that you're doing? Do you think it's possible to succeed without genuine buy in from that? Yeah, it's

critical. It's critical. Katie and I just looking at each other at this point of wondering which of the many stories we should share. So I'm going to start off with a little example of an organization who's trying to do work on gender inclusion. And they there is, they are. There's incredible men and women in the middle of the organization doing absolutely amazing work, but the work that they're doing is literally being nullified, for want of a better word, by by lack of buying at the top of the organization. And I think when you don't have buying at the top of the organization, the negativity bias kicks in, which is you may see 20 incredible initiatives coming from the ground up, but the one thing that a senior leader does, which is just so badly jars almost has the effect of nullifying 20 good ones and. And there's two things going on for here. One is, it's really important to get senior leadership by and let's talk about how we do that. But equally, in some organizations, we don't have that. And in the organization. Institutions where you don't have it. Let's face the reality that everybody has to shape then take that role as a culture shaper. And what's it like to be a culture shaper in an organization where you don't have a senior leader buy in? So the preference for us, absolutely, is to work in organizations where you've got senior leader buy

in. And that's not that's rarely the entry point, is it? So that's, you know, that sense of the spectrum. I would say that in most senior teams, people will be on different points of that spectrum, right in terms of their own awareness of their own bias and how that plays out, or their own willingness to believe the business case and want to work with it. So I think there's always, there's always a spectrum in that start point, and it's, it's rare to have a team who are kind of completely, fully aligned in their buy in on any, probably on any issue, but that point about in starting where, where they're at, and also that just a riff of what for you said, I don't think it's just senior team buy in either. So that, and that's the link I've heard you talk on previous episodes in your podcast about what does complex change really need. And we would see leadership buying is one really significant piece, and if it isn't there, you probably won't succeed that that modeling and walking the talk at that senior level, absolutely. But those other aspects of what does it look like for all of us to be culture shapers and take responsibility to so it's not just an HR issue that needs solving, or it's not women that need to solve this, or it's not black people that need to solve this, or it's not the leadership that need to solve this, but actually, how can I be part of creating more inclusive culture in the in the influence I have too? So there's more, I think we'd look at it quite systemically, that there's multiple touch points and potential areas for change when we're looking at how an organization can shift along that spectrum,

and do you find that that also is a different challenge in different geographies or different cultures or subcultures within either the UK or internationally?

So I'll speak first of all to organizational sector, in case you're having actually having this conversation yesterday, which is, I think in some ways, the more hierarchical the industry is. So we were talking about particularly heavily regulated industries, or in in some of the more emergency services type industries, where there's very strong kind of command and control hierarchy, there is an expectation that leadership needs to change first before people can change, and

they're often the most now dominated industries too, because it's that kind of hero model, I

guess. But I'm guessing that they may respond better to compliance related interaction intervention versus other industries, because they at least recognize that, that if it's or is that not the case. They do

respond to compliance led initiatives, but when we go back to that spectrum of inclusion, I think compliance led initiatives will often generate diversity, but they rarely generate inclusion and belonging. So for us, there's a really interesting correlation between the more hierarchy exists in an organization, the more that, the more sense and the people have. I don't hold the power, and therefore I can't be a change maker. So there's a particular challenge in hierarchical organizations. And I think some of the stuff around geography is that we found is there is we can't separate women's roles in organizations from women's roles in society, so particularly where women's roles in society are are viewed differently to where women's views and roles and organizations are viewed then, then the work is sometimes harder and slower. Yeah,

and I guess, I guess that's, that's the question I was really asking, is, yeah, where society view women differently, even quite in a small, nuanced way, or where, economically, the situation is different. So the thing I was thinking about, we were talking about just before we spoke to you, was in the southeast, you are struggling to buy a home unless both of you earn and, yes, a different context, and there is a different economic push to changing behavior from the individual organization. Indeed,

we literally, in two weeks time, starting a program in a particularly patriarchal and rural part of Scotland, where the program is with female entrepreneurs, and what we're dealing with is not just the organizational issues that women entrepreneurs face, but the societal issues that are happening in that society, which means that when You open local paper, what you will see is the male and business leaders and and the male entrepreneurs, because that's what's valued in that society.

That's a really interesting area to be working on. And I think the ability to separate societal reflection from organizational ones is complicated,

and a lot of our work is with international NGOs and so, I guess you know, similar for what you're seeing as well in your work, that there are multiple cultures represented in one organization or with global businesses, that would be the same as well. And where those organizations are, you know, part of their work, part of their being in those in those countries and cultures, is about alleviating. In poverty and and looking at justice issues locally. So all the gender issues and the diversity issues are really live in their work externally. And I guess the way that we support around that is, what are the principles and what are the cultural dynamics that you want to be consistent? I guess it's that sort of global and local piece. And you know, what? What do we want our culture to be like as an organization? How are we going to model that, even in really challenging gender, gender based situations, for example? And what does that then look like locally? Is then, you know, contextually determined and kind of culturally determined. Does that

mean that what good looks like? It's different for the different for the different organizations to work in, to some extent, based on where they are or what's your view.

I think sometimes not what good looks like, but the levers that you can pull to create change, and the speed at which you can expect to change varies.

Well, let's, let's jump into maybe a few more specific aspects around this, or a few more practical aspects around it. We talked a little bit about things like the importance of leadership, but also the fact change from different places. We talked about a variety of current states in industry, as well as bits around geography. Is there anything you can reflect on to do with what's currently blocking some progress in organizations in relation to both for gender pay gap and in relation to gender equality in leadership roles, or maybe more diversity equality in leadership. I think what we're dealing with here

is we're dealing with 1000s, 1000s of years of conditioning about what we expect from men and women around gender, and what that generates is a whole pile of subconscious bias in the workplace that shapes women's experiences of work. It shapes men's experiences of work, and it shapes how women and men experience are experienced, and that is not a single experience. So White women's experience of work will be different, for example, and some aspects of women of colors experience of work, people who are parents experience of work and will be different from a woman's experience with a non parent. So I don't want us to imagine it's a binding experience, because it's absolutely not. But effectively, what we're dealing with is a whole set of biases which shape how we are experienced as a leader in the workplace or an employee in the workplace, and how we experience the workplace, and some of the really common ones that we come across is networking. And there are gender based differences in networking. There are gender based differences in how our leadership is experienced. And we're going to come back and give you a little example that in a moment, literally, the feedback that women receive varies by both gender and by both ethnicity of gender, and how our performance, how women's performance, is measured. Also there is so a whole set of biases that play out, which effectively create what we call a set of headwinds. So the author, author, Debbie Irvin has this lovely phrase about headwinds, and effectively, women in the workplace are running into a set of headwinds around careers. And if you're a woman of color, you're running into an even stronger set of headwinds around careers. And because of bias, men are often running into a tail they're running with a tailwind that they don't appreciate they're running with. And is that sort of micro inequities and things like that.

Would you say it is? Yes, it is. So another way, I guess, another Yeah, another analogy to think about micro aggressions or micro inequities. So examples would be the kind of headwinds that some of your listeners might might connect with. So when you're in a meeting, do you get spoken over when you're in a meeting? Do you put forward an idea that somebody else then puts forward later and they get credited for it, is it? Yeah, all the things that we know and and you know, who does the office, housework, all that's good stuff. There's there's ways that bias plays out day to day. And there's a sense for us of, once you are aware of that, as as any leader in any organization, once you're aware, you sort of start to see everywhere. It's like putting glasses on. Then you can also start being active around that. And we talked a bit about being a culture shaper. So when we start seeing those things, we can start calling them out, or we can start acting differently ourselves. When when someone puts forward an idea in a meeting and someone else is taking it, you can say, well, actually that was, that was fees idea. Well, then fee we can, we can give the credit where it's due. And I think there's something about how leaders can, can counteract some of these barriers or counteract some of the headwinds. Sometimes we can, we can be quite overwhelmed. I think with this whole big topic of diversity and inclusion, it can feel so huge and complex. And on one level, it is, it's systemic and it is complex, but also, I think there are daily things that we can each do. And your question, you know, is it really different in different cultures? I think there's something about our kind of basic humanity which is really consistent wherever you go in the world and wherever you go in any organization. So how do we connect with that compassion for others? And. Their lived experiences that might be different from ours. How do we accept that just because we don't experience it doesn't mean it doesn't exist and and then, how can we get more educated around others lived experiences so that we can we can call it out, we can support, we can elevate. We can stop doing stuff that's harmful, all of that, all of that good stuff, and stuff, and that's a way of helping, I guess, reduce the headwind for others where we can.

And I love, I love this concept of headwind and tailwind. I think it's really useful, isn't it? What do you guys? How do you guys,

if at all, work with leaders who might experience fallout of people losing the tailwind, so inevitably, with privilege and awareness of privilege, at some sense, people either need to give it up willingly or unwillingly. Do you see fallout from that? Or actually, you know, do you build that into your programs? When you're working with your organizations,

we absolutely build it into programs. And I think one of the things that we're working with at the moment is we occasionally see backlash, and we are really conscious at the moment and mindful of we can organizations can create an approach to inclusion where it is not a zero sum game. So I think where you see backlash is where people sense that they are losing something that they have had, and that sense of it's a zero sum game. So in order for women to succeed in the workplace, either man need to lose, or in order for people of color to grow in a workplace, either white woman need to lose. And I think what we are really interested in is, how do we actually focus this work on creating a workplace that is better for everybody, or in which everybody can thrive, and reframing inclusion in those terms. And part of what's driven us to this is a really interesting trend that we're seeing at the moment, which is where men want a more balanced life. So for example, when they want to eat oral in parenting, they're now experiencing the same bias that women have experienced. So we've got male coaching clients who have gone part time and have been told that they've been taken off the talent list because they've gone part time, and therefore those

are exact conversations that I've had. Yes, gone, no, I just it's the conversation James and I had just before we were talking was about this concept. So I I have concerns that as hugely, as important as diversity, inclusion is, it is one marker of an issue where organizations reward people who conform to their expectations totally. And it's a massive part of it, but it also it doesn't get solved. It doesn't solve that underlying problem. If you get the work right, it illuminates it, and it helps people understand it. But there is this wider issue of there are always going to be people who want to behave differently from the norm of that organization, and that part of inclusion, I think, probably gets less funding and less interest.

I think this you sounds like you have a very similar conversation to one that we were having ahead of having this, you know, the podcast, what Katie and I were talking about is really the work that we're doing is actually rooted in a belief that the whole way that we conceive of work and the construction that we have created around what work is and what work needs to be is that is fundamentally exclusively problematic.

And some stuff in there about emotional labor, and that's where our conversation on that topic, I guess, started. That was our jumping off point. And it sounds like we moved in some of the directions. I think that's a fascinating subject.

I think for now, though, it would be good to reflect back on some of the things that we've talked about. So we talked about biases, we talked about headwinds and tailwinds, we talked about things like networking and leadership and differences in the way that people deal with and are receiving feedback. And I was wondering, from your side, when you're looking at addressing some of these things that are blockers to equality and leadership and equality in pay, what are some of the things that you can do to address these you know? How do you address some of the blockers that you see? What are your approaches?

So I guess it depends on it may depend a bit on your role inside the organization. We've talked a bit about all of us being a culture shaper. So if there are things where, if you see how those headwinds are playing out and acting on others, how do we call that out, or how do we just shift that in some way? So we've talked a bit about that. How do we give different people a voice? How do we give different people air time? How do we amplify others great ideas and contributions? How do we give credit where credit's due? Who do we talk about when they're not in the room? It's really fascinating. Who do we do we do we take someone else's idea, or do we give credit to that other person and name them and and if we are in a leadership position, who are we bringing into those other spaces of power? Who are we taking to lunch? Who are we bringing. Into a new project. Who are we giving that visibility and that and that additional exposure and space to and how are we supporting those individuals to to be able to step up into those spaces? There's sort of some small individual choices that leaders can make. I know

that you've got HR practitioners amongst your your listeners, and for HR practitioners, there are some key people processes that have a disproportionate impact on inclusion. And those processes around recruitment, they are processes around talent assessment, they are processes around performance assessment. And for HR practitioners, those baked in bias in those processes, and it can be really helpful to get a group of people to sit down and literally walk through the processes and say, Where is the bait and bias in this process and start shipping out? Well, you

just preempt what I was gonna ask you, so I'm gonna ask you something else before. Thanks for that. So we do have, we have kind of a mix of people listening to the podcast. And I know one of the challenges that we talk to about people who are kind of just beginning their leadership journey or thinking about how they can move forward, is, and I have this conversation constantly, and we had it on in a really big scale in the sports sector, with about 50 women in the room where we all went. But when we're put on the spot with silly questions, we never know what to say, right? And the sort of questions I'm talking about is the ones, isn't it just because men don't take career breaks have kids? Isn't it just because you have to be really hard nosed, and it's about performance, isn't it just you know that women aren't tough enough to negotiate or aren't experienced enough to go share, and we hear these things, and then we go, we want to what, make an argument going back to it, and we're just, we freeze a little bit because we're it becomes so obvious to us. Is there any advice on where people who want to get better at making that argument can go for information or for facts or things that they can quite quickly quote that people say, No, that's not true. This is, this is what's true.

Yeah, I think a piece of that, let's, let's educate ourselves and how bias plays out. And we've got a guide that we're having to show people to help, just as an initial Oh, okay, let's put the glasses on and let's see. Let's see where that is. Is it helpful if we speak to some of those objections to exactly how to answer those right now, that would be amazing, an army of people, let's do it. So can

we start off by kind of meta strategy, clearly with those questions, then perhaps deal with some individual questions. So I think the meta strategy that we encourage people to think about is, what does that objection tell us about the blueprint of work that the person who is speaking it holds. And if you unpick that blueprint of work, is it a sensible blueprint of work? So if, for example, we take the isn't it? Women take more just take more career breaks. The kind of the what underlies that is the belief that if I take, let's say, two years out of a 35 year career, I don't deserve to be a senior leader. That's the belief that underpins it. And when you when you turn it back to the person and express it as that belief, the lunacy of it, I think, becomes much clearer.

So yeah, because if you followed their logic, you would just see that women, if you really believed that, which I don't, but if you did, you just see women being two years later, right? And we'd have huge numbers still on leadership teams. They just might be a little bit older, if you really not that I do. So I like that idea that you get them to play out their own logic of That's really clever, yeah. And does that work? Do you find that works in conversations with people? It irritates people. It does irritate people to begin

with, is the bottom line. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't, but it then it gets them into a process of standing back from the that how they can see work, and actually beginning to start See, seeing some of the invisible barriers which are actually getting in the way of women.

And so that conversation, then, is quite provocative, isn't it? And essentially quite confronting. And we can get into some defensiveness or to some that's where you get the kind of man's plane or white splain stuff kicking off. But actually what we find is that by provoking, perhaps in a kind way, a gracious way, those conversations that it gets people thinking about what's actually going on here, like, let's, let's dig under this a little bit more. We've all got this kind of received wisdom, or deeply conditioned beliefs around how work should be and and it, of course, plays out into wider society, the caring roles, and what roles men and women should, inverted commas, be doing, and what it looks like to be a mother, to be a parent, all of those senses of expectation that we have on ourselves and on each other, those are deeply embedded in us, right? And so the more that we can, I guess, bring them out and bring it up, and interrogate it a bit, unpick it a bit, and then you can start having a. Really creative conversation about, well, what else could we do? Like, how else could this be and of course, there's a big societal questions, but inside a small, medium, sizeable, big organization, those conversations can be very rich. What would it look like here if we together co create something a bit different? What could we do in our own sphere of influence, which might be limited, but what can we still do to create something a bit different that would reflect more of our belief that talent is universal, we want really great people at all levels. Oh, that's great. I

mean, I love the idea of having some of those broader conversations, where you get people to really reflect on, I guess, the constructive worlds that we live in, and how we can maybe challenge those or reimagine them and and imagine world back to our own world. I think there's some powerful stuff in there that can be, can be pretty useful. I'm conscious that we are as ever getting conversation right? I mean, it feels like there are several other podcasts in here, particularly, almost at a societal level, that would be really fascinating. But I think for the interest of time, I'm going to start to wrap things up. One sort of last thing for me is, is there anything that you wish we'd asked you, or any final thoughts that you'd like to share? Yeah,

thank you. I am going to tip in with something. So I think if you, if you're a leader inside an organization, I'd love you to be challenging yourself. Who are you spending time with? Whose stories are you listening to, and who are you sponsoring, whether that's formally or informally. So a bit like what we talked about earlier, who are you equipping and enabling to to access different spaces? And we tend, all of us as humans, to stick with the people who are like us. And so probably you're you're mentoring and you're sponsoring people who look a little bit like you. So my my my gracious challenge, my confrontation, my provocation to you is, can you start to sponsor somebody who's really different from you? And you can look around and see who are the more marginalized groups in your organization, or who has less representation, and think about, okay, who can I find, who I can support and elevate? And if we all did that, actually, that would make quite a big difference in the world. And it's not about being a savior. It's not about being a rescuer. Actually, it's about listening with humility to other stories and others lived experiences that might be really really different from you, and that also starts, then to melt down and unpick some of those deeper conditioned beliefs about how the world should be. I think when we when we hear from others who are really different and have a really different experience, so that that would be my, my gentle challenge to your listeners and see each of us to take, to take that in.

And I'll add my gentle challenge as well, which is just, it's a 10 minute challenge for today, and literally, just encourage you readers to do it today, which is to do an audit of your social media. So whatever your social media platform of choice is, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and just take a look at how diverse are the feeds that you are seeing. And when you've done that, you might want to take action to enrich the feeds that you're seeing, because the what we see in organizations around inclusion is a reflection of the greatest societal issue around inclusion, and we live in a smog of bias around that. And one of the ways that we can start breaking through, as Zach is Katie said, is get a richer variety of what we're seeing in social media. Cool. Those are some pretty fun challenges. Aren't there for people? Yeah, totally doing that one. I'm totally doing that one. Fantastic, good stuff. Just before we finish up the last question,

how can people listening find out more about you?

Yeah, thank you. We'd love to connect with any of your listeners. You can find us at catalyst collective.com, and we're also on all the socials at catalyst collective community. And we'd absolutely love to connect with people there, and you can access all our free resources through through those spaces. Cool, yeah, and just one for me. I've,

I've been, we downloaded your gender pay gap report, the updated version for 2019 and thorough endorse. It is a really interesting provocation. Yeah, I like that word to conversation that I would encourage leaders to read and then maybe share with their teams, because I think if nothing else, it'll start a conversation. Lovely. All right. Well, thank you guys very much for your time. It's been a pleasure. I'm sure we will catch up again. Great to be with you. Thanks, Beth. Thank you. Okay,

so welcome back. That was our conversation with Katie and fi from the catalyst collective. I thought it was really interesting. I thought it's a great topic, and they're obviously really knowledgeable and engaged in it and looking to make a difference. So it was excellent to get the chance to speak to them. Have you got any takeaways or reflections you'd like to make on the back of it? I guess my own reflection is that I am always I

always find it harder to interrogate the information when it's a group that I belong to by nature. So as a woman, I'm always somewhat more suspicious about my own grouping and. Therefore it was really helpful and really interesting to hear about their research and how the research was structured, and what the information they took from it, and what what it told us. Because I think a lot of the time, research gets politicized in the press, and you very rarely can get down to the bottom of the detail of the research. You just get the top level stuff in the press, and so you don't get that opportunity to really understand what, what assumptions have been made. And I thought that was a really useful framing. Yeah, good. What about you? What did you take from it like

you? I thought that bit was interesting. I think, I mean, I think the whole, whole subject and whole area is really interesting. I guess what stands out for me is the fact that there's so much, you know, real evidence in this, in this domain about disparity and pay gap, and that evidence itself is, you know, just brings to light the real disparity that's there. And I think in itself, that's really powerful. And I think, you know, being able to evidence a clear differentiation in the way that we remunerate people for doing the same roles. It's kind of powerful, and it's kind of a little bit depressing, but it gives us an evidential base from which to make progress and to progress. Obviously, those are the same things, making progress and progressing, but you know what I mean. So I think the importance of evidence is important. Something else that's in my mind in relation to all of this is, obviously this is really focused on gender and one of the strands, but I understand that, you know, there are plans to broaden this out and to look at pay gap disparity across a range of diversity areas, maybe looking at ethnicity and things like that as well. And I'd be really interested to see where we end up with this. So I guess one of my key takeaways is really the importance of measurement of a first stage of this type of change process, to really pin down and demonstrate where you are, to form a basis from which to go on and change.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting, because I I like everything. I always want to look under the skirt or look under the trouser, or whatever the appropriate terminology would be of where things come from and why they happen. And there's a great I ended up reading a great Twitter thread maybe a year ago when some of the research came out the first time, and it was about how there weren't enough women in roles, so someone promoted someone into a role and added someone to that team at that level, but didn't have the budget to match the people who'd been there 10 years, because they've moved in. But of course, then, by doing that, had then made it look like, or maybe, well, it had that person with 10 years less experience, and they hadn't got that opportunity, because they've been previously quite sexist agenda, I think. So there is this whole problem where change takes time. Yeah, change is iterative. Change can sometimes improve things, but still be imbalanced. And I guess there's a level of how do we not make it divisive? Yeah, in the process of doing that, when people are trying to move it forward and understand the limitations of budgets while also being seriously angry about it.

Yeah, yeah. There's that sort of reconciliation piece that needs to take place as well. I mean, it's got to change, but you need to do it in as productive and collaborative, yeah?

And I think the answer to that is quite often, like mapping out. Okay, well, we know where we are and we know we're failing, but we're gonna move take these steps in this time to get there. But obviously it's so it affects so people, so individually, it is so much more of all the benefits and the challenges and the structures of employment contracts, ultimately, salary is an entirely personal thing, yeah, because it affects you differently depending on what your outgoings and responsibilities are, and responsibilities are, and therefore that makes it incredibly difficult to understand and predict and manage. Yeah,

well, fascinating stuff. I think it's probably just time to say a little bit more about how you can get in touch with them. Oh, that'd be good. Yeah.

I think the best thing that you can do to find out more about them and what they do, is you can look at WWW dot catalyst, dash collective.org so that's catalyst, dash collective.org and on there, they've got lots of great stuff. So they've got a gender pay gap report, but you can get but if you it's really good, yeah, it's good document. And you can click on on the, you know, request to get that, and they'll send that along. And they also do a series of webinars that might be of interest about things like being overwhelmed, networking, increasing visibility, and things like that that would be useful. And then, just to say that you'll be able to find them on usual places, sort of they're on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and stuff like that. And they are at catalyst collective. I think if you search for that, you search for that, you should be able to find them on most of those platforms. And I guess that's kind of it. Is that? Is that it? I think that's it, all right, let's