View publication - Chartered Institute of Housing
View publication - Chartered Institute of Housing
View publication - Chartered Institute of Housing
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HOW MENTORING AND COACHING BROKE THE ‘GLASS CEILING’<br />
How mentoring and coaching broke the ‘glass ceiling’<br />
at Genesis<br />
By Kulbir Shergill, Head <strong>of</strong> Diversity and Inclusion at Genesis<br />
Summary<br />
Increasingly organisations are looking at proactive ways in which they can<br />
improve their diversity pr<strong>of</strong>ile and become more inclusive employers. This is,<br />
because greater diversity and inclusivity opens doors to a richer seam <strong>of</strong> talent<br />
and expertise, improving business value and competitiveness. This article<br />
explores how Genesis used mentoring and coaching to develop the talent<br />
pipeline for senior management positions. The result was greater personal<br />
ownership <strong>of</strong> learning delivered in non-traditional ways.<br />
The issues – why did we need a different approach?<br />
Like many other housing organisations we employed a lot <strong>of</strong> women (60 per cent) but<br />
few <strong>of</strong> them were in senior positions. Clearly their numbers in the sector indicated that<br />
they liked working in housing but somehow the ‘glass ceiling’ was double glazed when<br />
it came to promotion and climbing up the career ladder! Less than 16 per cent <strong>of</strong> chief<br />
executives <strong>of</strong> housing associations are women.<br />
Gender equality at senior management levels became one <strong>of</strong> our diversity priorities. Our<br />
challenge lay in engaging men to support female staff in their career aspirations; after<br />
all they were the ones who would be making the hiring decisions and approving<br />
learning opportunities. So when we invited women from around the organisation to talk<br />
to us we also invited senior male managers and the male CEO to engage in the debate<br />
about what the barriers were and how we could use them to smash the ‘glass ceiling’.<br />
Managers also talked about what their role could be in supporting the organisation<br />
achieve its objective.<br />
Like other housing organisations we ran learning and development programmes and<br />
had appraisals in place; but the persistent outcome was a majority male senior<br />
management team. Clearly we needed to do something different if we wanted a<br />
different outcome.<br />
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