Q. I’m a CFO in the process of hiring a new addition to our investor relations team. As our senior management is all male, we’re thinking about getting more women onto the team. Is positive discrimination of this kind a good idea?
A. Discrimination of any kind – including positive – is usually illegal. So the obvious answer is to simply choose the best person for the job. Your share price is too precious to risk picking second best for the sake of equality.
However, if you’re presented with two candidates – one male, one female – who you absolutely cannot choose between, then something will have to be the deciding factor. If your company is predominately male, then this is your opportunity to even things up a bit and get a woman in a senior position. While you should never pick someone based solely on their gender, a woman could bring diversity and a whole new perspective to your all-male executive team.
A more equal ratio of male and female employees could also help you with recruiting new female graduates. After all, you probably want to escape from the off-putting ‘boys club’ image that many companies suffer from.
Q. As a woman working in our company’s finance and treasury department, I’m considering trying to spend a couple of years on the IR team. Would this be a beneficial career move or is it a bit of a sideways step?
A. IR is very often a job that people spend a few years in before moving on somewhere else, normally the communications or finance departments. IR is a great way to hone your skills for both of these areas.
Coming from group finance, IR is a bit of a sideways step, but it could help you leapfrog over a few positions to get you to a higher level. It’s a very visible role, too, so it’s a good way to make your name in the company. If your ambition is to become a CFO, then a stint in IR is a great way to improve your all-round knowledge. Also, knowledge of a company’s relationship with its customers, shareholders and employees – and how they all interact with each other – is critical. Working in IR is an opportunity to learn about this, so if you’re offered the chance to spend time in the IR department, you should grab it with both hands.
Q. Although I’ve never felt discriminated against in the workplace, as a woman in a mainly male environment, I do find that I don’t fit into the golf/drinks/gym set, so I’m probably missing out on vital networking opportunities. What are the chances of getting myself included?
A. By the time I left the City in 2000 I was only too aware of the lack of informal networking opportunities for women. So I created my own. MM is a women-only dining club which I started so senior women could have the networking and mentoring opportunities that are usually more readily available to men.
I also tried golf but found that I wasn’t very good at it, so I took up shooting instead. I’ve now got my own twelve-bore shotgun and I regularly shoot clay pigeons or game. Going shooting provides me with lots of opportunities for meeting and networking with senior people in business.
Both my dining club and shooting were ways to be proactive about creating my own networking opportunities. If you feel you’re being excluded from the shmoozing scene, find a way to join in and get involved. If you still can’t find what you need, be positive and create your own environment or club that suits your needs.
One final piece of advice if you’re inspired by my hobby: think Princess Anne, not Thelma and Louise. It’s a way to cozy up to the establishment, not destroy it.
E-mail questions to Heather McGregor – [email protected]. McGregor is a former IRO and investment analyst who currently works on IR assignments for Taylor:Bennett, an executive search firm specializing in communications jobs
