I am 50 this week. I am taking much comfort from recent headlines declaring that “over 50 year olds are back in vogue at work”. Apparently Mcdonalds and Halfords have fired up big recruitment campaigns to entice older workers back from partial retirement or to consider a change of sector later in life. This is good news and I don't say so from an entirely selfish perspective. An exodus of older employees post pandemic is one of the reasons we are facing such a significant skills shortage and tightening of the labour force. However, there is another underutilized segment of the population that is also on my mind as I hurtle towards my birthday - women. I wish it was still not necessary to write about the chronic lack of progress in the many aspects of business life that affects women, but it is. I am sure you have a sense of the dearth of female executives just by reading this paper. There are masses of data but two points haunt me. Firstly, I saw Vivian Hunt, a very impressive and rare senior black executive at McKinsey present their research on how long it will take by sector for women to be at parity with men. As someone who has built my career around technology, I was monumentally depressed when she revealed that under current trends this will never happen in the sector. And yet this is one of the fastest growing and most powerful forces globally. Secondly, I follow the money - only 2% of venture capital funding goes to women in the UK. Yet estimates suggest £13 trillion would be added to the global economy if there was increased equality for women at work. The issue is not just one of justice but also of good business.
Argh
Not stole -iterated :-)