Post-pandemic mission: Bring women back into the workforce

As a mother of two small girls with a demanding consulting career, the pandemic tested my ability to juggle playdates and video conferences with my banking clients.

I am in good company: PwC’s latest Workforce Pulse Survey showed that women aged 35 to 44, including working mothers, are more affected than other groups by the strains of the pandemic. The majority said they feel stressed or anxious, with 70% of respondents feeling unable to ask for help in managing work-related stress.

One profound result: millions of women departed the workforce due to competing circumstances as a result of COVID-19, not by choice due to reductions in staff, or personal choices to address caregiving and family obligations.

The National Bureau of Economic Research found that the pandemic has forced women out of the workforce at disproportionately high rates — almost four times more than men.

In the financial services industry, this is particularly alarming.

In 2020, the Financial Services House Committee Hearings highlighted the lack of diversity as an industry-wide issue.

Women are leaving. We need them back — particularly on Wall Street. With the rise of environmental, social and governance and public diversity reporting, as well as the overwhelming evidence pointing to companies with diverse boards outperform others, firms that move fastest to advance female talent will likely reap the benefits of their return.

Efforts to attract, advance and retain women through the pandemic should be boundless. They should not stop when the pandemic subsides. Lack of female representation is a systemic issue in the financial services industry, made worse by COVID-19. We should use these pandemic lessons to balance scales that have been tilted for much too long, and not allow the pandemic disruption to add to the imbalance.

There are signs of commitment. Since the ‘Fearless Girl’ statue faced down the Wall Street bull in 2017, we’ve seen an iconic female CEO appointment on Wall Street, and a pipeline of strong female successor candidates in major banks. One bank has refused to take non-diverse boards to initial public offering, while others have published diversity and pay gap data or tied diversity metrics to executive performance or compensation.

There is hope.

I have been encouraged by what major banks are doing to help keep women in the workplace — not just through the pandemic, but to support women in a post-COVID world. One global bank introduced flexible work programs that enable the purchase of additional vacation as well as a 12-week sabbatical for qualifying employees to focus on well-being. Other financial institutions have put in place timely benefits such as support in finding child care as well as virtual education assistance.

Holistic well-being, inclusive of various dimensions (for example, physical, financial, mental, and emotional) has never been more urgent. I have observed in several firms an uptick in the provision of mental health-related wellness programs such as meditation resources, resilience training and counseling.

In fact, PwC’s Workforce Pulse survey indicates that the majority of CHROs, across various industries, are planning to increase support to workers via new benefits, including those that offer childcare and mental health assistance, as well as hazard pay and upskilling programs in light of the country’s new administration.

What else should the FS industry do?

It will take time to improve gender representation on Wall Street and throughout the financial services industry. It requires commitment, resources and discipline. Here are key strategies:

• Integrate diversity and inclusion in business strategy. Consider whether there are aspects of the company’s strategy or business model that hinder the diversity agenda. For example, if the most attractive leads are consistently allocated to male over female advisors, or the most successful portfolios are routinely assigned to male over female investment managers, an underlying bias may exist with the ability to conceal the potential of female talent.
• Focus on pipeline. The loss of just a few lonely women at the top can cripple gender diversity in many financial services firms. To soften the impact, firms should focus on building their bench of female leaders via targeted recruitment, customized benefits, equitable pay, intentional succession planning and formal sponsorship.
• Measure progress, with gusto. Establish diversity and inclusion metrics within the key indicators of your company’s success, and measure progress against these goals with the same rigor that other business metrics are monitored. Share progress, both good and bad, and take it further to analyze why diverse talent is leaving. According to our recent D&I benchmarking survey, while 50% of financial services firms track employee demographics, only 20% monitor discrepancies in promotions which could be a main contributor to female attrition.

But most of all, let us recognize that advancing gender diversity is not a women’s problem for women alone to solve. Instead, we need a coalition including male allies who commit to the mission, and inspire others to do the same. Let’s bring those millions of women back to the workforce.