INSIGHTS

Studies suggest that the pandemic has set working women back by more than three decades so now is the time to increase dialogue and action. Leverage HR leaders will discuss What Women, Allies, and Organizations Can do to avoid losing talented women in leadership roles and unwinding years of painstaking progress toward gender equality.

Part of this talent war entails leveraging the greater diversity in the world today and removing barriers to advancement that exist, namely for the 75 million women in the U.S. civilian labor force. A recently published report from Columbus-based Leverage HR and Belgium-based social enterprise firm JUMP set out to explore the way these barriers exist and how we can break them down.

Sapna Welsh discusses how implicit bias and a lack of solid processes typically leads to losing out on promising talent. Notably, “like attracts like” behaviors also play a role. Many executives and leaders will point out “high potentials” who often remind them of themselves in some way.

ATD’s (Association for Talent Development) Senior Leaders & Executives Community of Practice spoke to partners at Leverage HR and authors of Worldly Women—The New Leadership Profile: How to Expatriate with Excellence. Based on years of HR experience and global research, the authors have been able to identify various challenges women face in climbing the corporate ladder and how to overcome those challenges.