New findings reveal 40 per cent of female senior business and public sector leaders in Australia lack an external network, compared to 30 per cent of male leaders.
This gender gap raises critical questions about the accessibility of networking opportunities for women, in comparison to their male counterparts.
Released today, in Telstra’s Return on Connection report, the research was conducted by YouGov, and quantifies the value of human-to-human connection for leaders, their organisations and the industries they support.
Telstra Enterprise Chief Customer Officer, Peggy Renders said that Telstra’s research not only put a dollar value on leader-to-leader connection, it found better collaboration led to increased problem solving and innovation.
“We asked Australian leaders about what’s keeping them up at night. As you’d expect, it’s a heavy list of challenges, with rising cost pressures, driving innovation, implementing new technology, short term vs long term goals and sustainable work practices rounding out the top five,” Renders said.
“What surprised us though, is that most leaders aren’t connecting with other leaders – either within or beyond their sector – on these big challenges. That’s despite a huge 96% believing stronger connections would help tackle these challenges.”
Surveying more than 1000 senior leaders across large businesses and public sector organisations, the report shows 1 in 3 have no professional network of peers outside of their organisation.
A lack of connection between senior business and public sector leaders on a macro level could be resulting in a missed opportunity of approximately $53 billion annually across large Australian organisations.
Organisations with highly connected leaders saw revenue growth 5 per cent higher on average compared to less connected organisations. And there was a growth gap of around $15.5 million in lost opportunity in the past year, on average, for large organisations surveyed with lower levels of connected leaders.
“What’s more, our research found that higher levels of leader-to-leader connection leads to higher levels of new and innovative ideas being injected into an organisation,” said Renders.
According to the research, in the last 12 months, nearly half of leaders who connect daily (46 per cent) shared that interactions with external networks led to the development of new or innovative ideas six or more times.
The research also compared leader-to-leader connections in different industries, with a higher proportion of connected leaders found in the manufacturing, construction and financial services industries. Lower connections were found in mining, retail and the public sector.
Nevertheless, nearly all (93 per cent) of survey respondents said they were willing to share their organisation’s challenges and opportunities, showing a desire to improve connections with peers.
To help these leaders do so, Telstra is launching a new Return on Connection initiative to bring leaders from diverse industries together on the key challenges identified in the report, including driving innovation and implementing new technology through a series of forums.
“In today’s super-speed society so many connections are often one-off or tactical. This doesn’t bring people closer, it doesn’t build trust or take a relationship to a strategic level,” Renders said.
“Throughout my career it has often been peers working in completely different industries – or countries – that have helped bring diverse thinking to challenges. And that’s certainly been the case over this year as we’ve worked to reset our enterprise business around our customers and Australian industry and government.”
“Through our Return on Connection forums we hope to unlock the value of diverse perspectives on the same challenges all Australian industries and governments are facing. We want business leaders from across sectors to connect, showcase innovation and learn from one another.”