Corporate Australia has got it wrong:
Forget executive coaching, invest in your female millennials
Female millennials will form close to 25% of the world’s workforce by 2020 (World Economic Forum) and employers must think and act differently to get the best out of this powerful force of emerging talent.
A recent article by the Centre for Workplace Leadership, stated that whilst frontline leaders make up close to 60% of all managers and can often directly supervise up to 80% of the entire workforce, companies invest up to 5 times more in senior executive leaders than in frontline leaders.
This has been consistent with what we have uncovered over the years through the leadership programs we run for emerging female talent at The Dream Collective, that organisations often have tunnel vision when it comes to leadership training and continue to invest disproportionately more in the senior level than emerging female leaders.
Whilst I don’t discount the reality that the impact of senior leaders’ decision making and leadership style can often dwarf that of a frontline leader, when aggregated to the company level and as economic volatility increases, frontline leadership capability is just as important as senior leadership (Centre for Workplace Leadership).
Female millennial is an era of ambitious and driven talent, with a huge appetite for professional growth and development. Yet they don’t believe big corporations will allow them to have the kind of progression, training and flexibility needed to advance their career.
Ernst & Young recognises the importance of building this next generation of female leaders in their publication “Women in Leadership. Speaking up: In the words of emerging leaders”. The study points out that large organisations are losing some of their brightest and best emerging female leaders because those women don’t to see commitment from organisations to make career paths visible at all stages and offer them true leadership opportunities. It also outlines that getting young women to the next step in their careers, especially the progression from technician to leader, takes mentoring and leadership training. Corporations need to work with female millennial to co-create structured career paths and development opportunities from the early stage of their career (beyond just graduate programs), so there is a visible and strong roadmap in place to facilitate career growth.
Companies need to shift their focus from investing in senior executive leaders only, to investing in this pipeline of emerging leaders in order to capitalise on their strength and to sustain long-term organisational success. The reality is that for as long as companies continue to underinvest in frontline female leaders who are undergoing what could be the most critical period of their career growth, we won’t see more women rise up to leadership. This is exactly why we are focused on developing this generation of female talent at our upcoming career summit, where ten thought leaders unite from a diverse background including business, sports, entertainment, retail and digital – to encourage individuals as well as companies, to be part of the solution.
As we face talent scarcity in today’s corporate world, the commitment to attract, develop, invest and retain skilled millennial women will not only be crucial for corporate success but will fast become a cost of entry for employers in the workforce.
Female millennial are in many ways, a new frontier that organisations will rely on to drive change and greater impact to their businesses. Leadership at the frontline is a competitive advantage that leads to a more effective, agile and profitable organisation.
As the Centre for Workplace Leadership aptly puts it, “frontline leaders are no longer the limbs of an organisation but the entire muscular-skeletal system. The organisations with frontline leadership capability won’t just outrun the pack in the sprints: they’ll win the long game too”.
To find out more about The Dream Collective Career Summit on19th September at Customs House Sydney, please visit our website.