Aside from sleep, work is where we spend most of our waking hours over our lifetime. How we experience work is how we experience a considerable amount of our lives, which is why managing the meaning we derive from work is essential to our overall life satisfaction. Knowing how your workplace works is how we can begin to make it work for everyone. Most of us want more meaning at work and badly. A 2018 study by BetterUp surveyed 2285 American professionals and found that 9 out of 10 employees,...

The degree to which we feel like we belong at work depends on the nature of our relationship with our workplace. We don’t often think about our job as a relationship, but it is, at least in a sense. Your job is a reciprocal relationship. You exchange your time, energy, and expertise for money, advancement, and fulfilment at a basic level. The exchange can happen only if both parties trust each other, which is why I refer to the relationship between workplaces and employees as a trust...

The publishing industry is notorious for a lack of diversity. In 2016 The Bookseller examined the lists of the UK’s most established publishing houses and found that there were fewer than 100 books published by authors of colour.   In 2021, out of a total of 4,017 authors and illustrators featured across 33 catalogues from the UK’s top five publishers and selected independent presses, 2.5% were Black British, when compared to the overall output.   These numbers speak for themselves.  In this...

It's that time of year again; companies are adding new graduates to their ranks and training them, much like they always have. According to a National Association of Colleges and Employers report, despite a slower job market, hiring projections indicate that companies plan to hire 4% more graduates in 2023 than in 2022. While employers continue hiring graduates, many are unaware of the specific skill gaps graduates face and what managers can do to solve these challenges. Companies often sell...

Based on my work, I know for sure that at one time or another, most of us have lost our belief in work. We have felt the pain of being excluded from informal networks, the stress of trying to keep up with the pace of change, or burnout after putting in countless hours to get the next promotion, only to be overlooked or disillusioned with cut-throat corporate cultures. We are tired of accepting the myth that individual advancement must come at a cost to ourselves and the people we work...

According to the most recent “Women in the Workplace” report from LeanIn.Org and McKinsey, the gap between men and women leaving their jobs is the largest it has been since the report was first published eight years ago.  For every female director who is promoted, two women at the same level of seniority choose to quit. The report states that women are leaving companies that fail to deliver on “the cultural elements of work that are critically important to them.” Culture is our lived...

For most people we want feedback at work, but it is also something we dread. Unless feedback is actionable and helpful, it just feels like unnecessary criticism or a way for organizations to try and get people to fit into toxic workplace cultures. In the HBR article entitled Women Get “Nicer” Feedback — and It Holds Them Back authors  Lily Jampol, Aneeta Rattan and Elizabeth Baily Wolf shared how their research finds even if their male and female employees perform at exactly the same level,...

For many people International Women’s Day has lost its way. It is too readily used by corporates as a day to provide lip service to gender equality and women’s advancement at work. But women don’t need one day of celebration, we need companies to take action every day to remove the barriers to women’s advancement and fulfillment at work. Without action it is too easy for men, women and all individuals to become fatigued, disengaged and disillusioned with efforts to advance gender equality. To...

  Every year companies spend about $8 billion on DEI initiatives in the United States, according to research conducted by the consulting firm McKinsey. With all this money and attention given to DEI efforts we need to ask ourselves an important question: Who benefits? A 2019 report entitled Being Black in Corporate America: An Intersectional Exploration released by the consulting firm Coqual, finds that black professionals are more likely to encounter prejudice and microaggressions than any...

Research is telling us is that hybrid working is something most employees want, it does increase our productivity because we don’t have to commute, and most companies are likely to keep it in place, but it comes at a cost. We need to be aware of these costs so we can manage them. Hybrid working does increase stress, loneliness, isolation, and disengagement. In many ways it is culture eroding. That doesn’t mean we get rid of hybrid working. I believe it is here to stay. Rather it means we need...

Making a career change is important because outside of sleep, work is where we spend the greatest number of hours over our lifetime. Work plays a huge role in shaping our identities, relationships and sense of belonging. On today’s podcast we are joined by Sarah Wittman, Assistant Professor of Management at George Mason University’s School of Business, who has conducted research into how work shapes our identity. In her article for Harvard Business Review she shares how thanks to major shifts...

Successful women often disregard gender roles, which makes people uncomfortable. For female leaders, managing this is critical. Having people support you determines how well you can build relationships and influence people, in other words, how well you can lead. Leading through backlash can be an incredibly difficult thing to do, as it takes a toll on women’s self-esteem and relationships. Backlash results in people disliking successful women and preferring male leaders. As society doesn’t...

Our expectations of leadership are masculine, when we evaluate men’s potential, we are much more likely to see them as a good fit. Women do not meet our masculine expectations, therefore the projection is never triggered. This male bias in our cognitive processing of leadership potential is powerful. “Think manager, think male” means we can fail to see women’s leadership potential. In fact, research suggests that men and women behave very similarly in senior roles, but men routinely receive...

Today is a special episode, we are going to unpack how to make a career change. Whether that is starting a new job or building your own business, at some point most of us will want to make a change, the problem is it can often feel overwhelming when you do. However, you might be surprised to learn just how many of us experience career changes on a regular basis. According to the latest findings from the Pew Research Center approximately 53% of employed U.S. adults quit their jobs in 2021 and...

Joining us on today’s episode is Lily Zheng author of DEI Deconstructed and a sought-after diversity, equity, and inclusion speaker, strategist, and organizational consultant who specializes in hands-on systemic change to turn positive DEI intentions into positive DEI outcomes for workplaces and everyone in them. Why do DEI efforts fail, is a question asked by many leaders. Why is it that companies claim to be invested in advancing DEI, launching one initiative after another, yet research...

In today’s episode of The Fix, we are going to unpack the specific challenges that women face at the midpoint in their careers, with Coleen Ammerman, the director of the 'Gender Initiative' at Harvard Business School and coauthor, with Boris Groysberg, of 'Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work'. Colleen shares why the barriers to women’s advancement at work are greatest around the midpoint in their careers. Inequality is particularly challenging for...

This week’s podcast features a former guest Laura Bates, who is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, an ever-increasing collection of over 200,000 testimonies of gender inequality, with branches in 25 countries worldwide.  Laura writes regularly for the Guardian, Telegraph and the New York Times amongst others and won a British Press Award for her journalism in 2015. She has written numerous books, and her latest Fix The System Not The Women is near and dear to our hearts with its...

On this weeks episode, we’re excited to feature our guest, Dolly Chugh. Dolly is an award-winning psychologist and the Jacob B. Melnick Term Professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University. She studies how and why most of us, however well-intended we are, are still prone to race and gender bias. In Dolly’s brand new book “A More Just future”, she shares the psychological tools we need to confront the white washing of our history so we can build forward better.  In our...

Though the reality of women’s rights varies hugely across the world, by country, by geography, by ethnicity, by socio economic circumstance - in recent decades, more and more women have won rights and spaces like never before: like the right to choose for themselves and to autonomy over their bodies, to have a career, not to have children, to have abortions, to love other women. On today's episode we are joined by Susanne Kaiser - author of “Political Masculinity”. She warns that some men...

One thing is clear to me. The progress of DEI efforts in organizations has stalled. New research findings released by the Charted Management Institute or CMI, in the United Kingdom last month reveals a growing sentiment towards DEI efforts. People are growing weary of DEI. In the Managers Pulse Point Survey, CMI found that despite ongoing efforts and activity towards gender equality, workplace gender equity remains elusive. The research has also revealed that employees, particularly men...

Time and time again, studies have shown that math and science are perceived to be male arenas and that scientists are perceived to be predominantly men. To advance more women into STEM fields, not only do women need to know about the career options available to them but they need to believe its possible for them to have a fulfilling career in these fields. A 2019 study published in Frontier Education found that gender-science stereotypes of math and science influence young women's and men's...

As an employer, it is important to understand gender and non-binary inclusion and what it means for your company – for the way you manage your people and for the way your people interact with each other. There are lots of brilliant resources out there to help with this including the 'Genderbread Person' which is described as a teaching tool for breaking the big concept of gender down into bite-sized, digestible pieces. Language really matters when it comes to supporting non-binary employees....

We all know that demonstrating empathy is critical to developing relationships, but it is also critical for business. A study by the consulting firm Catalyst examining 889 employees found that when leaders were empathetic, 61% of employees are able to innovate compared to only 13% of employees with less empathetic leaders. They also found that 76% of people who experienced empathy from their leaders reported they were engaged compared with only 32% who experienced less empathy. When people...

Leaders have a difficult job when it comes to leading on DEI, are you equipped for challenging conversations to arise, do you have enough knowledge yourself and do you have the answers?  A leader’s job is to build and maintain cultures that value difference because this is what it means to lead. Valuing difference is a practice. Anti-racisim, anti-ableisms, classims, sexisim and homophobia are all practices. Educational programs, workplace training, books, podcasts and courses are all...