Broaden Conversation To Increase Female Engagement


11/27/2019

Bacardi identifies and uses its hidden talents in its female employees.


Dailycsr.com – 27 November 2019 – The McKinsey and Company’s 2019 report “Women in the Workplace” informed that women are found occupying only 21% of “executive roles” while marking just under 30% “representation in vice president and senior vice president roles”. Even though, over the past five years, there has been a lot of progress to set the balance right, yet much work remains to be done.
 
However, Bacardi seems to lead the way in this effort. The “privately held family company” is 157 years, therefore it recognises the critical importance of being agile on a global platform. Bacardi’s quest to “continually foster agility” has pushed the company to find methods of identifying and tapping on their hidden talents.
 
In an effort to gather more information on the same, Michael Woodward Ph.D. contacted Bacardi’s senior director for “Supply Chain Planning”, Chio Zubiria, as the latter have been working as a “female executive” with Bacardi for the last twenty two years.
 
According to Michael Woodward Ph.D.:
“She (Zubiria) recently took on the role of Chair of the Bacardi North America Women in Leadership (WIL) Development Committee where she has had an integral role in expanding mentoring for women throughout the organization. The program now has 700 participants worldwide. In our conversation, Zubiria shared her tips for developing and deploying a successful mentoring program”.
 
To know more about Zubiria’s conversation with Michael Woodward Ph.D.; kindly click on the link given below:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/spotting-opportunity/201911/how-bacardi-aims-shatter-the-glass-ceiling
 
Zubiria noted that almost 50% of the mentors are men. Therefore when women reach out to other women to communicate about “women-specific issues”, it results in lost opportunities to involve themselves in broader conversation which could “forge critical relationships, and build more opportunities for advancement”.
 
As per data, female engagement has seen a jump by 12% ever since 2017, which brought the “engagement score for women at Bacardi on par with the score for men”. The “Bacardi Women In Leadership Initiative” was created to unleash the “potential of current and future female leaders at Bacardi”. Bacardi’s corporate strategy keeps this effort at its centre and evokes “a sense of ownership and accountability in business leaders” for them to “set the right example” and push for “engagement throughout the organization”.
 
 
 
 
References:
3blmedia.com