Women's Initiative And Workplace Culture Change

Q-1) Assess the Women’s Initiative and workplace culture change. How effectively did Deloitte & Touche manage these changes? How do you feel about the sequence of events?

The Women’s Initiative and workplace culture changes –

• Treat all women and men fairly at work with respect and support human rights and nondiscrimination.

• Ensure sufficient participation of women in decision-making and governance at all levels and across all business areas.

• Offer flexible work options, leave and re-entry opportunities to positions of equal pay and status.

• Ensure that all policies are gender-sensitive – identifying factors that impact women and men differently – and that corporate culture advances equality and inclusion.

• Support access to the child

• Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality - At the press conference, Cook named an external advisory group, the “Council on the Advancement of Women,” which would meet quarterly to monitor the firm’s performance and goals with respect to the Women’s Initiative and to challenge it to ever-higher levels of achievement.

• Ensure that all policies are gender-sensitive – identifying factors that impact women and men differently – and that corporate culture advances equality and inclusion

Gabriel had demonstrated her insight and passion for the issues such as why women were leaving the firm and developing recommendations to reverse the trend.

The Task Force hired Catalyst, a research organization that advises corporations on how to move women ahead, to help study the problem.

The Task Force began by “auditing” the assignment process—monitoring all assignments to determine whether and where there was gender bias and ferret it out. The Task Force found that on the accounting side, women’s assignments tended to be clustered in not-for-profit companies, health care, and retail

• They should conduct Women’s Mentoring Program, which pair female leaders with leadership mentors, include virtual workshops and provide networking tips to help ensure the advancement of women.

• They should support flexible work arrangements.

Q-3) How can Deloitte roll out the Women’s Initiative internationally?

• Creating a supportive environment for the development of women had become a part of Deloitte’s culture in the United States, but it was not part of the culture in many Deloitte offices around the world.

• Deloitte offices in the United Kingdom, for example, have launched a program “Opportunities 2000” for recognition of women in the workplace.

• They should launch such programs globally not just in UK.

• Fewer women are coming into the profession in many European countries—for example, there are only 10% women in Deloitte’s offices in Germany.

• Their strategy for building their global culture should be focusing on building high-performance teams. They should make sure that their global partners value people on the team for their contribution to their clients, not necessarily what country they’re from, what race or gender they are.

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