Sandbox2Boardroom | Innovation and Executive Women

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Fortune 1000 Company Adds 24% To Top Line Revenue With Innovative Female Talent Development Program

Fortune 1000 company that brought us in to address their drop in market share in the past three years, the financial drain of high turnover, and the challenge of maintaining operations in a long time male-dominated company.

Executive Summary

i) losing momentum and market share due to disruption in the workforce, particularly a lack of communication between business units

ii) a cost-effective strategy for attracting and retaining talent

iii) how to address gender inequality in the workplace with the current budget challenges

Our brief: to design a strategic and innovative approach to driving revenue while addressing these various challenges.

17% more women got promoted, top line revenue went up 24%, and management took steps to address the gender pay gap... a win for the business, a win for the women, and a win for the gender equality cause.

Key Challenges

Our Approach

set up a call

Our customized solution involved working with their leadership team and a group of 1000 employees. With the agreed upon goal being to encourage a more open, safe, and transparent speak-up culture with business units working together to drive the company's mission and targets, a key aspect of our delivery was to kick off with a proprietary gamulation called Picture Perfect™ which enabled teams to understand the value of team communication and inclusion, provided a safe space to bring up concerns, and share a proven framework for making cross-team collaboration more effective.

During this stage, it became clear that there appeared to be a disconnect between how women and men approached business challenges. Our process addressed this stumbling block and aligned them for impactful sharing, brainstorming, and planning. Throughout this period, over 250 new ideas were generated that the company could implement and three ideas were quick wins that could be built out and implented within the same financial year.

"it became clear that there also appeared to be a disconnect between how women and men approached business challenges"- Leena Patel

"Leena helped us realize that women are natural innovators, problem-solvers, and networkers. I didn't realize how much profit growth we were losing out by not nurturing the talents of the women in our organization. It has been both a humbling and eye-opening process." -Michael, Executive

Result

The women learned how to show their value at work, demonstrate their leadership potential, and drive revenue. The men were better positioned to understand the challenges women experienced -which enabled them to be pro-active in addressing stumbling blocks going forward.

As a result of this initiative, within an eight month period our client bumped up their percentage of women promoted into senior leadership roles by 17%- while driving their company's top line revenue up by 24%.

This number doesn't include the costs savings made from retaining their talent. During a survey at the beginning, 67% of women said they would leave if another opportunity came up. This compares to 32% six months later. Comments included:

"I feel [this company] is actually listening to us for the first time since I joined. I feel heard. I feel like I'm making a difference."

With the additional revenue generated, the company was able to take steps to addressing the gender pay gap differences that a wage audit had revealed.

The goodwill generated from making both women in leadership and innovation a top priority and tying these two initiatives together made this a win for the business, a win for the women, and a win for the gender equality cause.

Our Contribution

Strategic approach
Customized solution
Ability to adapt as new data emerged
Ability to create a blueprint that could be scaled across the organization