With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/347582
18 BCBusiness AUGUST 2014 The problem is that once you've done that, there's tons of competition for CAs—not just in Canada but glob- ally—so you lose staff to outside com- panies, to government, to academia. You have to have an environment where you can keep the best; you have to create a value proposition that's compelling for people to stay. And how do you do that? Culture is one of the most important ways—making sure you have a culture where you are a lifelong learner. Part of that is being a team-based organiza- tion; we work not just in local teams but global teams. And then we have a development model that is called EYU: a curriculum of experiences. When people feel like they're in a culture with colleagues that they're enjoying, doing interesting work and constantly learning, you're more likely to retain the best that way. You've spoken before about the dif- ference between diversity and inclu- siveness. Can you expand on that? We hire people from all different groups, and most organizations do. So we've already got diversity. But now it's important to have inclusive- ness. And that's not about treating one group in a special way; it's about getting the best out of all your talent. When you look at the numbers in the C-suite and on boards and you look at how homogeneous they are, you're not getting the best talent, because tal- ent doesn't reside in just one group. Last month we published the annual BCBusiness Top 100 list of the biggest companies in the prov- ince, and it included just four whose CEO is a woman. Is that typical? Sadly, it is typical. The stats on boards are particularly revealing. The Ontario Securities Commission did a survey of 1,000 TSX-listed companies last year and 57 per cent of them had no women on their board. In this day and age, that's gobsmackingly disappointing. And when you look at public companies in Canada, the number is under two per cent. One of the bright spots is, EY did a survey of senior public sector offi- cials around the world, and Canada had the best representation in the world, with 50 per cent of senior bureaucrats being women. So it can be done. On the private-sector front, what needs to be done to get numbers that are more representative of the population? I'm optimistic that we can address boards quite quickly. Boards can recruit from a wide pool, so it's easier to fix that. I'm hoping that if regula- tions recently proposed by the OSC come into effect, we will see some progress in Canada in short order. The CEO issue is more difficult. It comes down to companies assess- ing their culture and seeing whether there are systemic biases. You have to measure those key metrics that are relevant to your organization, and then address them. You don't do it by anecdote; you measure who you are hiring, who's leaving at what stages, performance-rating differentials and you try to really understand where the issues are. One of the obstacles to better representation at the executive and board level is the question of work/ life balance. Do you strive for balance, or are you a workaholic? I work hard and I love what I do; it gives me energy, so it doesn't feel like sacrifice. But I do have two children, a son who's 15 and a daughter who turns 20 this week, so I have a hobby of figuring out how to have them want to spend time with me still. I try to keep all of it in perspective and say what I do is not brain surgery, so if I screw up or don't do something no one is going to die. • Where Are the Women? 43% with women board directors 3% with a woman board chair 53% with less than 10% women executives Of A+TSX-listed companies SOURCE: Ontario Securities Commission