Hello again. We’re all still on a high from our fabulous Opportunity Now win at the end of April… I was absolutely delighted to receive so many kind messages once the news broke. I personally received over 250 emails, texts and Facebook messages in the first 48 hours after the win! Thank you again to everyone who took the time and trouble to congratulate us; the messages really were the icing on a very delicious cake.
Later this week I’ll be attending Deutsche Bank’s annual women in banking conference, which is themed as “The Art of Possibility”, so I’ll be writing about that shortly. In the meantime, continuing with the good news stories, here’s a fabulous blog entry from Kuala Lumpur based Gender Advisory Council member Suit Fang Chin, which describes how her team invented a themed week of activities to support International Women’s Day back in March.
What gender diversity? 60% of our workforce is female!
Pink Week: how we celebrated diversity and our women
“When I first brought up the topic of creating a week of diversity themed celebrations with my team and colleagues, I got a mixed bag of reactions. Some were all for it. Others, though not against the notion, really didn’t see the need. We’re lucky in our neck of the woods – whilst I can’t speak for all, I know that a majority of us work for leaders (men and women) who are remarkably gender-blind.
But when I got elected to the GAC, I felt that we couldn’t just sit back and do nothing, no matter how comfortable we were with the state of things. After all, I had to walk the talk, as they say. So we started to test the waters.
First, we ran a survey to take stock of where we stood in terms of gender diversity and how our people felt about the issue in general. We got a 30% response – rather encouraging, for a first attempt. The survey told us that we were doing fairly well in most areas.
But I still didn’t feel like there was a sense of real urgency to push the issue. I knew it wasn’t for a lack of appreciation for the cause – perhaps many simply didn’t understand the business case behind it. After all, more than half our workforce is female! Or was I just underestimating the insight our people possessed?
But sometime in March this year, some of the women in Human Capital (HC) and our Malaysian marketing team got together. They wanted to do something for International Women’s Day. Never mind that it was less than two weeks away or that we hadn’t yet broached the idea to our colleagues in the Mekong (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) firms.
We started small. The initial idea was an internal web page celebrating the day. But, as more heads got involved in the effort, this little idea took on a life of its own. Soon we started talking about a donation drive, bringing in external speakers, putting together a show reel of role models … at some point, someone even wanted to get the local news station to cover these activities. And voila, Pink Week was born.
We had less than three weeks to pull this all together. Plus, make sure everyone knew about the slew of activities that were planned, and would fully support them.
It was a crazy rush for the teams but we managed to mobilise the forces almost instantly – talk about passion! What about cross-collaboration? We had the HC and Marketing and Communications teams working together, and they did it across the Malaysia and Mekong firms. One of the main coordinators of this effort was an HC woman who had only been in the Malaysian firm for a month! It may have been chaotic but it just seemed to fuel everyone’s fires. It also helped to have on my team a manager who is a self-confessed ”equalist”; her only reality growing up in a family of four women was that, barring the physical, women and men are no different.
Pink Week eventually turned out to be a full week’s worth of activities:
In Malaysia, the All Women's Action Society discussed how gender differences affect male/female relations at home and in the workplace. The National Cancer Society of Malaysia (NCSM) held a session on breast and cervical cancer, and brought a few cancer survivors along to share their inspiring real-life experiences. Vietnam had a “Breast Cancer Talk” by the International SOS Clinic at both the Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi offices.
And the biggest challenge during the crazy lead-up to Pink Week? Putting together this event dedicated to women, but making sure it wouldn’t alienate our men. So we took great pains to tailor messages that appealed to them (like “Real men look good in pink too!”). We dreamed up activities that they would want to take part in too – sales of pink ribbons for charity, getting our people to come dressed in pink and setting up a photo studio (who doesn’t love to get a good picture of themselves?).
It seemed daunting at first, but I’ve always believed that our people truly care about making a difference and giving back.
And they proved me right, with overwhelming support from all quarters, male and female. In a mere five days and in the height of our peak business period, we raised a respectable amount for our pink ribbon donation drive. On the last day of Pink Week, we were a sea of pink, as everyone (almost) came dressed in theme. It was hard to not get caught up in the enthusiasm; to feel that truly, in spite of our differences, we could still rally around a good cause.
Next year, when Pink Week happens, I’m looking forward to something better and bigger. Perhaps even getting one of our men to take up the reins. Now that would be a true stamp of diversity.”
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