The Channel Focus Women’s Leadership Charter

We are extremely pleased to announce the creation of the Women’s Leadership Council Charter! The Charter represents the actions companies can take to enable more women to expand their opportunities and reach the most senior roles in the Tech Channel. Why? Because it’s good for business, innovation and profits.

The Charter
This has been created by a senior Group of women in the Channel based on their shared experiences and is designed to help companies implement a series corporate wide initiatives either in total or in part to enhance the ability of women to expand their opportunities in the Tech Channel.

Leadership Roles & Responsibilities
Create a leadership forum that explores gender issues

1. Create a research program to understand where the organisation is with regards to women’s roles in the Channel organisation
2. Create a forum where Channel staff are encouraged to take an active role in providing valuable feedback and insights that will lead to your organisation’s charter
3. Create a feedback vehicle so staff are kept regularly informed of progress on these issues

HR Policies
Creating policies that are more family friendly for Senior Executives including

4. Enabling executives to structure their day around alternative hours such as leaving at 4.00pm and back on-line at night
5. Structure the team so there are key roles that don’t require as much travel
6. Re-craft roles such as Channel Strategy that do not require the same degree of travel
7. Encourage more meetings via collaboration tools
8. Addressing the travel issue, the biggest issue preventing more women reaching the most senior roles

o   Provide family friendly support enabling travel including childcare stipends and/or a budget for childcare support

1. Enable time flexibility and more family time

o   Encourage flexibility timewise and remote working

o   Be able to be home when not travelling

• What is HR’s responsibility?

1. Establish recruiting and hiring practices to encourage gender parity
2. HR to create a series of criteria that they can use to benchmark the company’s performance against like sized companies
3. Build Dashboards – to track and highlight the issues data doesn’t lie
4. Creating the data
5. Tracking the data
6. Ensure VP’s are trained to use the dashboards
7. Develop a public policy that ensures there is equal pay for equal jobs
8. Evaluate the performance review process to ensure women are getting the feedback they need to succeed (includes training men to give constructive feedback and to over the fear that they will make their female team members “cry”)
9. Provide programs where women can develop and practice executive skills

Support Networks – encourage grassroots initiatives

1. Reverse mentoring
2. Female mentor(s) for key male leaders
3. Each Senior leader has mentors
4. Representing different levels in the organisation
5. Able to coach the leaders on women’s issues
6. Create a Women’s leadership networking group

iii.      Homework/Assignments

1. Encourage the group to suggest Corporate initiatives to move the needle
2. Encourage and pay for membership of “support organizations,”

• Empower women within the organisation

1. Create women’s groups to give women a voice
2. Roundtables with Mix of execs and individual contributors – and professional facilitators – with focused topics that drive the conversation forward – use Skip Level approaches

• Create formal mentoring programs

1. Identify top women talent
2. Match each with a mentor (male or female)
3. Build and leverage the mentor and mentee relationship

• Seek like-minded peers and develop a unified voice and platform to encourage Senior Women Channel Executives to address the issues

1. With the leadership Group
2. With the Channel teams

iii.      Find the female role models and make them visible