Big Business Insights: Work, womanhood, and the way forward

The latest data from the World Economic Forum (WEF 2024) shows that women in 41 African countries earn, on average, 39% less than men and struggle to receive the same wage for the same job as their male colleagues. This season on the Big Business Insights podcast, we explore the evolving dynamics of the workplace, including the critical topic of gender equality.

In this episode of Big Business Insights, host Blessing Utete, Managing Executive at Old Mutual Corporate, Phillipa Geard, founder of RecruitMyMom, and Celiwe Ross, Director of Strategy, Sustainability, People, and Public Affairs at Old Mutual, delve deeper into the historical and current challenges faced by women in the workplace. 

Examining systemic issues such as the wage gap and career barriers, this conversation highlights the ongoing need to balance flexible work arrangements, financial security, and holistic wellness to create inclusive work environments. 

Resources used in this episode:

●      Diversity for Social Impact Gender Equality in the Workplace 

●      TEDx Talks: “A Seat at the Table” Isn’t the Solution for Gender Equity | Lilly Singh

●     Britannica.com: Industrial Revolution

●     UNwomen.org: Progress On The Sustainable Development Goals

●     Working women in South Africa report 2024

Transcript

Old Mutual Corporate Big Business Insights Podcast Ep.5 Work, womanhood, and the way forward

Blessing Utete: When we look at history, it’s impossible to miss the monumental shifts that have occurred. The Industrial Revolution wasn’t just a time of innovation and expansion – it also sowed the seeds of profound social change, particularly for women. As more women entered the workforce, they began fighting for the very things we still talk about today – equal pay, equal opportunity, and fair treatment.

But let’s be honest. Despite the progress, we know the workplace still isn’t a level playing field.

Diversity YouTube Clip: Fast forward to the present, a recent McKinsey report shows the global wage gap still exists, with women earning on average 81 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Blessing Utete: Whether it’s the pay gap, career progression barriers, or the pressure to balance work and family life, women continue to face unique challenges. This year’s Gender Snapshot report by the United Nations revealed that women spend 2.5 times as many hours a day on unpaid care and domestic work as men.

In today's conversation, we'll explore not only how these dynamics impact women, but also what's being done to change the future of work.

Welcome to the Big Business Insights podcast, brought to you by Old Mutual Corporate. I'm your host, Blessing Utete, the Managing Executive at Old Mutual Corporate Consultants.

By meeting thought leaders and visionaries across sectors, looking at the past, the present and the future, we aim to give business leaders the 360 degree advantage.

Joining me today are two business leaders who each have their own stories to tell, their own expertise to share, and their own unique takes on how we can create room for gender equality in the workplace.

I'm joined by Philippa Geard, the founder and CEO of RecruitMyMom. Welcome, Philippa.

Phillipa Geard: Thank you, Blessing. I really appreciate the opportunity to share some thinking and thoughts with you.

Blessing Utete: We've also got Celiwe Ross, Director of Strategy Sustainability, People and Public Affairs at Old Mutual joining us today Welcome, Celiwe.
Celiwe Ross: Thank you so much, Blessing. Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

Blessing Utete: Thank you. I mean, it's really great and I actually feel privileged to be talking to both of you today. And I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic. But maybe to get us going, I'd like to hear from both of you, you know, what comes to your mind when you refl ect on challenges women have faced in the past and how those have evolved. Maybe we can start with Philippa.

Phillipa Geard: Yeah, that's a really good opening question for us, Blessing, because I think that it's always good to stop and pause and refl ect on how far we've come. We're so busy charging forward that we forget actually where we've come from. And I think societal norms have largely influenced the role of women in the work, and if I look back I think about, um, the levels of exclusion that have happened in the past, and the challenges that women had in, specific industries or roles that they could or could not play and, and how that has changed.

And cultural norms have also influenced the way women are working today and so the way people think about women in the workplace has changed and particularly in the last, even for me in the last 30, 40 years, I've seen a, you know, a change, significant change. I think a large impact has come from the internet and technological changes, which has assisted the societal norms and cultural changes that we're seeing in the workplace. I'll hand over to Celiwe.

Celiwe Ross: So Blessing, I think that's a great question and much like Philippa, I think it's good to reflect on the past, like look backwards before we just charge forwards. Mine is a bit of a personal reflection, because my career started in the mining industry, and what a place that is.

That is completely unwelcoming actually to women, but looking forward, I either mentor or follow so many other women who followed that profession, who've gone on to do great things. Um, and it's wonderful to see how the industry has transformed itself to be, I think, more welcoming of all sorts and I don't think it's just gender and race.

It's all sorts and having to think about redesigning workplaces and redesigning successful outcomes for women in the workplace. If you think about it, there were no changing facilities, no bathroom facilities underground for women, as an example, which makes it very difficult to thrive there.

Women are also just physically built differently to men and having to accommodate for physical brute strength versus other strengths that we as women possess have been great strides that have been made in the mining industry down to accommodation, shared accommodation, and not career progression, career paths that still allow you to work in an industry that you love and are passionate about, but in an environment that's more welcoming.

And it's been wonderful to see many of those women now, even at executive level in large mining companies. It's massively forward.

Blessing Utete: Thanks for that, Celiwe, and I think, you know, you've also gone on to be the first black female strategy director for the Old Mutual Group Limited. So continuing to break barriers and very interesting journey you've traveled. But maybe let's take it back, let's take it to the workplace and I want to go to Philippa and ask, you know, I mean, you've dedicated your career to helping women find flexible, meaningful work.

Has the workplace evolved to provide better opportunities for women? And where do you think the biggest gaps exist?

Phillipa Geard: You know, I started RecruitMyMom in 2012, and one of the primary roles we played in South Africa was educating employers about, first of all, hiring mothers and attracting those skills back into the economy, and including educating them on how to embrace flexibility.

So back in 2012, 99% of organizations were built around the eight to five in our office work environment. And what I was noticing was that we were losing skills out of the economy when a lot of women have been to universities and colleges, and we actually needed to find a way of retaining these skills.

And so a lot of education needed to be done with employers on how do you do this. How do you enable either workplace or work hour flexibility that keeps these women in and then COVID came and overnight, organizations were educated on what digital, remote, flexible, variable hour type working might look like.

And that will never go back, we saw an enormous digitization in the economy globally, and that won't return. And then what we've seen is, is, is we saw a swing towards remote working, and then it started to normalize back towards hybrid working. And now we're slowly starting to see more in offi ce working, creeping back again.

So we've seen a change, but, but never again, will we see that it will be an only eight to five work environment. We're seeing changes in cultural behaviour and norms around what people are looking for in terms of flexibility and we have seen a big change and in mindset around workplace flexibility and the fact that people can be productive no matter where they work.

Blessing Utete: You're quite right. I think, you know, COVID was quite a tipping point in terms of flexibility and maybe going to tell you now on in terms of from your advantage point, you know, how have the workplace policies shifted to accommodate some of these needs for professional growth, particularly when it comes to leadership roles?

I mean, you've said you mentor currently other women in leadership roles. Maybe just your thoughts on what shifts still need to happen and what has happened.

Celiwe Ross: I thought as Philipa has reflected just on what it was like around 2012 versus now almost 10, 12 years hence it's such an interesting reflection. I mean, I'm a mom myself, I have three children and it's interesting how at the start, like at the start of my own career, you actually felt guilty for needing to take your child to a doctor's appointment or watch a sporting event during the work day, particularly in corporate South Africa.

That certainly has changed, and it is the gift of COVID, even as companies start returning people to the office, whether in a hybrid form or more in office attendance, I do think that there is just so much, not even tolerance, it is accommodation, it is understanding and appreciation for the fact that we all have multiple roles, mothers and fathers.

And the fact that actually women research in COVID showed us that women are adversely affected or impacted by having to solely either work from home remotely or be in the office, so our role as employers, I think, is to understand that dynamic more distinctly is to create an environment that is more agile and I think accommodating of the fact that families look different today.

I don't think it's just a woman's struggle, some fathers struggle, some families are not made up of any women at all. And so how do we introduce that level of fl exibility in our thinking and in our policies to accommodate them, particularly when there's children involved, because the demands of children are not always predictable.

A child falls ill at school, a child has a school concert or a soccer game or whatever the case may be, but more than anything, I think also fi nding moments to care for self. Because in this instance, particularly where women are concerned, we occupy so many multiple roles, both at work and in the offi ce, that [00:09:00] the ability to be able to take time to care for ourselves is also becoming an increasing need, right?

And finding the moments that create energy, energy at work, energy at home, and also recovery from the demands of what life takes from us is also a big thing. I have found that employers are starting to just consider different types of policies to be able to accommodate this and many of the international companies are leading the charge in this.

You know, I've seen all sorts of leave instances now that are becoming introduced over and above the normal kind of annual leave, sick leave, maternity leave. People are starting to consider things like women are falling pregnant later in life. Some women are struggling with infertility. Women are working longer, retiring later, and working well into their menopause, what that means.

And the fact that families look different than they did 50 years ago and so how do we accommodate families who give birth by surrogate either because they're a same sex couple or because they struggle with infertility? How do we accommodate families, especially same sex couples who need to go and care for children that they've either adopted or given birth to via surrogacy to get the same benefits of caring for them as well.

Plus all the other health care benefits that are now required to accommodate different types of people and different types of families. And I think that that is going to continue to be an advancement in the world of work.

Blessing Utete: It's quite a significant amount of change that has to come into accommodating from a workplace perspective aligned with that is maybe some thought from Philippa in terms of a lot of this is guided by prevailing mindsets.

And, you know, I just want to hear from you what you've encountered in your work and how you've managed to challenge these, because from what Piliu is saying, you actually need to change the thinking around a lot of these policies that are there.

Phillipa Geard: Yeah, I think Celiwe has summed up beautifully the complexity of the workplace environment, you know, and that it isn't necessarily about one size fits all because people have different needs and we know that well being is becoming more of an issue, especially mental wellbeing amongst employees.

So, so just, you know, around the mindsets blessing is, is, is that one of the big mindsets that we've needed to challenge is that productivity doesn't equal presence. If I can see you doesn't mean that I'm working. And, you know, we've seen extreme behaviours of employers wanting cameras on all the while remote employees are working from home.

And the reality is that just because somebody's on camera doesn't mean they're working. Just because somebody's sitting at a desk doesn't mean that they're working because you can't see them. That's defi nitely been one of the big mindset changes and the need for measuring productivity well. If you can't measure productivity well, then you can't assume somebody is or isn't actually doing their job.

And so there's an onus on employers to, to be respectful to their employees around how am I measuring your productivity? This is what I'm looking at and I think that that helps everybody know where they stand and then another mindset that we come up against, because I'm in the working mother's space is very much around that.

Mothers don't take their careers seriously and, you know, I've got on the line and clearly she takes her career very seriously as a mother, which breaks all mindsets and, you know, mothers aren't technologically proficient. Back in 2012, you know, I was one of the first online recruitment companies that existed.

And the other one is that this is my absolute worst one Is, is, is that I'm looking to hire a bored housewife who might be looking to earn extra money. Well, the reality is that we know that so many women, about 38 percent of women are sole income earners in this country and so they really are needing to earn a fair wage.
So the way we deal with it is, first of all, we challenge it directly. 

So when we speaking to employers, we say these things to us, we're able to address it but also, thankfully, because we've been in the market long enough now, is that we have really great testimonies of how this works. And employers really value the service that we  can bring them through, skilled mothers that are looking for various ways of working.

And as you heard from Celiwe, there can be a myriad of ways, you know, I say flexibility is like a piece of string you go from fully remote, to fully in office and somewhere in between that is a fi t that works between the employer and the job seeker and that's got to work well.

Blessing Utete: Thanks for that Philipa ,but that's quite a lot in terms of just mindsets that need to shift. And I think you've started to touch on another element, which is the financial aspect of the challenges that women face and maybe I want to go to tell you just your thoughts on mindsets as well as maybe your thoughts on these financial challenges that women face in the corporate world or just in general in industry.

Celiwe Ross: Look, I found Philippa's comment just around the way that potential employers think, not just about employing women who are either wanting to re enter the world from a motherhood perspective, or possibly after a bit of a career hiatus.

I was actually reflecting on the fact that, like, remote work has definitely become a thing. There are so many of these platforms where, especially during COVID, people could take on a number of side jobs and be paid to do that. But in the corporate world, I think it shows up a little bit differently for me when I ask people to switch cameras on, it really is a form of connection.

I struggle with the tiles on the screen and not being able to see and look into people's eyes. And I always say to people like, I just want to know that you're there. I want to know that you're hearing and appreciating me and some and some sort of way for me to hear and appreciate you. But I think like anything in life, these things can be abused.

Hybrid work or remote work shouldn't be looked at from a productivity perspective. In fact, I think you'll lose on the productivity count because not needing to do the commute, not needing to stop and have a number of side conversations actually gives you more hours to work. So the productivity counts is not it.

I just think that for, certainly for us from an Old Mutual perspective, the need to return and we're back in the office two days a week, so still working hybrid. I think the need to be together is largely informed by two things. The first is really thinking about people who are early in their careers, who need to learn functional skills.

The things that sometimes you learn by osmosis, by observing who is good at which skill, sitting in a meeting and watching a negotiation underway, seeing someone produce a financial model and needing to learn how they do that. Like, of course, one can do research, one can play around, experiment and try to figure it out.

But there are things that in one's career, especially early on, you learn by osmosis and by observing others. And to try and recreate some of that environment, particularly for people who have less than five years work experience. Then there's incorporating or onboarding the new joiner who comes into an organization having been a professional elsewhere and needs to figure out like, what is it?

How does this company work? How do people do things here? What does success look like? What's the culture here? And so to be able to help people assimilate into the doors and the walls of a new company like ours, which happens to be large and multi jurisdictional is really very different when done in person.

It doesn't always work perfectly Blessing, I don't want to misrepresent like there are definite challenges. Sometimes teams are in the offi ce and others are at home. You're not necessarily then learning by osmosis, you're not necessarily then building that culture and cohesion and transference of cultural assimilation, it needs a lot more intentionality.

So I feel like the role of the leader in this new world, like I love how Philippa described it as this continuum between completely remote and completely in office, and many of us work in that continuum. There are weeks when I'm in the office every day, there's weeks when I'm sometimes not in the office every day, when I'm travelling out of the country, et cetera.

So how do we start to accommodate the nuances that happen along that continuum? And how do we equip leaders to lead through that? I think that's become the more complex thing. So helping people plan their work, for example, if you are reviewing board papers, building financial models, coding, whatever the case may be, that's work that's best done asynchronously, like on your own at home in a quiet space.

But if there's work that needs handover points, to other teams, to other people, if there's work that needs deep collaboration, if there is work that's required, that is about connecting with others, that is about resolving conflicts and the like best done in person, it's not always easy to plan for a day as distinctly as that.

Interestingly, I saw in a webinar that I attended, someone had an in office notification on the email that said “I'm in the office, please expect a delayed response from me because I'm busy connecting with people. I've got time with my team, etcetera, and I'll be delayed in responding”. So that's the next, I think, wave of thinking about time in the office versus time away from the office.

Oh, and you asked the question about financial independence and, and financial challenges as a result. And hopefully that people aren't being punished or getting any sort of punitive means as a result of working flexibly but certainly for people who are dedicatedly working remote or are gig workers, the need for financial planning and financial understanding and education is becoming increasingly important because their work is cyclical.

Not always committed, it's not like earning a monthly salary and so the ability to be able to plan for the tough times, and also, dare I say, plan for retirement in some way, shape or form becomes an increasing requirement.

Blessing Utete: You know, what Celiwe is talking about is it's not always that it's a one size fits all.

I mean, there needs to be intentionality from the employer in terms of how you structure your work environment to accommodate the various needs. But yeah, you wanted to come in Philippa?

Phillipa Geard: Just to support Celiwe on the hybrid side of working is, is that earlier this year, we released one of the biggest working women's reports in South Africa, which is wonderful to fi nally, you know, to get any South African data is incredible.

And one of the results that came out of our report was that that 59% or 60 % of women would prefer hybrid working over any other form of  working, which is that need for that connection, the need for seeing, and, and we are people, people at the end of the day. And so that's really important.

And that's where that understanding, the rhythm of what an organization needs is important and I don't undervalue the needs of the organization because at the end of the day, the health of the organization is what enables all of us to be able to work successfully in that organization. And so that organization will need to work out what is required in order for that organization to succeed.

And then how do the employees then fi t in with what is also required by the organization for them? So it's not at the expense of one or the other, and I think that that's quite important.

Blessing Utete: I agree with you there and just maybe by going back to the comment from Celiwe in terms of financial challenges, we've also done some work around the dips in savings that women have for maternity leave and things like that.

They do have an impact on the long term savings that women have overall. So, uh, always good to think about the financial planning aspects that are required for women to make up for some of those. And I suppose, Philippa, in your space, from a recruitment perspective, that's some of the things you'd think about from a financial perspective for women.

Phillipa Geard: Yeah, absolutely. We're seeing more and more women either being the sole income earners or the only breadwinner in home, or what we're calling the sandwich generation now, looking after the parents and the children. And so those financial needs are becoming imperative and unfortunately, savings do get dipped into when people are either on maternity leave or needing to take a career break, or when they're becoming a single income earner, or for many women, they don't have the opportunity to have somebody else bringing in an income and so therefore use their savings during maternity leave but then get straight back into work.

Blessing Utete: And maybe Celiwe, without having a situation where the employer is adding more expense, how do you think employers can help women manage some of these challenges?

Celiwe Ross: As a starting point, Blessing, it's education. We do quite a lot of that, particularly during women's month, but also at key moments during the financial year, tax season, when pension fund contributions change and the like to help educate all our employees, but also at specific moments, women, because they have a different slant in terms of their responsibility.

Some of it being physical, like needing to take maternity leave, some of it being financial and personal circumstances wise as well. I just think that COVID gave employees an opportunity to show that they truly care and I say that without trying to be glib, like when you're dealing with an existential crisis, that could be life or death. The opportunity for an employer to show up for the people who have contributed to his financial success became so critical and I find that that has certainly carried through well, in our instance, I know that it has and many of these things come with the costs.

And that's not just in terms of benefits and employee benefits. Everything does and so we've got a responsibility to balance that, but also think about how we continue to show up as an organization that expects, of course, for people to show up to perform, to deliver what they need to.

And as a commensurate measure to be able to demonstrate that we're able to show care. That we're able to be responsible and also that we're able to help them plan for what may be an uncertain future, some of the enhancements that we thought of, like at the fi rst instance, was really just around basics of leave and maternity leave.

And we've decided to go above and beyond on a number of things. So besides paid maternity leave, which I think is a hygiene factor for any employer now, we really started to think about the things that can go wrong when a woman is pregnant, like miscarriage or a stillbirth.

In South Africa, the law only recognizes a miscarriage in the first three months, and we provide that benefit to all our women up until the day they give birth.

And ensuring that they, as well as the secondary caregiver, which could be their husband or spouse or same sex partner, also gets that benefit if they work for us, to be able to mourn the loss of a child who would have arrived in the world and didn't. Just recognizing the fact that there is a mental and emotional load that happens on a family, not just the birth giving mother, but on that entire family when they have that loss, and how we can show up for them in that time.

We continue to think about expanding that to start to think about things like infertility and helping women who are adopting. So we offer the same maternity leave benefit to women who adopt or have a baby by surrogate versus those who happen to give birth naturally recognizing that families have evolved over time and I think that employers are going to have to consistently challenge themselves. To be deeply connected with what's happening in society and in the employee base over time and starting to think about how they balance as I said, it's it's about performance about roles and work. We can't get away from that.

Companies have that responsibility to all their stakeholders, but also thinking about how we show up for employees in those moments in their lives, where it really, really matters.

Blessing Utete: Indeed. I appreciate what Old Mutual has done, but the space is evolving quickly. And I'm, I'm keen to also just hear from Philippa, you were recruiting you on the other side of this.

I mean, what do you seeing that employers are doing out there that other employers can pick on as, as some shifts in their benefits or their remuneration or total rewards space to accommodate women?

Phillipa Geard: Yeah, I think I would like to pick up on maternity because, you know, in South Africa, we have a belief that it's okay for a woman to go on maternity leave because she'll be able to claim UIF.

Well, in my years of working at RecruitMyMom, I have seldom heard of a woman successfully being able to claim UIF. Sadly, during maternity leave, and that is a massive burden if the employer is not then assisting in any way or form when somebody's on maternity leave. So I think that that is one that needs to be relooked.

And then the other one is flexible worker options and be that hour or place. In various forms, like I explained, it's a continuum, so you can miss the traffic, or I really don't mind that you go and see your son or daughter play in a very important match or play. They're doing a music recital, whatever it is, so there's a lot more compassion.

I want to use the word compassion, a humaneness in the workspace around, I understand that this is really important to this employee, particularly as a mother or a father, and I'm going to give them the time to do that. And I, and the understanding is in exchange for that, they do work hard and they obviously are loyal.

So those are the kinds of things we're seeing. We released again in that same report, you know, what benefits are important to women in particular, medical aid, very, very important in this country. That becomes a vital conversation when people are looking to employ women and to retain them and then financial reward, equal financial reward.

So don't be biased towards me because I'm a mother or I'm a parent. Pay me a fair wage, um, in this, in this day and age, which is a ridiculous conversation you think to be having in this day and age, but actually we still need to be having it. So fair wages, medical, maternity, and then just general mental health support at this time is really important.

Celiwe Ross: No, that is so true and I think the point that Philippa hits on just on healthcare generally, so beyond maternity leave and other leave benefits, healthcare, and I think the flexibility of healthcare cover that employers are requiring. I think with having so many generations in the workplace now, younger employees are certainly looking for more flexibility than, than what would have been the case before.

Wanting the ability to be able to structure for the moment in life that they're at, and I think as an employer, we need to balance, you know, the the almost paternalistic view of, hey, we need to take care of you. We need to make sure you are providing for all of these potential uncertainties when people are actually also wanting to push for more in their pockets, which might be driven by personal circumstance as well.

So seeing a lot of pressure in that space and without a doubt, the mental health pandemic is upon us. If I look at just data from our employee kind of support service that we provide, the amount of calls for support, struggles that people are having when it comes to mental health and mental wellbeing, even to the extent of people being booked off, being booked off for extended periods of time.

I think the next thing as employers that we're going to have to start thinking about is what reasonable accommodation looks like in that world and how jobs are packaged to help people deal with. Both personal stress and to a certain extent, or certainly the more senior you become, it's also an extreme amount of work stress and how we either help people cope and assist with coping mechanisms and support or create different roles or ways of work to be able to reasonably accommodate them.

Blessing Utete: We're going to listen to a clip now from a TED talk by Lilly Singh titled a seat at the table isn't the solution for gender equity and then we'll get your thoughts on it.

TEDx Talks YouTube Clip: And I'm not alone in this mission. In fact, us girls, what we desperately want is a seat at the table. It's what every motivational poster, Tumblr post, Instagram account you follow, business card, tells us success is.

A seat at the table. You know? And if they want to be extra spicy, they say, if there is no seat, drag your own seat. I'm sure you've heard this. Right? And so my marching orders were clear. Get a seat at this coveted table by any means necessary. And that's been the driving force behind my entire career.

Blessing Utete: Interesting thought there, but maybe let's go to Celiwe, your thoughts after hearing that.

Celiwe Ross: I think a seat at the table is just a start Blessing, it simply isn't good enough because by sitting there, there has to be an assumption of many things. You have to assume certain things to be true, the fi rst is that I'm sitting there because people believe I deserve to be there.

That I'm competent enough to be there, that my views are credible and worthwhile, that they're happy to be challenged by me, that they're happy to deal with all parts of me. And by that, I'm not meaning like I need to be inappropriate at the seats at the table, but all parts of me are the fact that I'm married.

I have a mother, I have different career experiences, I'm black, I'm South African, I'm there's a whole lot of things that consume and, or maybe make up who I am and therefore how I come into the world. And there has to be an acceptance that that diversity of views is acceptable and actually makes us better. It's a joint contribution to making us better as a team. Then the seat is worth it.

Blessing Utete: Thanks. Thanks for that. Philippa, your thoughts.

Phillipa Geard: It's not about just the seat at the table because there are still tables that are created in old cultures and old mindsets. And so the seat at the table therefore becomes a tick box.

We don't want that. We're not looking for that. We want to have Our full being appreciated and the fact that we can contribute in a meaningful way. Everybody wants to contribute in a meaningful way. That's what people are looking for. And so it's not about having a number on a tick box of, I have so many women in senior leadership.

It's about what contribution is this woman truly able or this person truly  able to bring to my organization that is going to contribute to a better organization.

Blessing Utete: We can turn to sort of the future of the workplace and maybe have a lens, look at the lens from a generational perspective. We've got different generations now.

I mean, Gen Z and even Gen Alpha entering the workforce from a woman's perspective, how can organizations prepare for them and, and appreciate how they can recruit them and employ them in a better way.

Phillipa Geard: What we're seeing about this generation, because I have another business, which is RecruiterAGraduate.

So I look into this lens of young people a lot. Is is is that they are a highly, highly inclusive generation. They have no issue embracing people that are different to themselves the challenge we have. And this is where, how do we, we enable them to continue this is, is to continue to encourage them to remain that way.

So that when they get into an organization where the culture has not yet shifted or the, the change has not happened, that they don't fall into  that, but that they are agents of that continuous change of inclusion. The other thing is, is as Lilly said earlier, is, is they value flexibility. How do organizations who particularly need to balance.

Flexibility and having people in the office cause that's very important because again, for this young generation, they need that social interaction in the office. They need that mentoring, but they also want flexibility, they want to be able to do things in a, in a different way and so it's not then becoming just a woman conversation around flexibility.

It's about a generational conversation as well and it goes further than that. One of the other challenges I'm going to end on this one is, is, is they are also the two generations that are struggling probably the most with mental health and so they're coming into organizations with that. And, and to Celiwe's point is how do, do we as managers, owners, business owners, organizations, then facilitate and help our employees knowing that they have this challenge and what role do we play in assisting with that.? So that's my thoughts on the young generation coming in.

Blessing Utete: I couldn't agree with you more, the daughter that's 18 as well. I mean, I can, I can resonate with those thoughts. Celiwe what are your thoughts?
Celiwe Ross: The thing is this generation is also dealing with an infl ux of information and access like we've never had before.

When I speak to young people, the greatest piece of advice I give to them is you've got to be sure that you're safe, skilled at what you think you're skilled at. Like that, you can, that you can solve something, that you can build something, that you can deploy something, whatever that is.

Don't be in a rush for the next thing, because the lack of that initial skill that you were supposed to build is going to catch you up somewhere, somewhere along the line, somebody's going to be saying, but why? Why can't you do that? If you're already here, that doesn't mean you should slow down your progression. It means you must double down on building your skills as much as possible. And it sounds so cliche, but if there's anything that's true of the world today, you have to be open to learning.

Blessing Utete: Such nuggets from both of you in terms of the, actually the world of work and how that's evolving.

But as we get to a close, I mean, I want to ask you our cornerstone question, which we ask every week. What do you think we haven't said about this topic today? We start with you, Philippa.

Phillipa Geard: Women aren't asking for the impossible and are not trying to be unreasonable. They're asking just for respect and understanding of the unique
challenges that they face and that's why I say you can extrapolate it to pretty much any employee.

Blessing Utete: Yeah, Celiwe we see you nodding there.

Celiwe Ross: Yeah, a 100%. I so resonate with everything that Philippa said. I believe that the wars of the world, the conflicts of the world have been built by intolerance. It's just this unwillingness to accept that difference is okay.
I don't have to agree with you. I don't have to see it the same way as you, and I don't have to hate you for the fact that you are different, look different, believe different, ascribe to something different than I do. I think that's just the next step phase of leadership is, is really learning how to deal with difference because it's coming at us in so many ways.

There are gender fluidity considerations that we now have to think about. We have to think about longevity, people living longer, wanting to work longer, what retirement means for people, you know, all of the needs around flexibility. There are so many things that are different in the workplace than they ever have been.
Blessing Utete: Wow, what a way to summarize. I think, you know, we just barely scratched, it feels like we've just barely scratched the surface on the topic. There's so much that could be said, but that brings us to the end of this episode. And I just really want to thank you, Philippa and Celiwe, for joining us and sharing your insights and even your personal aspects that you've raised.
But it's really been an enjoyable episode that we've had today. Thank you very much.

Phillipa Geard: Thanks, Blessing. Thank you and thank you, Celiwe. I've really enjoyed the conversation with you.

Blessing Utete: Three ways to cultivate a more gender inclusive work environment.

First, there's the option to adopt a more flexible approach to working hours. Companies like Recruit My Mom allow businesses to tap into a pool of highly skilled women who need flexible hours. It's a win-win for both employers and employees.

Second, it's important to provide fi nancial wellness programs. It's crucial that women, particularly those balancing careers with family life, have access to support systems that help them plan for their financial futures. Whether it's saving for retirement or budgeting for today, financial security is key.

And third, investing in holistic wellness so that people can take control of their health and well being.

At Old Mutual Corporate Consultants, we can advise you on the ideal solutions that consider the changing world of work. Visit Old Mutual Corporate's website or get in touch with us for more details.

To all our listeners, let's keep the conversation going. How can we continue to break barriers for women in their workplace?

Let us know your thoughts and sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay updated on the upcoming episodes and more great content. Until next tim