Spotlight

A lack of exposure is inhibiting the rise of talented women throughout the corporate world. Could sponsorship be the answer? Mark Fenton reports. We’ve heard the soundbites – gender pay equality is 170 years away; only 4.4% of S&P 500 CEOs are women; only 14% of Irish companies have either a female CEO or Head of Operations (and this ratio is diminishing). Meanwhile, an international report by Citi showed that closing the gender gap in labour market participation could add 12% to OECD gross domestic product (GDP). And yet there are many men (and some women) who believe gender equality in the workplace is a zero-sum game. For example, if women are to win, men must lose. Men often feel disengaged from the inequality problem too because issues relating to gender do not concern them. Further, when men do generally get involved, it is to ‘fix’ the problem by encouraging women to behave in the same way that men do in the workplace.With such a high socio-cultural mountain to climb, it is no wonder that progress has been painfully slow towards gender equality at work. Furthermore, the traditional talent programmes (most commonly packaged as ‘mentoring’) have not delivered the necessary results in terms of the recognition, professional development and career progression of women. Why is this, and what can be done to correct it? A mentor can empower a person to see a possible future and believe it can be obtained, but many mentoring programmes fail because the discussion surrounding such empowerment doesn’t generally apply in real life. As E.M. Forster put it, “Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing except the shape of the spoon.” Mentoring is restrictive as it involves talking to just one individual and, more often than not, expectations are not met regarding mentee belief and mentee exposure. Exposure is the recipe; sponsorship provides the ingredients  Studies have shown that there are three principle levers to career success and their weighting is not as you might expect. One’s professional performance (i.e. how you do your job) is important. However, in modern businesses with sophisticated talent attraction techniques, it accounts for just 10%. After all, your company expects you to be excellent – that is why you were hired in the first place. More important is your professional image (i.e. how you present yourself in the workplace). Being assured, trustworthy and open to change is central to your success and this impacts on just under one-third of your success. Perhaps surprisingly, it is your exposure that holds the lion’s share of future opportunity and advancement. It is not what you know or indeed who you know. It is more about who knows you and what you can do. Historically, men have been expert at cultivating their exposure levels through informal and male-stereotypical networking environments. Conventionally, women have less flexibility (and perhaps desire) to embrace these traditions. They also remain more risk-aware of their abilities, whereas men are generally openly confident about their suitability for a new opportunity. In terms of exposure, sponsorship is more involved than mentoring regarding both the sponsor and sponsoree – both are accountable for the process and its outcomes. The best programmes last for at least 12 months, include job-shadowing, resilience-coaching and are supported by clear metrics. Sponsorship takes mentoring beyond the tandem partnership and into the boardroom and/or management meetings. Sponsors talk to and about their sponsorees and therefore increase their corporate exposure and can provide feedback on unseen opportunities for growth. Sponsors also benefit from the learning opportunity that comes with an intense, frank and extensive personal and professional interaction. Sponsorship’s immediate and impressive impact The impact of sponsorship can be immediate and impressive. A recent series of sponsorship programmes within a Euro Stoxx 50 firm doubled the ratio of women at the top layer of management in just two years and demonstrated that an overwhelming majority of senior female promotions were directly linked to participation in such programmes. Sponsorship is not about talking to me; it is talking about me. It is the key to unlocking the main obstacle to women’s career success – a lack of exposure. Mark Fenton FCA is founder of MASF Consulting, a specialist advisory firm focusing on diversity and inclusion.

While diversity is the buzzword of today, it will soon be replaced by inclusion. Dawn Leane explains how both diversity and inclusion can be integrated in organisations of all sizes. It is virtually impossible to write an article on workplace diversity without referencing equality and inclusion. If diversity is the current hot topic in the workplace, then equality was its predecessor and inclusion will be its successor.   In a workplace context, equality is often associated with compliance. It suggests that as a society, we must legislate for our differences and sanction transgressions. The term “equality” is synonymous with the nine grounds on which discrimination is outlawed.   Diversity is a different concept. It is about valuing our differences, and it has a broader frame of reference than equality, including matters such as personality, cognitive style, education and socio-economic status.   Inclusion, while closely related, is still a different concept. The Society for Human Resources Management defines inclusion as “the achievement of a work environment in which all individuals are treated fairly and respectfully, have equal access to opportunities and resources, and can contribute fully to the organisation’s success”. It is the deliberate act of welcoming diversity and creating an environment where all different kinds of people can thrive and succeed.   But diversity is the buzzword of the moment. Employers have progressed from complying with equality legislation to recognising that a diverse workforce brings many benefits: innovation; balanced decision-making; reduced group-think; retention of key staff; and improved risk management among others.   Perhaps unsurprisingly, the technology sector is leading the way in creating workplaces that are genuinely diverse. While Apple contends that “the most innovative company must also be the most diverse”, Intel declares that “innovation begins with inclusion”. It’s easy to see how the technology sector readily benefits from diversity but other areas, including the professions, are also embracing the fact that diversity is good for business.   Nonetheless success rates for diversity initiatives are still low. A report published in January by the ESRI highlights the fact that the unemployment rate for the Travelling community is 82%. None of the community is employed in a profession and just 3% are employed in managerial or technical roles compared to 28% of the general population.   In March, the Central Bank of Ireland published a report which analysed the gender breakdown of applications for pre-approval as part of the fitness and probity regime. Of the pre-approval applications received by the Central Bank since 2012, over 80% have been from male applicants.   Why is it that so many diversity initiatives fail to deliver the desired outcomes? One reason is that many organisations take a ‘top down’ approach to diversity initiatives. While tone at the top is crucial to ensuring success, the top down approach can often manifest as policies and procedures that attempt to redress balance rather than encouraging a change in attitude.   A recent Harvard Business Review article outlined the negative impact of such policies, claiming that they are often counter-productive. The article suggests that the reason most diversity programs aren’t increasing diversity is because organisations are still utilising the same approaches that they have always used and relying on diversity training, hiring tests, performance ratings and grievance systems to support the diversity agenda.   Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace can mean changing the culture of an organisation. The best results are achieved when the focus is less on control and more on challenging existing attitudes, providing supports and encouraging accountability to ensure that good practice becomes embedded in the organisation. The following outlines specific initiatives that are delivering results. Accountability This is the most fundamental change an organisation can make. Without it, the other initiatives can fail to have any impact. It’s the old maxim – what gets measured gets done. For many organisations, publicly committing to diversity and publishing results – whether positive or negative – is driving change. Apple is among a number of organisations that publishes its hiring trends, highlighting areas such as representation among ethnicities and pay equity. While Intel also publishes its hiring rates, exit rates, promotion rates and pay equity, it goes a step further and ties a portion of its executives’ pay to achieving the organisation’s diversity goals. Education versus diversity training Organisations continue to provide diversity training, although it has been proved that such training doesn’t make people discard their biases – at best, it ensures that they are compliant. No-one is immune to unconscious bias; it is a manifestation of our life experiences. However, it often leads the best and brightest to feel unwelcome and not part of the success of the organisation. Rather than diversity training, progressive organisations such as Adobe are delivering enhanced awareness programmes to help eliminate hidden biases. These programmes cover topics such as how to identify bias, strategies and tactics for better decision-making, and how to speak up. Individualised development Most women say a clear path to career progression is important at work and, in response, organisations are now developing personalised, modular development plans to foster future leaders and improve gender diversity in leadership roles. Sponsorships Organisations are evolving beyond mentoring programmes towards sponsorship as a means to help level the playing field for under-represented groups. Sponsors serve a different purpose to mentors or coaching – they advocate for the advancement of people in the workplace, championing their work and potential with other senior leaders, helping them to secure optimal work allocation and opportunities to be more visible. Sponsorship is of particular help to women in the workplace and many relationships focus on women helping other women to gain profile at work. Returnships Returnships are a relatively recent development. Essentially, it is a professional internship designed specifically for people, most often women, returning after an extended career break. The position is relatively short-term, usually six months or so, and it allows the returner to refresh their existing skills and experience while deciding whether they want to return permanently to such a role. Returnships provide the returner with an opportunity to build their confidence and gain recent experience for their CV, while employers benefit from gaining access to the skills of experienced professionals. Inter-generational networks While many organisations were fearful of the impact millennials would have in the workplace, the more forward-thinking embraced the change and developed programmes to integrate existing and new generations. Such programmes include reciprocal mentoring, where younger people partner with longer serving ones to achieve specific business objectives. Generally, the younger person teaches the older person about the power of technology to drive business results while the longer serving person shares their experience and organisational capital. Over time, millennials will become a demographic bridge between Generation X and subsequent, more diverse generations at work. The ability of millennials to advocate and become accepted will be key to the successful transition from diversity to inclusiveness. Accessibility Trinity College Dublin established the first third-level programme for people with an intellectual disability in Ireland. The Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities provides access to education and ultimately to the workplace to people who previously would have been excluded from both. Employers such as Bank of Ireland have recognised the contribution that can be made by those from such marginalised groups. Promoting family-friendly policies Most fathers in the workplace belong to a generation of men who place more value on work-life balance and taking time off with their children. Yet most family-friendly policies tend to be aimed at women and it is usually women who end up leaving the workforce to care for children or ageing parents. President and CEO of New America, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, agree that, in order to support women’s progression in the workplace, men must be allowed to take more responsibility at home. Organisations are beginning to encourage male employees to avail of family-friendly practices by “normalising” such practice. In the US, Facebook offers four months of paid leave to both male and female employees. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made a very public statement by taking two months’ paternity leave when his daughter was born. Conclusion The key to creating a diverse workplace is really quite simple. The starting point is to look beyond compliance and do what is right, rather than what is required. The role of senior management is to set the tone, to educate people and empower them to act; to make them accountable and trust them to do the right thing. Then, pay real attention to the results.   Intel’s Chief Diversity Officer, Danielle Brown, suggests that, “For diversity and inclusion work to really be successful and really break through, it absolutely can’t be an initiative that is buried in HR. Diversity and inclusion absolutely has to be an integral part of culture and part of everything that we do.”   With the implementation of such positive initiatives and future generations shifting attitudes and expectations, workplaces are being reshaped to become not just diverse but inclusive, closing the circle so that the term ‘equality’ reclaims its real meaning – the state of being equal, especially in status, rights or opportunities.ty and inclusion can be integrated in organisations of all sizes.  Dawn Leane is Director of People and Resources at Chartered Accountants Ireland.

What lies in store for the accountancy profession? Cian Molloy investigates how the profession might fare in the years ahead. Since the arrival of the first accountancy software packages more than three decades ago, there have been regular predictions that IT would lead, if not to the death of the accountancy profession, to wide-scale redundancies among back office accountants, accounting technicians and book-keepers. The latest iteration of this prophecy of doom is contained in a book by father and son Richard and David Susskind, The Future of the Professions: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts, which was recently reviewed on Newstalk 106FM by Mark Kennedy, Managing Partner at Mazars, who described it as “a bit scary”. Kennedy was so impressed by the book that he had 10 copies of it to distribute among the radio station’s users. But don’t believe the hype – Accounting Technicians Ireland reports that it has 5,000 members in employment, its highest number since it was founded 20 years ago and Chartered Accountants Ireland’s student intake recently surpassed pre-financial crisis levels. The institute also recently enrolled its 25,000th member. “A significant amount of the existing work of accountants and accounting technicians – processing invoices, producing month-end accounts, meeting statutory reporting requirements – is being either automated through business processes and artificial intelligence or is being outsourced and exported to low cost economies,” says Ed Heffernan, co-founder of the Barden recruitment consultancy. “The traditional role of the accountant is being diluted as a result of disruptive technology, but that just means that accountants are being freed up to take a greater role in the businesses where they are employed. “In the past, accountants were very much concerned with recording what had happened, writing month-end statements et cetera. Increasingly, the role of the accountant will be to analyse data to generate information that can be used to provide insights into what actions will affect the bottom line. They will be moving from being purely technically skilled to using a wide range of soft skills so that they can talk to other people in the business about costs and budgeting around costs, and how the company will pitch for business; how it will spend money and how it will make money. “In the background to this is big data – audits will no longer look at a set of sample transactions, they will look at all transactions. Accountants will be people who look at financial and non-financial empirical data to help business decision-making.” Rising HR demand In the short- to medium-term, the good news for newly qualified accountants, says Heffernan, is that they are very much sought after by employers at present. “We have a perfect storm situation where various factors have come together to create a situation where the supply of newly qualified accountants is nowhere near close to meeting the demand for accountants who are qualifying this year or who have qualified in the last 10 years. Following the financial crisis, the big accountancy firms really cut back on their graduate recruitment programmes in 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2012 so there are less qualified accountants coming out of the system three and a half years later. Added to this is the fact that people are staying with the Big Four and with the Top 10 companies, because they are in growth mode and they are short of staff.” EY has been in growth mode for the last four years according to EY Audit Partner, Frank O’Keefe. “Last year, we took on 270 graduates. This year, we will take on at least 300. We have a lot of people from different parts of the world because we value diversity and inclusiveness. When I put together an audit team of 15 people, I don’t want 15 Frank O’Keefes, I want people with different backgrounds and different life experiences who will strengthen the team with their own skills and particular insights.” Stranger and stranger Having non-accountants as work colleagues could be a feature of accountancy in the big firms from now on as they develop new areas of business where specialists other than accountants are required. “Two big areas of growth for us are cybersecurity and risk management,” says Paul McCann, Managing Partner at Grant Thornton. “At present, our business is growing overall at a rate of about 25% a year, but in these two areas growth is at 100% plus year-on-year. “Both cybersecurity and risk management require people with non-accountancy skills. Risk management requires quantitative analysts, economists, people with maths and  this is something that feeds into compliance – another growth area. The regulators no longer want to look at insurance companies’ and fund managers’ historical accounts; they want to see their models for dealing with market contingencies and what might happen to their assets, their liabilities and their non-performing debts. This is a huge area – one director of a major bank told me that regulatory costs accounted for 25% of total costs; that’s a huge number.” Attracting talent How accountancy companies attract the brightest and the best graduates to work with them is changing too. “20 years ago when I started, people were very focused on progressing through the business at pace and would work all the hours under the sun to deliver exceptional client service,” says O’Keefe. “The current generation of graduates are not afraid of working hard, but they want flexible working; they want the opportunity to travel internationally; they want to work with brilliant teams of people and they want to be part of something that offers something back to society. A lot of our new talent first engages with us through social media and through online content and, when we do meet them, they interview us as much as we interview them.” The growing complexity of the accountancy profession, the fact that there are now multiple standards affecting different sectors served by the profession, the increasing regulatory burden on client companies and the growing scope of IT-enabled auditing and reporting tools means that today’s newly qualified accountant is increasingly likely to specialise in one particular skill set or field. More to study “The days of people qualifying and knowing everything they need to know is long, long gone,” says Ronan O’Loughlin, the Institute’s Director of Education and Training. “The idea of people going back to college or doing a diploma with us is much more commonplace as people specialise in areas like forensic accounting or study to keep abreast of technical updates. “We were one of the first professions to embrace the need for CPD, continuous professional development, and it is essential. There are many areas relating to the accountancy profession such as taxation legislation, where knowledge acquired is out of date within 12 months. Increasingly it is not about what you know; it is about knowing how to find out. “One thing that is certain, those of us working in the profession will adapt to new circumstances. It is no accident that Tony Farmer used the title ‘The Versatile Profession’ for his history of accountancy in Ireland. We started as  a sub-set of the legal profession that was involved in liquidations; now we are involved in much more than that.” Reputations at stake Farmar doesn’t see accountants being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence any time soon. “There is a requirement to question things, to not just accept things at face value and you need humans to do that,” he says. “However, the role of accountants is changing. Risk and compliance are a big deal now and the CFO is no longer the automatic choice to become the CEO or the company chairman; there may be others better equipped for that role. “One of the big changes that I see coming is the role of ethics. For too long, there has been an idea in accountancy that if something is legal, then it is moral. The whole area of tax avoidance is now under scrutiny. Across the water, Teresa May has threatened to make to make Britain a tax haven, but that risks making her country a pariah state. Already, large multinational companies who have been shown to be paying little or no tax have suffered lasting reputational damage. The accountancy profession has to ask itself if it wants to continue to take pay for helping people avoid tax.”

Chartered Accountants can build and protect the public’s trust in the profession by living out the Institute’s core values, writes Liam Lynch. We live in a time of great change; a time of great uncertainty. And, there are those who will add, a time of great opportunity. It is said that as the old certainties fall away, the old way of doing things is consigned to the dustbin of history. We are no longer writing entries in pencil in dusty ledgers, nor indeed are we manipulating figures on a spreadsheet stored on a hard disk sitting on the floor under our desks. We make entries here, input orders, and a chain of reactions results in a book being printed and put in a parcel half a world away. So all is changed. We act in different ways. We certainly react faster, given the speed of communications. There are fewer places out of coverage. I have seen text messages sent from the top of Kilimanjaro – truth be told, personally I was not physically capable of sending a message at that stage, so some things maybe don’t change. Think about that for a moment. We reply so quickly to messages, but do we think sufficiently about the reply? Are we in a fit state to think through all that we should, and send the reply? I certainly wasn’t at the top of Kilimanjaro.Maybe there are things that don’t change. The question of ordinary human decency. The question of respecting others. The question of only delivering your best. These things are universal and hold true from age to age. But the tools change. The issues we need to grapple with are complex because they are presented in ways we have not seen before, indeed in ways that were not possible before. They are new and innovative, but that is what our training as Chartered Accountants equips us to deal with. And at the core of that training are our values. Our values and Strategy 2020 When we sat down to develop a strategy for our profession and our Institute to bring us through 2020 and beyond, we centred the development of our strategy on our values. We set out to define these values, because every so often they need to be stripped down to their bare essentials in the language of the day. Strategy 2020 reminds us that the core values we adhere to as Chartered Accountants are: 1. We act to the highest ethical standards; 2. We exercise professional judgement with integrity; 3. We prize technical excellence and innovation; 4. We respect others and the common good; and 5. We work together and individually to protect the trust given to the profession. Or, to summarise in more ‘tweet’ type language: ethics, integrity, technical excellence, common good and trust. Now, it is easy to be cynical of these values or to be dismissive. Our detractors may very well point to failures, both real and perceived. But that does not make them any less real, any less important or any less vital. They are the bedrock on which we build everything else. And they are not easy. They are hard. They are a challenge and they require constant vigilance from each and every one of us to see that we live up to them consistently. And that consistency is really hard. But that challenge is what makes us professionals, providing our professional expertise to society at large. We must live up to these values ourselves and we must expect it of all our fellow Chartered Accountants. Acting to higher standards It might be asked at this point, why are we any different than anyone else? Why as a Chartered Accountant should I have any higher obligation than any other citizen and, in fact, do I have a higher obligation? I think the answer to this lies in our status as a profession, as the premier Irish business professionals respected around the globe. We stand in a privileged position, and what we do and how we act are not only relevant to ourselves. We are looked upon by others to be business and societal leaders. We are trained to bring a certain perspective to society, that of the professional accountant, and if that perspective is to be respected then the people delivering that perspective must be respected. If the person delivering the message is not respected, then the message is ignored. In fact, it is distrusted. Therefore, we accept that as Chartered Accountants we are expected to act to higher standards. Recently, as part of a series in this magazine, my Council colleague Pat Barker put it very well when she stated that as a person’s level of power increases, or as their influence and credibility increases, so too do the number of people who are affected by their decisions. When we look at our own actions, we must consider their impact both on ourselves and on others. It is not enough simply to focus on the self. That is the purpose of stating and restating our values. To make sure we are completely conscious of our actions at every moment; that as professionals, we do not act in an entirely personal capacity but that we always act as Chartered Accountants and our actions have impacts that go much wider than ourselves. And everything we do not only reflects on ourselves but also on our profession and on our fellow Chartered Accountants. That is the responsibility we carry. But it is carrying that responsibility well that opens professional opportunities for us. So we restate our values and we embrace the constant challenge to maintain them consistently. But remember, none of us need do this on our own. Part of being a member of a profession is the peer support we have around us, the people we can talk matters through with. We have this informally in our own professional networks and we have this support provided centrally though the Institute. For example, the Technical team can support members in the area of technical excellence, while the confidential CARE Service provides guidance for members facing ethical issues which may affect their professional integrity and independence. Support is important to us all as Chartered Accountants in understanding our values intimately so that we can live them on a day-to-day basis. It is not simply a matter of saying that we do, or saying to others that they should. The support must be there. In another article on the subject of the common good and the public interest, Dargan Fitzgerald talked about framing our actions in the context of the wider society. Often, there is no single “correct” answer – there are nuances and scales, and we need to understand these as we exercise our judgement. We need to consider carefully what our values actually mean, and how they relate to us in very practical ways. For example, I have been part of discussions where the concept of the public interest was equated with following government policy. The implication being that if we act in accordance with government policy, then we are okay. But it went further to suggest that if we do something contrary to government policy, then that would automatically go against our values. Yet, the ability of the individual citizen to obtain advice and representation in taking on government policy or interpreting legislation and rules is an essential aspect of what it means to live in a liberal democracy governed by the rule of law. We are part of that system and therefore, to understand what we mean by the common good and the public interest, and how we contribute to that, is essential. Practical supports for members We are working to extend the practical support available to members. In addition to this article, there is the series of articles that have preceded it over the last year. In April, we discussed the technical resources and support that is available to members, and the technical research and representation carried out on behalf of members. In June, Diarmuid Breathnach concentrated on innovation in education. Penelope Kenny followed this in August with constructive whistleblowing in ethics, and I have already referenced Dargan’s and Pat’s articles above. Separately, we are looking at how the rules Chartered Accountants are required to follow in our Code of Ethics can be made more accessible using technology. These are the basic requirements, but it is incredibly important that we don’t reduce ethics to a tick-the-box exercise based on a range of specific rules, rather than a principles-based approach that equips people to deal with a much wider range of circumstances. Rules are indeed important, but they can only deal with what is envisaged when they are written, and so eventually they struggle when faced with the unexpected. Without a principled underpinning that is understood by those applying the rules, they not only struggle – they collapse. Our work in this area will be enhanced significantly by the hiring of a new full-time Head of Ethics. We are also focused on ensuring that these matters are covered in our education programme. However, we must not forget the overriding importance of the training our students receive. And for those of us who train new Chartered Accountants, we must remember at all times the duty we have to imbue our students with the profession’s values and communicate clearly their relevance. Among the greatest responsibilities we have is our responsibility to the next generation. Indeed, when we talk about education and ethics, I would have a very strong view that we need to talk about the entire education system. We need to look not only at the Chartered Accountancy exams and how they deal with ethics, but we need to consider the whole system from primary school through to university where there needs to be more focus on ethics and philosophy. We teach professional ethics as part of the professional examination process, but teaching professional ethics in an environment where students have not been equipped with the tools to understand their own ethical orientation and recognise their own blind spots is like sowing the seeds before tilling the ground. This is an area we need to take more seriously as a society. Overall, we are in a privileged position. We are given trust because of everything we do as professionals and because of how we live our values. It is incumbent on all Chartered Accountants to build and protect the trust that is given to the profession by making our values real in our daily lives. Liam Lynch is President of Chartered Accountants Ireland and Partner at KPMG.