Aside from sleep, work is where we spend most of our waking hours over our lifetime. How we experience work is how we experience a considerable amount of our lives, which is why managing the meaning we derive from work is essential to our overall life satisfaction. Knowing how your workplace works is how we can begin to make it work for everyone. Most of us want more meaning at work and badly. A 2018 study by BetterUp surveyed 2285 American professionals and found that 9 out of 10 employees, reg...
Nov 08, 2023•30 min•Ep. 212
The degree to which we feel like we belong at work depends on the nature of our relationship with our workplace. We don’t often think about our job as a relationship, but it is, at least in a sense. Your job is a reciprocal relationship. You exchange your time, energy, and expertise for money, advancement, and fulfilment at a basic level. The exchange can happen only if both parties trust each other, which is why I refer to the relationship between workplaces and employees as a trust exchange. T...
Nov 01, 2023•25 min•Ep. 211
The publishing industry is notorious for a lack of diversity. In 2016 The Bookseller examined the lists of the UK’s most established publishing houses and found that there were fewer than 100 books published by authors of colour. In 2021, out of a total of 4,017 authors and illustrators featured across 33 catalogues from the UK’s top five publishers and selected independent presses, 2.5% were Black British, when compared to the overall output. These numbers speak for themselves. In this episode ...
Oct 18, 2023•24 min•Ep. 210
It's that time of year again; companies are adding new graduates to their ranks and training them, much like they always have. According to a National Association of Colleges and Employers report, despite a slower job market, hiring projections indicate that companies plan to hire 4% more graduates in 2023 than in 2022. While employers continue hiring graduates, many are unaware of the specific skill gaps graduates face and what managers can do to solve these challenges. Companies often sell the...
Oct 11, 2023•29 min•Ep. 209
Based on my work, I know for sure that at one time or another, most of us have lost our belief in work. We have felt the pain of being excluded from informal networks, the stress of trying to keep up with the pace of change, or burnout after putting in countless hours to get the next promotion, only to be overlooked or disillusioned with cut-throat corporate cultures. We are tired of accepting the myth that individual advancement must come at a cost to ourselves and the people we work with. Asid...
Oct 04, 2023•35 min•Ep. 208
According to the most recent “Women in the Workplace” report from LeanIn.Org and McKinsey, the gap between men and women leaving their jobs is the largest it has been since the report was first published eight years ago. For every female director who is promoted, two women at the same level of seniority choose to quit. The report states that women are leaving companies that fail to deliver on “the cultural elements of work that are critically important to them.” Culture is our lived experience o...
Mar 23, 2023•19 min•Ep. 207
For most people we want feedback at work, but it is also something we dread. Unless feedback is actionable and helpful, it just feels like unnecessary criticism or a way for organizations to try and get people to fit into toxic workplace cultures. In the HBR article entitled Women Get “Nicer” Feedback — and It Holds Them Back authors Lily Jampol, Aneeta Rattan and Elizabeth Baily Wolf shared how their research finds even if their male and female employees perform at exactly the same level, manag...
Mar 14, 2023•33 min•Ep. 206
For many people International Women’s Day has lost its way. It is too readily used by corporates as a day to provide lip service to gender equality and women’s advancement at work. But women don’t need one day of celebration, we need companies to take action every day to remove the barriers to women’s advancement and fulfillment at work. Without action it is too easy for men, women and all individuals to become fatigued, disengaged and disillusioned with efforts to advance gender equality. To pr...
Feb 10, 2023•17 min•Ep. 205
Every year companies spend about $8 billion on DEI initiatives in the United States, according to research conducted by the consulting firm McKinsey. With all this money and attention given to DEI efforts we need to ask ourselves an important question: Who benefits? A 2019 report entitled Being Black in Corporate America: An Intersectional Exploration released by the consulting firm Coqual, finds that black professionals are more likely to encounter prejudice and microaggressions than any other ...
Jan 26, 2023•16 min•Ep. 204
Research is telling us is that hybrid working is something most employees want, it does increase our productivity because we don’t have to commute, and most companies are likely to keep it in place, but it comes at a cost. We need to be aware of these costs so we can manage them. Hybrid working does increase stress, loneliness, isolation, and disengagement. In many ways it is culture eroding. That doesn’t mean we get rid of hybrid working. I believe it is here to stay. Rather it means we need to...
Jan 19, 2023•24 min•Ep. 203
Making a career change is important because outside of sleep, work is where we spend the greatest number of hours over our lifetime. Work plays a huge role in shaping our identities, relationships and sense of belonging. On today’s podcast we are joined by Sarah Wittman, Assistant Professor of Management at George Mason University’s School of Business, who has conducted research into how work shapes our identity. In her article for Harvard Business Review she shares how thanks to major shifts in...
Jan 11, 2023•25 min•Ep. 202
Successful women often disregard gender roles, which makes people uncomfortable. For female leaders, managing this is critical. Having people support you determines how well you can build relationships and influence people, in other words, how well you can lead. Leading through backlash can be an incredibly difficult thing to do, as it takes a toll on women’s self-esteem and relationships. Backlash results in people disliking successful women and preferring male leaders. As society doesn’t assoc...
Dec 07, 2022•25 min•Ep. 201
Our expectations of leadership are masculine, when we evaluate men’s potential, we are much more likely to see them as a good fit. Women do not meet our masculine expectations, therefore the projection is never triggered. This male bias in our cognitive processing of leadership potential is powerful. “Think manager, think male” means we can fail to see women’s leadership potential. In fact, research suggests that men and women behave very similarly in senior roles, but men routinely receive high...
Dec 01, 2022•23 min•Ep. 200
Today is a special episode, we are going to unpack how to make a career change. Whether that is starting a new job or building your own business, at some point most of us will want to make a change, the problem is it can often feel overwhelming when you do. However, you might be surprised to learn just how many of us experience career changes on a regular basis. According to the latest findings from the Pew Research Center approximately 53% of employed U.S. adults quit their jobs in 2021 and cha...
Nov 24, 2022•25 min•Ep. 199
Joining us on today’s episode is Lily Zheng author of DEI Deconstructed and a sought-after diversity, equity, and inclusion speaker, strategist, and organizational consultant who specializes in hands-on systemic change to turn positive DEI intentions into positive DEI outcomes for workplaces and everyone in them. Why do DEI efforts fail, is a question asked by many leaders. Why is it that companies claim to be invested in advancing DEI, launching one initiative after another, yet research finds ...
Oct 26, 2022•21 min•Ep. 198
In today’s episode of The Fix, we are going to unpack the specific challenges that women face at the midpoint in their careers, with Coleen Ammerman, the director of the 'Gender Initiative' at Harvard Business School and coauthor, with Boris Groysberg, of 'Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work'. Colleen shares why the barriers to women’s advancement at work are greatest around the midpoint in their careers. Inequality is particularly challenging for women ...
Oct 19, 2022•24 min•Ep. 197
This week’s podcast features a former guest Laura Bates, who is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, an ever-increasing collection of over 200,000 testimonies of gender inequality, with branches in 25 countries worldwide. Laura writes regularly for the Guardian, Telegraph and the New York Times amongst others and won a British Press Award for her journalism in 2015. She has written numerous books, and her latest Fix The System Not The Women is near and dear to our hearts with its message....
Oct 12, 2022•30 min•Ep. 196
On this weeks episode, we’re excited to feature our guest, Dolly Chugh. Dolly is an award-winning psychologist and the Jacob B. Melnick Term Professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University. She studies how and why most of us, however well-intended we are, are still prone to race and gender bias. In Dolly’s brand new book “A More Just future”, she shares the psychological tools we need to confront the white washing of our history so we can build forward better. In our wonderful c...
Oct 05, 2022•24 min•Ep. 195
Though the reality of women’s rights varies hugely across the world, by country, by geography, by ethnicity, by socio economic circumstance - in recent decades, more and more women have won rights and spaces like never before: like the right to choose for themselves and to autonomy over their bodies, to have a career, not to have children, to have abortions, to love other women. On today's episode we are joined by Susanne Kaiser - author of “Political Masculinity”. She warns that some men feel t...
Jun 29, 2022•19 min•Ep. 194
One thing is clear to me. The progress of DEI efforts in organizations has stalled. New research findings released by the Charted Management Institute or CMI, in the United Kingdom last month reveals a growing sentiment towards DEI efforts. People are growing weary of DEI. In the Managers Pulse Point Survey, CMI found that despite ongoing efforts and activity towards gender equality, workplace gender equity remains elusive. The research has also revealed that employees, particularly men are eith...
Jun 15, 2022•19 min•Ep. 193
Time and time again, studies have shown that math and science are perceived to be male arenas and that scientists are perceived to be predominantly men. To advance more women into STEM fields, not only do women need to know about the career options available to them but they need to believe its possible for them to have a fulfilling career in these fields. A 2019 study published in Frontier Education found that gender-science stereotypes of math and science influence young women's and men's aspi...
May 18, 2022•20 min•Ep. 192
As an employer, it is important to understand gender and non-binary inclusion and what it means for your company – for the way you manage your people and for the way your people interact with each other. There are lots of brilliant resources out there to help with this including the 'Genderbread Person' which is described as a teaching tool for breaking the big concept of gender down into bite-sized, digestible pieces. Language really matters when it comes to supporting non-binary employees. The...
May 06, 2022•20 min•Ep. 191
We all know that demonstrating empathy is critical to developing relationships, but it is also critical for business. A study by the consulting firm Catalyst examining 889 employees found that when leaders were empathetic, 61% of employees are able to innovate compared to only 13% of employees with less empathetic leaders. They also found that 76% of people who experienced empathy from their leaders reported they were engaged compared with only 32% who experienced less empathy. When people felt ...
Apr 13, 2022•21 min•Ep. 190
Leaders have a difficult job when it comes to leading on DEI, are you equipped for challenging conversations to arise, do you have enough knowledge yourself and do you have the answers? A leader’s job is to build and maintain cultures that value difference because this is what it means to lead. Valuing difference is a practice. Anti-racisim, anti-ableisms, classims, sexisim and homophobia are all practices. Educational programs, workplace training, books, podcasts and courses are all resources t...
Apr 06, 2022•24 min•Ep. 189
Is AI inherently sexist? Or are we building AI with the biases we are still struggling to root out of our human interactions? And is a lack of diversity in the innovation process translating into the technology? AI is built and maintained by data, and if the data collected only represents the view of one type of individual or overly weights the importance of this information then the decisions AI makes will reinforce this inequality. In a 2019 article for Sandford Social Innovation Review, entit...
Mar 31, 2022•28 min•Ep. 188
Diversity is simply good for business. Companies with greater gender diversity in their leadership outperform their less diverse competitors, having higher returns on capital and credited with better employee engagement and retention. These companies have loyal customers, are more relevant to a broader customer base, are more innovative and are better at problem-solving. The same goes for companies that are more ethnically and racially diverse. Almost no companies are reflective of the diverse m...
Mar 25, 2022•31 min•Ep. 187
The Great Resignation, has seen employees leaving their jobs at unprecedented rates. According to the US Labor Bureau in November 2021 alone, 4.5 million employees quit Reports by the online media publication The Plug states that workers across the U.S. are finding more reasons to leave their jobs than having reasons to stay, citing burnout, being overworked amid shortages in some industries and pay that hasn’t kept track with inflation. But for Black workers, unaddressed racial issues in the wo...
Mar 10, 2022•22 min•Ep. 186
Being unaware of people’s experiences of inequality like racism or sexism, often inadvertently and unwillingly leads to behaviors that are racist and sexist. We are simply blind to inequality. Being able to learn about inequality without ever having to experience it, is really the ultimate privilege. But just like inequality, when we deny our privilege we are blinded by it. Privilege makes it easy to deny other people’s experiences of inequality and keeps us from seeing the workplace in the way ...
Mar 02, 2022•25 min•Ep. 185
Today on the show my dear friend Eve Rodsky is joining us! Eve has been featured on the show before, with her New York Times best selling book, Fair Play and now Eve is here again with her new book, 'Unicorn Space', which is all about making time for your creative pursuits. As a researcher, I was intrigued with this idea that men and women have different opportunities to pursue creative interests, which makes sense. Women disproportionally undertake domestic chores and child care requirements, t...
Feb 23, 2022•26 min•Ep. 184
This podcast is dedicated to the topic of hiring diverse talent whilst also looking at what businesses can do to really try and value difference. Research states that 46% of people’s experiences of inclusion at work are down to their manager’s behavior. So, 46% of your experiences of whether you feel included or not are attributed to your manager’s behavior. So when I hear “not my workplace, I’ve done everything I can. My workplace is a meritocracy. These hostile work environments might be true ...
Feb 09, 2022•51 min•Ep. 183
