Where women are at top, organisations are more profitable

I don’t want to spend my time trying to persuade people that employing women at all levels makes good business sense.

As Allan Leighton, chairman of Saltaire-based Pace, puts it: “Fifty per cent of brains are female and brains have no colour.”

So he asks why anyone would want to eliminate such a high percentage of potential talent when they’re recruiting.

What I am interested in is helping businesses to be more successful and more profitable.

There is evidence now that where women are at the top the organisations are more profitable.

It seems to be a bigger issue in large organisations than small ones, partly because middle management can get in the way, by keeping things as they are.

There is still a debate in the European Union about whether there should be quotas for the number of women on boards. Most attendees at a recent large gathering of men and women, where women were in the majority, said “no”. Having a diverse workforce means that a business should be able to tap into the needs and changing wishes of its customers better.

What I came away with was the recognition that any business has to keep up the momentum in making changes, modifying, but not seeking perfection.

To paraphrase Mr Leighton again, if we attract the best people, focus on fewer bigger decisions and do the hard stuff better, we’ll create great businesses.