To recruit: Put women in top roles

How do you get women to the top?

Put them there, said Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup.

Clifton said the most aggressive way companies can recruit women is by promoting them into the executive team. A more diverse leadership team will attract a more diverse applicant pool for positions that feed into a pipeline to the top, he said.

Gallup research about mixed-gender work teams has found that such teams are more productive than all-male teams, he said. Ignore diversity, he said, and “you’re selling out your future.”

A sampling of what some Omaha companies are doing to improve the ranks of women:

Omaha Public Power District

A traditionally male-dominated institution where slightly more than one in five of OPPD’s 2,405 employees are women, the utility in recent years has aggressively promoted women. Women now hold two of seven executive positions and six of 28 division manager spots, and that’s double the number of women who served in similar positions in 2000. Of OPPD’s 500 managers, 72 are women.

The utility has developed an internal process to identify solid candidates for executive spots and is freeing up its female employees this fall to attend an in-house women’s leadership conference. The company sponsors a women’s leadership council that gets face time with CEO W. Gary Gates, who is a member of both Heritage Services and the Ak-Sar-Ben board of governors.

“We have women in charge,” Gates said. “They are not supporting players here. They’re leaders.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska

When CEO Steve Martin was brought on board in 2002, the insurer had five female vice presidents. Now 10 of 22 are women. About 70 percent of the company’s managers are women.

Martin said companies have to be aggressive about “building up internal talent for succession,” so he places a priority on training and development.

He also said companies need to help women who take time off for family reasons to re-enter the work force and accelerate their careers.

Several female vice presidents say the workplace environment fosters success without singling out women but in providing what one called “a level playing field.” CelannLaGreca, vice president of community investment, said the company has a collaborative rather than a “command-and-control” culture that is more conducive to producing successful female leaders.

Creighton University

Under the Rev. John Schlegel’s watch since 2000, the representation of female leaders on campus has grown: seven of 38 board members (up from two in 2000) and three of nine deans (up from one, head of the school of nursing). He has appointed two female vice presidents, though one has left.

In the fall of 1999, there were 206 full- and part-time women out of a total faculty of 625 (33 percent). Last fall, 309 of 721 faculty members were women (43 percent).

While at the University of San Francisco, he increased the percentage of female faculty from the teens to more than 40 percent.

During his 2000 Creighton inauguration speech, he said: “At an institution that has a majority of female students, there is a need to enhance the profile of women.”

— Erin Grace

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