Press Coverage
Soft sell for hard cash
Evening Telegraph and Post Dundee - 2008-08-18
Gone are the days of weak women, grateful for any crumb an employer would throw her when it’s time to talk about money.
A poll taken by a leading management consultancy asked a number of recruitment companies a number of questions about differences between men and women within their organisation.
Most organisations (98%) said that the top performers in their organisations were pretty evenly split between men and women.
There was also a healthy percentage of women in top jobs with more than three-quarters (78%) saying that half or more of their senior roles were held by females.
One national finance recruiter said that four out of five of its regional directors were women.
One of the most interesting things that came out of the poll was that almost two thirds (64%) of respondents said that women were better at negotiating their salaries than men.
“Men tend to focus more on the money they have earned in fees while women are better at using their softer skills to show how they add value more holistically through leadership, mentoring, and problem solving or customer service”, said one respondent.
“I find that often, women tend to drill down much more quickly to what they have actually achieved and, importantly what else they have contributed – while sometimes men concentrate solely on hard targets and numbers,” said another respondent.
“It’s these ‘softer’ skills that can really make a difference to an organisation’s bottom line,” said Aisling Tighe, managing director of Perriam & Everett, who conducted the poll.
“Given all the column inches devoted to the gender pay gap and the ubiquitous ‘glass ceiling’, it’s good to see that the recruitment sector is championing the business case for gender diversity and that women, often criticised for not always asking for what may be due to them, are beginning to lead rather than follow in the salary negotiation stakes!”
It seems that the days of whispering in hallways about salary inequality may be over as the Government plans to outlaw the practice of pay secrecy clauses.
According to a reward survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, just under a third of employers ask staff not to discuss pay with colleagues. It seems the Government hopes these measures will give the renumeration process better transparency and, eventually, close the pay gap that still exists between men and women, currently sitting at around 17%.
A combination of this and women being better negotiators might end the gap once and for all.
