More women in senior management means better business, says Shell Chemicals Chief Executive
LONDON: Getting more women into senior management and leadership roles is a key ingredient for future business success, Shell Chemicals Chief Executive Evert Henkes told the Institute of Directors Women's Leadership Summit today.
At the conference, Mr Henkes said: "We must increase the number of women in the boardrooms of business because their absence makes our businesses less effective, less competitive and ultimately less successful than they should be... We not only want women to join organisations such as Shell but we also want them to stay with us because they know that their contributions will be recognised."
Mr Henkes also told the conference that there are big challenges ahead: "We have set a tough target and publicised it in the Shell Report. We want to have 20 per cent of senior executive jobs held by women by 2008. I don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach that target. In the UK as a whole, only 2 per cent of Executive Board Directors and 14 per cent of senior managers are women. The figures are much lower, at 6 per cent, in manufacturing and production industries such as those in which Shell companies operate.
"In the Shell Group of companies, 8 per cent of senior jobs are currently held by women, though some parts of the Group do better. We have doubled the numbers since 1997 so the trend is in the right direction. However, the target remains challenging because of the current career profiles of the women working in Shell. We do not yet have enough women in middle ranking positions who will be candidates for future leadership roles. We want to change that. And the targets are providing a clear driver for that change, not just at the top, but throughout our organisation."
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