By Ray Birch
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—The World Economic Forum predicts the gender gap will not close entirely until 2186, as men will continue to dominate leadership positions in companies across America.
But one expert says that credit unions won’t have to wait another 169 years to close that gap—although there remains a distance to go—as CUs are well-positioned to move faster than other industries to bring gender equality to their executive ranks.
In conjunction with Women’s Equality Day, which was celebrated on Aug. 26, human resources expert Lynn Heckler, spoke with CUToday.info about the road ahead for women leaders inside and outside the credit union movement.
“Gender equality remains an issue in the workplace overall,” noted Heckler. “Yes, progress has been made, but the women’s movement within corporate America has really stalled for 20 years.”
Heckler is EVP, chief talent officer at PSCU, and is responsible for the functions that define PSCU’s culture and employees’ work experience. She joined PSCU in 2001 and has more than 25 years of experience in human resources management. In 2015, Heckler was recognized with the Society of Human Resource Management Florida Professional of the Year Award.
“Credit unions are still very underrepresented in senior leadership positions, specifically when talking about the bigger credit unions,” she said. “When you start to segregate credit unions by asset size, the gender equality gap becomes very apparent.”
50% Of CU CEOs Are Women
Heckler said that some people, glancing at credit unions, would say they are doing fine with gender equality, as 50% of credit union CEOs are women.
“But dig down under the covers a bit and credit unions look very similar to corporate America when you get to those larger credit unions,” Heckler explained. “And looking at the entire picture across all of corporate America, we see things are moving slowly, with the wage gap not scheduled to close for another 50 years. That is not OK.”
Heckler believes credit unions are in a good position to close the gender equality gap faster than other industries due to pending turnover in the corner office.
“A large number of credit union CEOs are scheduled to retire in the next five years. So this is a really critical time that the movement is looking at—how do we get that next layer of potential candidates and have a good pool of female candidates ready to move into CEO roles,” she said. “Credit unions have not done a great job of systematically developing that next layer down in their organizations to make sure there is that strong line of female leaders that could be considered for higher positions.”
What needs to be done?
Heckler said the responsibility falls on women in the work force, as well as on credit unions’ senior leadership. She suggested that a big reason many women do not advance is because they choose not to do so to spend more time raising their families, believing that taking a senior executive role would take away too much time from the children.
Women Opting Out
As a result, Heckler said many women are either opting out of the workforce or are deciding not to advance.
Lynn Heckler
“Women today, overall, have less aspiration for senior executive roles as they balance their jobs with family caregiving. That, in turn, makes the pool of male candidates larger, because they are not making these same decisions,” Hecker said.
Heckler insists that companies across the U.S. need to establish plans to make gender balance a business priority.
“This is about business as much as it is gender equality,” she said. “There are many business cases and research available today that shows that gender balanced teams have better business outcomes, in terms of engagement productivity and retention. So this is not just the right thing to do, it’s a huge business opportunity for credit unions and industry in general.”
What needs to happen, according to Heckler, is more leaders inside companies must be educated about the need for gender equality and the business case for it as well. She said that will lead to more strategic plans incorporating gender equality initiatives.
“We need more intentional plans to create gender equality,” Heckler said. “Plans like we have in place at PSCU. We have a strategic plan, if you will, on how to accelerate placement of women in leadership positions within our organization. This takes a focus, an actual plan. What you are doing is disrupting some of your traditional processes and practices you have around hiring and promoting employees. You are really trying to imbed new processes that value inclusiveness and get this into the DNA of your company.”
Heckler said she believes credit unions can make important changes to drive toward gender equality among senior leaders.
“There are lots of other things on credit unions’ agendas—regulation, how to attract more Millennials—I understand that. “But we need to get our heads around the problem of gender equality and then put in place a systematic plan and make progress against it. We need to accelerate the development of some of these women at the middle-level layers within credit unions.”
Will Take Effort
Heckler stressed that this will take effort, initiative, time and money.
“If we just kind of play with this, we won’t get the traction that’s needed,” she said. “We have to make bold moves, and that requires significant effort.”
Heckler said she is “extremely optimistic” for credit unions’ progress here because of their co-operative structure.
“Credit unions are based on cooperative principles, so I think they are more prone to understand this,” she said. “Non-discrimination is a primary tenet of cooperative principles. Credit unions realize non-discrimination is important, whether its related to the delivery of financial services or the delivery of workplace opportunities.”
Editor’s note: PSCU is the premier sponsor of an executive readiness summit being hosted by the Global Women¹s Leadership Network in Chicago this November. The summit will promote the advancement of women by focusing on the industry’s “pipeline problem” and cultivating the leadership potential of up-and-coming talent.