Gender equality: an essential value of Wavestone’s development

CSR is a key priority for Wavestone, and gender equality plays a very strong role within it.  One of our CSR commitments is to act for diversity and create an inclusive working environment where everyone is free to be themselves and has the same opportunity to fulfil their potential.

Especially in the consulting business, where our main value are our people, the issue of diversity and inclusion is critical. Therefore, we need to take care of our employees and create the right environment for them. We constantly strive to make Wavestone an attractive place for new recruits, however we also need to remember to retain the existing talent pool, by embracing gender equality agenda and having a collective mindset focused on nurturing our female talent.

We committed to achieve a better representation of women in the management positions.

However, it is worth mentioning that, since Wavestone launched the gender equality program in 2018, the overall representation of women in our workforce has improved already by 5 points to 41% and by further 5 points in regards to the management from 28% to 33%. Nevertheless, a gap persists, and women are not yet fairly represented in the management and leadership positions.

Of course, it is partially a systemic issue linked to the historical legacy and the fact that there are less women in the areas we are primarily targeting within the recruitment, e.g. the engineering schools.

However, there is still plenty we could do!

Most of all, we should not be targeting gender equality as a solely women’s issue…

It’s about creating the right opportunities for everyone. We are also not looking just for a quick win by introducing fixed quotas, we want a sustainable change and a lasting behavioural impact across our firm. We would like Wavestone to be a very attractive place for a diverse talent pool today, tomorrow, and in the future.

This year, we organised a global international Women’s Day event to mark the occasion. We asked a few selected senior leaders of Wavestone to participate in a workshop to challenge their perception of gender equality, their unconscious bias and a common stereotypical way of thinking.

What’s more, we also ensured that there was a local action dedicated to the International Women’s Day in every country, where Wavestone is present.  For instance, in the UK, we worked with Smart Works, a charity that supports women referred from Job Centres, mental health charities, women’s refuges, homeless shelters, the prison service, etc… Overall, at Wavestone we organised a series of activities, like webinars, lunch and learn sessions, etc…  to show our support for gender equality in many different contexts, not just related to a workplace diversity.

And other similar actions take place throughout the year in the practices and offices, as part of the Diversity & Inclusion day or the Women’s Forum, for example.

I am delighted to see that Wavestone’s attitude to gender equality is progressively changing and thanks to our culture underpinned by a transparency, I strongly believe we will succeed in our goal!

Last year’s experiences have shown clearly that local situation in each of our practice vary in relation to gender equality …the priorities within this topic as well as the overall maturity differs significantly in every country. However, we all share the same goal; we all want to increase the representation of women in the management positions and leadership forums.

Therefore, in order to achieve this ambition, we need to have local and customized action plans.

Since 2021, actions such as close monitoring women talents, turnover, promotions as well as coaching, mentoring, or tackling sexism are being implemented within all the offices and individual practices. So far, the results are encouraging!

Our Human resources and local steering teams have clear KPIs (and they are as important as the financial KPIs) but we are all responsible for the success of a gender equality action plan.

We need to embrace this journey together.