In 2022, shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade, another unprecedented action happened - many corporations stepped in to support their employees in states with restrictive bans. They offered benefit plans to pay for reproductive health care travel, which proved to save many women's lives who needed to travel out of state to obtain time-sensitive care for life-threatening pregnancy complications.
Watching companies step up to support women, while also watching more organizations provide abundant family-planning and fertility treatment benefits (which my husband and I gratefully used via his job at Wells Fargo) led me to this aha moment:
Corporations will lead more social change than government ever will.
In an election year, we are inundated with ads and messages on how each candidate will do this thing or that thing, but if you look at the arc of history, it was corporations who drove real changes to work life balance, working conditions, benefits and more.
Why? Because in most countries, paid leave and insurance is government provided and protected. But in the United States, corporations primarily bear the responsibility of providing an individual's benefits. Employee-formed unions paved the way early in the manufacturing days to improve working conditions.
In talking with a colleague who spent a majority of her working career working with factories in China, it was the corporate brands (Adidas and Nike) that demanded the factories to provide safer working conditions, not the government. As companies chase talent today, they continue to offer more flexible, lucrative and family-friendly benefits that set new standards and drive social change.
A few weeks ago, Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup announced they would be providing 16 weeks of family leave to both parents + 8 extra weeks to the parent who gave birth. I can't wait to see how other organizations follow suit.
This is why it's so important to have women in the decision making rooms of companies driving these changes. Yes, it's critical to see more women represented in local, state and national government who will continue to advocate for equity and equality. However, since corporations still drive a significant amount of social change, it's very important that women are in the corporate rooms where decisions are made.
PUT THIS IDEA INTO ACTION
Do you want to be known as a woman who changes policy? The best place to start in leading change is to start where you are.
Start With Your Team. When I was leading training teams, some of our BEST development ideas came from creative leaders who were already doing it with their teams! If you want to see a culture change, how can you implement what you want to see with your own team? Make sure to track and communicate your results.
Lead With The Data. Many of the organizations I talk to made changes simply by looking at data and discerning if the data is trending in the direction they want it to go. Types data you can look into include:
Employee attraction (what benefits enticed them?)
Employee attrition (why did good employees leave?)
Employee promotion (Who are we promoting by gender, age, race, etc?)
Find Best Practices. When I oversaw HR at a healthcare tech company, we did NOT have a brand name to recruit by so we had to recruit on culture - and part of culture strategy was having best practice talent management and benefits. Here are great places to review what other organizations are offering to attract talent and lead benefit offerings:
“Best Places To Work” Lists
Society for Human Resource Management (https://www.shrm.org)
WorkHuman (https://www.workhuman.com/)
Share Wins. Have you found a new way to lead your team that's working? Have you heard of another company in your space that offers a benefit that is helping them attract and keep talent? Share these wins. Many of the best policies we created came from feedback in our teams based on what they were hearing in the market.
Advocate For Change. Think you can't impact your company policies because you aren't in HR? Think again. The best way to influence the leaders in your organization who make the policies is to connect and communicate with them on the data, the best practices and what's working. Frame it in a way that communicates the following:
How could this new policy help the company make money or be more lucrative?
How could this policy help the company save money?
How could this policy help the company reduce risk?
How could this policy help the company be a change leader in it's market?
Try this next: What's one policy in your organization that you'd like to change? What's a small step in your control that you can take towards influencing it?
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