The Key Learning Points:
1. The extent to which gender discrimination occurs in the workplace and the problematic notion of ‘speaking up’
2. The importance of establishing prejudice-free working environments where employees can challenge what is wrong
3. Top three tips for businesses looking to improve their culture
Today on the Risky Mix Podcast we’re joined by Emily Shaw, formally a change project manager in the insurance sector who now heads up business culture consultancy, Making Decent Money. Having experienced some of the negative aspects of the Lloyd’s culture, Emily set up the consultancy to help businesses create healthy, awesome business cultures so people can work in highly productive environments, prejudice-free.
Emily entered the world of project management in her early 20s and admits that by her mid-20s she’d noticed a shift in the way she was treated in her career. Emily explains that she used to be obese and had initially experienced the world of work as somebody who did not fit that “classic western idea of what is attractive”. She explains that she lost a lot of weight and noticed that the way she was treated changed. She was being given more attention and time from her male colleagues, who became more willing to listen to her. Emily acknowledges now, looking back on that time, that she “kind of used that”: “What I did notice was that if I was complicit in this idea of being not just a project manager, but an attractive female project manager, then my career seemed a lot easier.”
Emily explains that as she got older and more senior, she “realised how toxic that thinking is and how easy it is to wander into that.” One of the turning points for her was when she moved to Lloyd’s in June 2017. “For the most part, I loved it! The London market is bonkers, brilliant, insane and steeped in history. It’s a place like no other.” She worked there for almost three years, and a couple of years in, in March 2019, an article came out in Bloomberg Businessweek, titled: ‘The Old Daytime- Drinking, Sexual-Harassing Ways Are Thriving at Lloyd’s.’ “What I can say is that I wasn’t surprised!”
Emily explains, having worked in that environment, that you’re often asked, “why didn’t you speak up?”. But she believes that we need to question this idea of speaking up and understand more about it. There are lots of reasons why you don’t speak up. Firstly, she adds that when somebody puts their hand on you, you go into survival mode - fight or flight. You’re then often asked, “why didn’t you speak up after?”. Emily explains that when something like that happens to you, you sometimes feel some shame. It’s an undignified and humiliating thing that’s just happened, and “you’re asking them to relive that thing that was shameful or undignified!”.
Her experience of working in Lloyd’s lead to her launching her business, Making Decent Money. “I realised that the generation of women before me had worked so hard for me to even be allowed to work at Lloyd’s. It was my job to give the next generation of women a fighting chance.” She helps businesses to create a healthy environment where people feel confident to do what’s right and challenge what’s wrong.
Emily provides her top three tips to businesses looking to improve their culture:
1. Set the scene
What’s the purpose of the business and is everyone pulling in the same direction?
2. Eat, sleep, values, repeat
Values capture what’s brilliant about your business. They’re the common thread that pulls everyone together.
3. Bring everything to the table
Teach people the language, give them permission and provide the skills to enable people to speak up.