The CEO of OMD, Peter Horgan, has told a packed house at today’s B&T Women In Media Forum at Sydney’s Randwick Racecourse that, despite strides, the industry still has a lot of work to do to get more women into leadership positions.
Delivering this morning’s opening address, Horgan said that despite small representations of women in Australian boardrooms it had been proven that gender diversity had a significant impact on a business’ performance.
Horgan noted:
- Women comprise 46.0 per cent of all employees in Australia… yet;
- Women hold only 27.4 per cent of key management personnel
- 14.2 per cent of chair positions
- 23.6 per cent of directorships
- And represent only 15.4 per cent of CEOs
- Yet McKinsey shows that businesses with gender diversity at every level have 15% improved performance.
“At OMD we are focused on supporting, developing and promoting women in media. With a 60 per cent female staff base and 50 per cnet female executive team, we are passionate about attracting and retaining top talent in the industry and helping them to achieve their full potential. We believe talent speaks louder than gender.
“In the last 12 months we have introduced a number of initiatives to re-energise women staff engagement through a greater focus on career development, wellbeing based programmes and the required flexibility to support our OMD women through life’s changes while pursuing their career.
“Whilst we are supporting our women in media, we do recognise there is still a ways to go, as an industry women are still under represented in senior roles. How do we ensure that women are given equal opportunity to reach executive positions? How do we ease fears that starting a family won’t affect your career? How do we ensure the right work-life balance? How do we ensure there isn’t a gender pay gap,” Horgan said.
