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"THE BUZZ" |
Quote of the Month: "Eschew Obfuscation!" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
May 2008 Egret's Annual Women in Industry Survey I've attended the NAED conferences for over 20 years and for the past several years I've conducted a survey of the number of NAED badge attendees who have female first names. Albeit, this is not the most scientific survey but the results confirm the overall perception I've had of our industry for the past 25 years; we are a male-dominated industry. There are elegant rationalizations for that; the distribution industry was launched in its current form at the end of World War II, when the returning soldiers represented an extraordinary influx of labor at a time of government sponsored construction projects; where the availability of materials was a major contributor to the efficiency of our re-birth from the War. The industry was virtually started by men and has remained virtually male-only for 60 years since. Dads turned the business over to sons, and a handful of daughters, but a strategic process of attracting a diverse workforce into distribution and even electrical manufacturers simply never gained traction.
I've updated the results for 2008 and will make several comments about those results, but first a few rules: for every name I find that is non-gender specific (Chris or Pat, etc.), and I don't personally know of them, then I accumulate those names into a total and assign 70% as male and 30% as female. At the end of the day, I had a total pool of uncertain names of only 6 (so 4 were considered male and 2 female); not enough to hugely impact the statistics. Here is the summary of 2005-2008:
My professional interpretation? No changes. This could be caused by one of two explanations: 1. the industry is still ignoring a strategy of attracting a more diverse employment base, or 2. the diversity strategies are in place but it takes time for women recruits to rise to a level of authority that warrants attending the national NAED conferences. NAED as an organization has launched their version of a job board to attract new college grads, which should increase some measure of diversity. Unfortunately, the issue of attracting talent and retaining talent is largely ignored in the NAED conferences. This conference has one presentation on Assembling a Leadership Team. At a time when the absolute top issue for growth is attracting or keeping talent, NAED could serve its members better by recognizing that the industry desperately needs serious consultation on how to hire people, how to keep them, and how to attract people to their unique company. Bluntly put, diversity hiring is essential for no other reason than the current labor pool isn't predominately white guys any more... it's women and minorities and old and young, all selling to customers who are just as diverse as America. In short, do you want to grow and become more profitable? Then start to mirror your customer base or differentiate your business into minority-owned companies. As the inimitable Peter Drucker so eloquently says: "the ability to make good decisions about people represents one of the last reliable sources of competitive advantage, since very few organizations are very good at it". Ted Konnerth will be attending the NAED conference, let us know if you'd like to talk about the issues that are facing every company in attracting talent. We are the #1 recruiting firm in the electrical/industrial industries. Isn't it about time you called to find out... To view our recent newsletters click here: 'THE BUZZ' |
Survey Corner Women and the Industry Please take 12 seconds to tell us how many female managers there are in your company. We'll report the findings next month! Click Here to take survey
Last month's survey question: Responses: Population: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Industry Events Lightfair International 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mergers & Acquisitions
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