May 2010
Volume 11 Issue 5

Egret’s 6th Annual Women in Industry Survey
By Ted Konnerth

I’ve attended the NAED conferences since 1985 and for the past 6 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 it’s current form from 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 servicemen and has remained virtually male-only for 60+ years. Dad’s 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. Look at the results for 2010*:

My professional interpretation? No significant changes in diversity. In fact, based on 6 years of reporting, 2010 represents the nearly exact median performance over those years for both participant categories. It is good to see that attendance is coming back up; the recession hit 2009 attendance very seriously. It is also of note that the women in industry luncheon is back on the program, with a total pool of 45 prospective attendees, that’s got to be a pretty intimate meeting.

In general, for the size of the membership, the overall attendance is pretty small. The program is ‘ok’, with the usual economic commentary and a presentation on theft control, both worthy topics but in light of the crash, wouldn’t it make sense to address revenue strategies? Diversifying customers or markets, margin strategies to grow sales with or without margin decrements, etc.?

I have my own biased view on the industry. Although I spent 16 years on the manufacturing side of NAED meetings, I still feel that NAED as an organization has largely ignored the issues of attracting and retaining talent; and diversity hiring is a rarity in any NAED agenda. The number 1 challenge for the electrical industry for the past 5+ years has been the availability of quality talent. The ability to attract talent in this economy is actually better than in boom times, but the topic is ignored. I will probably get a dozen curt replies to this newsletter from men who simply say they don’t care about diversity in the industry. Bluntly put, diversity hiring is essential for no other reason than the current labor pool isn’t predominantly white guys any more.. it’s women and minorities and old and young, all selling to customers who are just as diverse as America. And take a hard look around NAED; it’s a bunch of old white guys who are resisting the chance to broaden and grow their company. There’s a reason the industry is splintering into more specialist companies every day (datacom, energy, solar, etc.), the leadership is resistant to change.

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.

*The results for 2010 are reported using a few rules that have been maintained since the inception of the survey: I simply count the first names of every female attendee who is listed as a distributor or a manufacturer/VAR. For every name I find that is non-generic 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. For the 2010 survey, I had a total pool of uncertain names of only 3 (so 2 were considered male and 1 female); not enough to hugely impact the statistics. 

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