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SALT LAKE CITY —The Women's Leadership Institute is celebrating 10 years of supporting Utah businesses in creating cultural change and making workplaces better for women.
The organization was formed in 2015 through conversations with business leaders who wanted to address Utah's deficiencies regarding the presence of women at top levels of corporate and political leadership. Former Zions Bank President and CEO Scott Anderson approached former Utah lawmaker Pat Jones to direct the Utah Women Leadership Institute.
"He told me, 'Pat, Utah is doing very well. Our economy is doing really well. But we have a real perception problem, especially with people from out of state who perceive Utah as a strange place for women, and it's harming our ability to attract and retain talent here,'" recalled Jones at a conference Wednesday. "This has been the joy of my life to run the Women's Leadership Institute."
The organization partners with companies through a program called ElevateHER, which offers a series of challenges to the participating company to elevate the stature of women's leadership. The program suggests:
- Increase the percentage of women in senior leadership positions.
- Increase the retention rate of women at all levels of an organization.
- Increase the number of women on an organization's board of directors and encourage women to serve on community and corporate boards.
- Monitor pay by gender and close identified gaps.
- Establish or enhance leadership development, mentoring and/or sponsorship programs for women.
- Urge women to run for public office and give follow-up support.
"We have positive news today," Jones said. "Through the support of Utah's key business leaders, we are making headway in changing. You've taught us business culture to advance women in leadership. Well, here's some examples today of how becoming more gender-inclusive is impacting companies. We have found a formula that is working.
"It's not the only formula, and we certainly are not there yet, but we really do see some headway."
Perceptions versus reality
The conception of the Utah Women's Leadership Institute came about after a series of articles and reports that placed Utah at the bottom of the list for women's equality.
It began with a 2013 Center for American Progress report on the state of women in America that ranked Utah at 49th for good economics, leadership and health in the workplace, followed shortly by a 2014 analysis by 24/7 Wall Street Journal put Utah as No. 1 on its list of the 10 Worst States for Women.
"I was reviled by this because I grew up in Utah, raised on stories of remarkable things women did to lead and build this community," recalled Anderson. "They helped tame the wilderness; they farmed; they pushed for the right to vote; they established schools and hospitals and art councils; they started and ran businesses; they ran for political office, and they raised families.
"And I grew up with remarkable women leaders surrounding me — my grandmother, my mother, my aunts, my teachers. And with these examples in mind, I simply cannot understand how Utah ranked as the worst place in the country for women."
Anderson approached Jones intending to do something to challenge that perception.
"I just thought we had to change that perception," he said. "We had to change that reality, and we had to really return Utah to a society where everyone was valued, where everyone had a voice, where everyone had a chance to live, and where Utah would be rated as the best state in the country for women."
Success stories
Several companies that have taken on the ElevateHER challenge reported increased talent retention, improved employee engagement and a positive impact on their return investment. But to see these improvements and returns, it requires leaders to listen.
When Alex Shootman was recruited from Austin, Texas, to run a software company in Lehi, he began with a series of conversations with employees at the company.
"I sat down to get feedback on what's working in the company, and then they started to explain to me that it was very difficult to be a woman in business in Utah," Shootman said. "Well, at that point in time, I only knew two things: No. 1 is I didn't know anything about doing business in the state of Utah. The second thing I knew is that I had never been a woman in business, and so I set out to understand this."
In doing so, Shootman met with Jones, who began to invest in the company WorkFront and make adjustments to things like the benefit policy. The company eventually ranked as the second-best big company to work for, falling just behind Microsoft, Shootman said.
WorkFront was then purchased by Adobe, which applauded the company's culture, he added.
More recent change can be seen in Ken Garff Automotive Group, which noticed significant turnover, low promotion rates of women within the company, and a 112% turnover rate for women in sales.
"Those are not indicators of a great culture. They were indicators that our culture, our environment, our leadership, my leadership wasn't as healthy as I had hoped or wanted it to be. And so, that was a difficult year for us to look into," said Joe Barnard, the company's vice president of human resources.
"But Ken Garff is a great company with great leaders, really great owners who really want to be better," he continued. "So we rolled up our sleeves and we went to work."
Now in the five years since, Barnard says turnover has decreased sharply and there were nearly 700 promotions — perhaps most notably a 300% increase in women promoted — last year. The reduction in turnover saves the company approximately $2.6 million on an annual basis, he said.
"Culture either happens by accident, or it happens by design. And (because we) are more deliberate about our structure, and about our culture, more than 80% of primary buying decisions in the car business are made or heavily influenced by women. They're smart, they're shrewd, they're talented and, most importantly, they're fantastic listeners," Barnard said.
