Women in Leadership: November 2024 EN:Insights Forum

For the November EN:Insights Forum, members heard Jennifer Hilliard, vice president of human resources for the consulting firm CGI, talk about the barriers to female advancement in the workplace. Despite significant progress, women continue to face gender bias and underrepresentation, which makes creating inclusive leadership opportunities more critical than ever.

Jennifer Hilliard: More Work Left to Promote Women

Hilliard didn’t originally plan to build a long-term career as an HR executive. However, a temporary stint led to an opening in HR, ultimately paving the way for her current leadership role. “That was exactly 24 years ago this month, and I never left,” Hilliard reflected on her long career in HR.  “If we’re in this line of work, it’s obvious that we enjoy people, we enjoy service, we enjoy partnership.”

Hilliard feels there’s still plenty of work to do in creating equitable opportunities for women to take the lead in organizations. That includes improving support for work/life issues, building effective mentorship programs, and adding sponsorship programs that can advance women toward leadership positions. 

“I think we need to take a fine look at how the outcomes of our development programs are translating into greater flexibility and more promotional opportunity for our women leaders,” Hilliard said.   

Here are a few excerpts from Hilliard’s comments during the November 2024 EN:Insights Forum.

What can organizations do to foster a more inclusive workplace culture that empowers female leaders?

Over the past couple of years, CGI has become more intentional about our commitments versus measurement. We’ve created some level of analytics and visibility as it relates to representation and how that maps into diversity and gender diversity. We’re trying to see how the outcomes of those development programs translate into greater flexibility and more promotional opportunities for our women leaders.

The other thing is conducting more root-cause analysis about why we may not be making progress, such as examining our programming to figure out if there is some inherent systemic bias. An example is our employee referral program, which has been a significant lever to bring high talent into the business. What we learned is that when you have the majority referring the majority, you get more of the majority. And so there is some revamping to better support the representation and opportunity for our women leaders.

What are some of the most significant barriers that women in leadership have overcome in recent years? 

Some of the things that we have started to overcome are around pay equity. We all see some building of pay transparency. And yes, it’s regulatory, but it’s also charging us as employers and as stewards of our organizations to make sure that we have equity.

The other piece we’re starting to see is some shattering of the glass ceiling. There are many instances we can point to where we are seeing very good and deserved opportunities for our women leaders.       

Why do you think organizations struggle to retain female employees, and what strategies can ensure that women leaders feel more valued and supported?

There needs to be a continued conversation around the things that women leaders say they need, whether that’s the life balance pieces, the organizational culture, or other issues. We need programs that support our women leaders that they can actually utilize. We also need intentional actions around supporting our women leaders in a focused way and become quite loud and proud around the outcomes of those programs.

And then there’s gender bias, which probably is the least comfortable conversation for organizations, and being able to identify that and call that out is an area that can make it difficult to retain women leaders. 

Do you have any kind of a formal mentoring program at CGI?    

We’ve been talking about mentorship in our organization for some years, but I must give all due credit to our employee resource groups. It was our women’s forum that took matters into their own hands and worked to formalize a program that we now have across the organization. We’re using a tool that matches the needs of both a mentor and a mentee. It’s been incredibly helpful.

What are some of the persistent challenges that female executives are facing today?

The first thing that we hear a lot about is what we used to call work/life balance, but in my estimation, it’s really life balance. It’s everything that happens in our lives. There is a lot of conversation in terms of struggling to retain individuals because of balance issues, and then finding programmatic benefits in order to support that balance. 

Another component is the lack of mentorship and lack of sponsorship, which are two very different things. We have tried to be quite intentional in establishing those programs, the measurement around those programs, and making sure we have the right level of inclusion. 

At CGI, we’re just getting our sponsorship program off the ground, and that is connected to who can help sponsor someone for the opportunity she’s interested in. It’s about being able to amplify skills and abilities in places where those opportunities are. In the next six to eight months, I look forward to talking about starting that program and some of the foundational things we’ve established.

What trends do you foresee in creating inclusive leadership opportunities for women? 

I think that we will see a shift in some of the pay equity pieces and compensation-related elements. I think that we will start to see more visibility of women on the big stage in some very prominent roles.

We are far from having done all that we can, but I do think the trajectory for women is trending better. I think it will only continue to get better if we have a unified voice, and the commitment and the acknowledgment that we have some work to do. As long as we continue to do that, I think we will be far better off.   

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