The gender pay gap has been hot news recently after a 9.1% national gender pay gap was revealed, rising to astonishing levels in certain sectors, such as the financial sector with an average of a 35% gap. The BBC also hit the headlines when they announced a pay gap of 10%.

As of this year, all companies and public bodies with over 250 employees now have to publish their gender pay gap, bonus pay gaps, and the proportion of men and women in each quartile of their business.

Well at the least, we are probably going to see a sharp rise of women going into management and leadership positions, in a bid to close the pay gap before the next report. If this is executed fairly and without discrimination (including positive discrimination), this is great news but it also means we can expect to see some sudden changes.

Shifting the structure of senior management very rapidly will likely lead to some unexpected culture changes, particularly if we consider that unconscious bias still goes on despite our best intentions to be aware of it and avoid it. Unconscious bias relates to the times when we naturally feel a stronger affinity or trust with those who are more similar to us or things we are familiar with, such as gender, race, sexual orientation or education. You can imagine how a forced shift in senior management to a better male : female ratio will also lead to a shift in the balance of biased future decisions towards both males and females.

There is going to be a greater need for organisations to invest in management and leadership training programmes in order to give people the best opportunity to excel in their new roles. It’s no good employing people into leadership roles just on paper if they are not given the tools and support to fulfil their responsibilities. The ability to lead is in all of us – our experience, our knowledge, our job title provides us with an opportunity to inspire people to come with us, and leaders sometimes need guidance to help them achieve this.

Our leadership programmes at Brightstone help individuals to find the confidence to fully acknowledge and fulfil their potential. Our leadership skills programmes are not just for the top dogs of the organisation, they can be developed and designed for anyone who has a leadership responsibility, such as CEO’s, Directors, Operational and Line Managers, through to Supervisors and Team Leaders.

The team at Brightstone have a combined wealth of experience enabling us to deliver bespoke leadership and management training for just about any business. Our Consultant and Coach, Liz Hughes, has also been a director of her own businesses and has first hand experience excelling as a woman in leadership.

If you would like to find out more about how Liz at Brightstone can work with you to design a bespoke leadership programme, or to understand how best to handle a change in organisational culture, get in touch.