As a major study highlights the different ways that men and women advance their careers, Louis Wustemann reports on the Women in Safety programme, in partnership with L'Oréal, RoSPA and Nike and in association with Leaderlike, that helps female safety and health professionals build the confidence and contacts to overcome traditional barriers.

Female safety and health practitioners make up an increasing proportion of the profession, but they are still underrepresented in the highest positions. Though women made up almost one in three of the 2,725 respondents to the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health’s (IOSH) 2024 survey of pay in the profession, they accounted for less than one in five of the health and safety directors in the poll.

There is a large body of research showing that achieving a more representative and equitable gender split at the top of the profession depends on changing or finding ways round business structures and conventions that favour men.

Making connections

Most recently, a 25-year study by academics led by Carla Rua-Gomez, Assistant Professor at the Université Côte d’Azur, published in the Academy of Management Journal and reported in the Harvard Business Review, throws light on the different ways that women and men make connections with the most influential people in their workplaces.

The study found that while men gain powerful allies by directly buttonholing the “star performers”, senior figures they are co-located with, women are less often successful in these face-to-face approaches, even when the influential colleague is a woman as well.

“Compared to men, women who had the opportunity to interact face-to-face with a senior leader were 40% less likely to form a tie with that leader,” the researchers say. The reason, they argue, is that men are more likely to behave in an assertive and self-confident manner in encounters with senior figures, and that “these traits, traditionally associated with masculine behaviour, become the yardsticks for measuring potential and performance.”

Instead, women more often succeed in making these valuable career connections through “third-party advocacy”, the study reveals. This advocacy involves a colleague in the woman’s network brokering an introduction to the “star” and vouching for them. Women are also better than men on average at building such informal networks. Rua-Gomez and her colleagues make recommendations for organisations to support women in building the kind of networks that help them progress.

Innovative programme

In occupational safety and health, one such network is already under development for female professionals. The Women in Safety programme is run in partnership with RoSPA, beauty products multinational L’Oréal and Nike, one of the world’s leading suppliers of athletic shoes and apparel. It aims to build confidence and skills among women in occupational safety and health positions around the world, but also to introduce them to peers and mentors who will help and advocate for them.

The programme was instigated by Malcolm Staves, L'Oréal’s Global Vice President Health & Safety, who says that the company already ran extensive programmes with UNESCO to offer career support to female scientists and he believed something similar was needed in safety and health. “By choosing the best people for the jobs I ended up with a 50-50 split between men and women my team,” Malcolm says, “and it changed the dynamic of discussions completely. There are fewer testosterone battles.”

Nike joined the programme in 2023, sponsoring two Leading Safely for Women training sessions involving 16 Nike and supplier delegates. “Nike and L'Oréal recently sponsored two programmes to develop additional mentors who will continue to provide networking and skill development opportunities for future cohorts going through the programme,” says Sittichoke Huckuntod, Nike’s Director of Health and Safety.

The programme consists of an intensive day online followed by two “power hours” in the months after, to regroup with the course leader and other attendees, plus meetings with a personal mentor assigned to each attendee after the day. In addition, the course graduates receive a free year’s membership to the Institute of Leadership, which also certifies the course.

Applicants for Women in Safety have to write a 250-word submission explaining why they want to attend. “We are inundated with people now, with around 100 applying for 18 places,” says Dr Karen McDonnell, RoSPA’s Head of Global Relations.

Transformation

Karen J Hewitt is an author, speaker and founder of the Leaderlike safety and health engagement and leadership training and consultancy firm. She took over the Women in Safety Course in 2023, revamping the programme content with Malcolm Staves. She says the main day of the course begins with attendees discussing the challenges they face as female safety leaders. They are encouraged to examine their communication styles and shown techniques to help make their communications more effective, especially in male-dominated environments.

“The content of the course is very much around transformational leadership,” says Karen, “and the first step of that is really self-awareness, transforming yourself, because the best leaders recognize that change comes from within, and when they start to change, everything around them changes.”
Sarah Steers is Stay Safe Business Partner at building supplies specialists Wickes. She attended the course in April 2023, with a group of female safety leaders from all over the world.

“The content was superb,” she says, “I love the style in which Karen delivers it. But she also put us into lots of groups to discuss things, then to come back to the wider group with our ideas and plans, and that was the ideal balance.”

Beforehand, having gained Chartered member status with IOSH 19 years ago, Sarah felt her career had reached a plateau “I felt a bit stuck,” she recalls. The group discussions helped unpack the issues that can slow women’s advancement. “Many of us are parents and caregivers,” Sarah notes, “and we don’t put ourselves first, we put our families first. And we found that in business we were doing that as well.”

After the day, along with all the other attendees, Sarah identified three “North Star” activities to advance her career. She says the boost in confidence she felt after the course has helped her to progress in all three goals. She has started to deliver presentations at large forums (“I wanted to do more public speaking”), has submitted her evidence portfolio to IOSH for fellowship – the institution's highest membership grade - and (her third aim) had an article on vehicle risk published in one of RoSPA’s specialist newsletters.

The course gave her renewed confidence at work, she says: “As a business partner I have to partner with directors, members of the board. It’s my job to communicate with them and help them make the right decisions for the business. I feel much more listened to now and they are trusting me with big projects.”

She also values the contact with her fellow attendees. “I have stayed connected with them,” she says.

Mentoring

Karen McDonnell says the appointment of a mentor for each course member to offer encouragement and advice in achieving their career aims is an important element in fostering third-party advocacy. There are now 60 mentors, including herself, volunteering their time. “Giving back is at the heart of this whole programme,” she says. “I had a mentee who's now mentoring people from the two cohorts that came after her.”

After attending the Women in Safety day, Loveness Marabwa was allocated Biosafety specialist Dr Shureene Bishop Simon as a mentor. Loveness, who is Senior Risk Officer at the Zimbabwe Power Company, says it was the perfect match as one of her goals was an eventual move into safety consultancy and Shureene already runs her own consultancy. “She provided invaluable resources on the way I could start,” Loveness says, “such as by opening a business account, which I did.”

Like Sarah, she says the programme has given her confidence “a huge boost”. Would she recommend it to other safety professionals? “I'd definitely do that. I've been writing fantastic reviews about the course on my LinkedIn profile on what it has done so far.”

Karen Hewitt says Loveness’s enthusiasm is replicated throughout the programme’s alumni because it has galvanised them to develop the networks to help them find the third-party advocacy identified in the study by Carla Rua-Gomez et al, but also to promote themselves more confidently in the way it suggests men have more often done.

“The course has paired people up with mentors that can open doors to them,” she says. “So they don't have to sell themselves. Although, ironically, having been on the course they are also selling themselves more and selling their ideas. The common denominator here is the new belief in themselves. With that new belief, they then start leading more on a basis of their strengths, they start talking about their expertise. They're putting themselves forward for opportunities. Opportunities are opening up, and people are perceiving them differently because of the new communication skills and the new confidence combined.”

Sarah Steers, Loveness Marabwa and another Woman in Safety alumna Elaine Osborne, talk in more detail about their experiences on the Women in Safety programme here:

• Sarah Steers

• Loveness Marabwa

• Elaine Osborne

Louis Wustemann is a writer and editor on sustainability and health and safety. He was previously Head of Regulatory Magazines at LexisNexis UK, publishing IOSH Magazine, Health and Safety at Work magazine and The Environmentalist among other titles. He is a trustee of the One Percent Safer Foundation.