Reframing Gender Issues in Corporations

Companies with a gender-balanced leadership team are way ahead of those that are not.

Worldwide, sixty percent of university graduates are women.  In the United States, women under the age of thirty out earn their male counterparts.  As a result, forty percent of American households can label the woman as their main source of income; therefore, it is unsurprising that women are often the decision maker on purchasing consumer goods.  Despite all of these statistics, women remain underrepresented in senior level positions in corporate America, according to an article recently completed by the Harvard Business Review.

There is a decided split to be addressed—women’s potential on the one hand, and their relative absence from the highest levels of business on the other. As a result, it can be the easy approach to continue to insist that the process is unfair and unequal, that women are simply disregarded in the process of hiring for senior levels.  This can often lead to the assumption that women who don’t make it to the top must be doing something wrong.

The article offers a solution to this assumption and conflict0.  Instead of focusing on the issue as a lingering women’s problem or an issue of equality, choose instead to view the issue as a massive business opportunity.  Don’t fester on the problem; seek solutions instead, such as roadmaps to businesses that are better balanced, arguments that help companies and managers understand and benefit from shifting global gender balances.  As a result, the discussion will veer away from what is wrong with women who didn’t make it to the top to focus on analyzing what is right with companies and leaders that do build gender balanced leadership teams.

Focusing on these teams will draw attention to the healthy mode of competition that results to a properly gender balanced leadership team.  According to the article, gender balance delivers better and more sustainable performance.  Research shows that companies with more gender-balanced leadership teams out-perform those with less.  Essentially, seeking gender balance in leadership teams will put a company decades ahead of its competition; while skeptics will spend another decade resisting this fact, the best leaders will charge forward, armed with the information.

 

from Lohra Miller| Women in Leadership http://ift.tt/1wAjMUi

Shoplifting Highest Causes of Losses

All crimes should have consequences, even petty crimes such as shoplifting.

Recently, the annual report entitled the Global Retail Theft Barometer was released, indicating some increasingly scary statistics.  The study reported that shoplifting was the highest cause of losses in most countries surveyed.  Worldwide, shoplifting retailers one hundred and twenty eight billion dollars in the last year alone.  This figure averages one and a third percent of all retail sales and, as a result, indicates that shoplifting costs consumers in the United States four hundred and three dollars per household.  This indicates that shoplifting is a global problem that hurts economies as well as family and community values.  While this figure may not seem overwhelmingly large, in such a strained period following the Great Recession, often every dollar can count.

As a result, Turning Point Justice has teamed up with the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention to address the issue, according to a post completed for the website.  To Turning Point Justice, the biggest problem with shoplifting is a lack of consequences, which, in turn, encourages repeat offenses.  As a result, the two organizations have worked together to create the Crime Accountability Program, otherwise known as CAP.  The program has resolved to work between businesses and qualifying first time offenders in shoplifting to reduce the costs and time consumed in reaching restitution.  The efforts of the two organizations reduce the amount of times police are called to the scene of a petty crime, allowing law enforcement officers the freedom to address more serious crimes and reducing the costs of valuable resources.

CAP has proven to deliver results.  The program helps retailers double restitution collections to repair financial damages.  In addition to this, it reduces police calls to stores by more than fifty percent.  These early indicators have fueled Turning Point Justice with hope that in future Global Retail Theft Barometer reports, their efforts will show a marked improvement in the cost of shoplifting per household in the United States.

from Lohra Miller| Restorative Justice http://ift.tt/135oPQG