Marianne C. Brown, president and CEO of the Omgeo central matching utility, thinks that diversity in the workplace is not only a good idea but good for business. “I am extremely committed to diversity and not for any subjective reasons,” says Brown, who argues that a diverse workforce drives better results. Emerging research into “social cognition” just may give her more evidence for her argument.“Social cognition” as defined by Stowe Boyd, a social philosopher and Webthropologist, is “the way that our connections to others influence our thinking, values, and capabilities.”
Boyd, who spoke at SWIFT conference session on innovation last week in New York, cites the key role that social sensitivity—the ability to perceive others’ emotions—plays in group intelligence, recently chronicled in a study co-authored by Carnegie Mellon University, MIT and Union College researchers. The study found that groups with members that have higher levels of social sensitivity proved to be more collectively intelligent. In addition, teams that had more women had higher levels of social sensitivity and thus higher levels of collective intelligence when compared to groups that had fewer women.
The more socially sensitive groups allowed more voices to be heard and this bolstered group intelligence, according to the research. Those teams that restricted input to a few voices had lower levels of group intelligence.
While researchers want to further investigate the surprising gender aspect, it’s clear the hallmarks of social sensitivity are “strongly associated with being a woman,” says Boyd, who adds that this “amazingly interesting” research could have major implications for diversity hiring.
That’s the good news. However, other research—that of marketplace realities—illustrates the challenges ahead for women.
A nonprofit group devoted to expanding opportunities for women and business, Catalyst Inc. has found that 19.1% of executive officers in the finance and insurance industries are women, according to the 2010 Catalyst Census of Women Executive Officers at Fortune 500 companies. Catalyst also cites numbers from 2009 when the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission discovered that among private employers with 100 or more employees or federal contractors with 50 or more employees:
- Women were 41.8% of all employees and 17.8% of executive/senior-level officials and managers at the 1,587 companies in the EEOC category of “Securities, Commodity Contracts & Other Financial Investments.”
- In addition, women were 37.7% of all employees and 15.3% of executive/senior-level officials and managers at the 383 companies in the EEOC sub-category of “Investment Banking & Securities Dealing,” part of the “Securities, Commodity Contracts & Other Financial Investments” grouping.
Another complication is that talented women frequently step away from the arena to start a family and interrupt their careers. Brown has had to juggle her career, a 25-year marriage, a family, a home—essentially a full life—and says she has been lucky it’s all held together. “But it’s not without difficult choices some days.”
When women return to the marketplace, they should be embraced, Brown says. “They can knock on my door and I will find a home for them.”
What can firms do to achieve real diversity as they hire for a fragile recovery?
“You have to be extremely focused on expanding the candidate pool,” Brown says. “We had a service role open for months so I could ensure that we expanded that talent pool as far as I conceivably could.” In another example, Omgeo’s search for a global head of strategy includes “as many, if not more, women right now in the interview process than men.
“And when I say diversity,” Brown adds, “I mean it not just for women but representatives of the demographic you’re serving. … Boards need to get more active in driving diversity—by the way, starting with themselves.”
Keeping the door open to diversity is a key issue for Brown.
“It’s disappointing for me, as a female veteran for the financial services marketplace, that there are not many, many more women in financial services. I’m in my fifties. I want to see more women in their forties and their thirties that are leading women in their twenties. That does not appear to be as prevalent as I would have predicted 10 years ago,” Brown says.
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