Inclusivity Means Empowering Women At Every Level

Women bring tremendous value to the workplace, with women leaders boosting profit margins by up to 16% . Today, on International Women’s Day, we celebrate the contributions and achievements of women around the world. Now is also the time to reflect on the challenges women face to become tomorrow’s leaders.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme is “Inspire Inclusion” . Although Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) are familiar terms within the modern workplace, they are not mutually exclusive. Diversity calls for the representation of employees across gender, age, ethnicity, ability and more. Equity promotes fair treatment across the company, but also recognising that not everyone shares the same starting point, which must be acknowledged and accommodated for in actions and in words. Inclusion ensures everyone feels valued, regardless of their background and experience, and is arguably the foundation for achieving diversity and equity.

Women are making remarkable strides to becoming leaders in the workplace, occupying 28% more seats in the boardroom since 2015. However, a gender gap persists and women hold only one in four C-suite leadership roles today. This brings about the question: what can we do to propel women leaders in the workplace?

Understanding the Problem: A Peek Beyond the Glass Ceiling

The “glass ceiling” is the colloquial metaphor used to refer to the barriers to women achieving senior leadership positions. However, the sobering reality is that women face hurdles throughout  their careers. With 94% of workers agreeing that gender equality is important, there has never been greater awareness of the gender barrier. Yet for every 100 men promoted and appointed to managerial positions, only 85 women make it through. In addition to ensuring opportunities for women in leadership positions, we must also recognise and break the barriers for women advancing at all levels.

Breaking down Barriers: How Sephora is Uplifting Women

Sephora’s approach to DE&I is simple: create a culture where every employee, customer, and partner feels heard and valued. With 87% of our current workforce identifying as female, women set the pulse at Sephora. It is our vested interest and responsibility to ensure their success in the workplace.

We believe in creating opportunity at every step of the Sephora career. This ranges from training programs across various levels of seniority to mentorships with leaders, and reverse mentoring in some. An example of this is Sephora’s Leadership Programmes, which aim to cultivate and nurture leaders at every level across the organisation:

• “Starting Together” is for new managers who have just started leading teams or are about to start leading a team. This program equips our people managers with the fundamental skills to start managing people, understanding performance management, handling challenging conversations and giving feedback, as well as understanding the different roles of a manager. Our aim is for all of our managers at this level to be equipped with these fundamentals, and we are now starting to roll this out to our retail population in addition to the office based managers.

●       “Growing Together” is for managers with 3-5 years of experience leading small teams. Ideated and launched in Sephora Asia, this initiative supports employees in their transition from individual contributor to manager by equipping them with a deeper understanding of leadership competencies and cross-functional collaboration. We are proud to say that we’re now exploring a worldwide launch for this important initiative.

●       “Leading Together” is designed to support senior managers with 6-10 years of experience, in honing their leadership skills. This involves a 360-degree assessment to evaluate their style and practical simulations to lead through performance, accountability, trust and collaboration.

●       “Winning Together” supports Directors and VPs in building connections with fellow leaders from around the world. Designed to create a collaborative workplace, the initiative is centred around three core concepts: lead self, get results through others, and get results with others.

As a testament to our ongoing effort, 61% of Sephora’s top management and 87% of managerial positions in our retail stores today are held by women. Sephora is proud to continue growing, leading and winning together.

Beyond the workplace, we strive to make a positive impact on women in our communities through initiatives like "Classes for Confidence". An integral part of our social impact strategy to inspire and support under-represented groups, the programme engages employees, builds connection with consumers and demonstrates Sephora’s commitment to inclusion within local, retail and beauty communities in a tangible and authentic way. Across Asia, Sephora has worked with local NGOs whose beneficiaries include women returning to the workforce and those seeking better employment opportunities.

Leading the change: Sephora empowers Women

Although there is no definitive roadmap to propel women forward in the workplace, it is clear we must create a work environment where all women feel consistently heard and valued. This year, Sephora Asia will begin conducting our Inclusive Leadership workshops. The initiative will bring together Sephora employees to recognise their power to cultivate inclusivity regardless of their role, background or gender, and will be rolled out gradually to employees across Asia. We hope that with this workshop, more employees will be empowered to become leaders in creating an inclusive culture for themselves and for others.

International Women’s Day is a reminder that we can and need to do more - today and every day of the year.