Women in leadership: 'There’s still a lot of progress to be made'

While the industry has come a long way in terms of encouraging more women into senior leadership roles, there is still some distance to go, a panel of experts have said.

Speaking on a panel at an Arena Hospitality Network event in London this week Helen Charlesworth, MD of Stonegate Group said the data speaks for itself: “We don’t have an equal amount of people on boards – CEOs and the FTSE 100 are male dominated, and I don’t think it’s just about women either, it’s about diversity, inclusion, colour, religion, sexuality.”

She added: “We’re the largest LGBTQIA+ pub retailer, and this should be reflected in our leadership team and consumer groups should have some level of proportional representation on the board.”

Charlesworth said the business was proactive in terms of diversity, taking part in internal and external conferences, and introducing a female mentoring programme where over 100 women have been mentored.

“I also train our mentors in how to mentor females differently, because it’s all about confidence and instilling self-belief. So many women out there want to achieve but don’t quite feel they tick all the boxes and don’t go and make that step. We need to enable them to tick all the boxes.

“It’s a confidence thing,” agreed Catherine Roe, CEO of Elior UK. “Which means we need to mentor and coach people.”

Roe added that confidence should begin in childhood and education: “We need to give girls the confidence that they can do anything they want. Maybe this has become a boring topic to some people, but look at the facts and statistics – there are swathes of businesses where women aren’t present [at the top]. There’s a lot of progress to be made.”