Recognising that diversity has to focus on building an organisation’s pipeline, Grant Thornton Ireland is focusing its gender initiatives on supporting more women to progress up the management ladder.

Grant Thornton Ireland began its journey towards greater gender parity in leadership in 2016, but it is over the last 18 months that focus on the issues has really sharpened. Also, from 2020 onwards, it is one of the managing partner Michael McAteer’s key goals. “The gender diversity of teams is assessed by him on an annual basis during partners’ annual reviews. As a result, partners are encouraged to keep a lens on this area, track the balance within their teams and identify areas for improvement,” says Sasha Kerins, tax partner and diversity and inclusion (D&I) lead for Grant Thornton Ireland.

Gender split is also high on of the agenda when nominating staff for senior level promotions. “As a result we’ve seen success at two levels: culturally, in that leaders in the firm are very aware that this is something we’re focusing on; and in the flex in gender balance within senior roles,” says Sasha.

Taking the inclusion initiative

Only concerted, deliberate action will catalyse change, and this has been concentrated on, policy focus, initiatives around role models, and awareness of where current gender statistics sit. The firm recognizes that in order to be impactful, any initiative has to be rooted in the data – and if the numbers don’t move, then the initiative needs to change.

Specific female leadership programmes, which branch out across the different levels of the organisation and then feed into a broader senior leadership programme, are proving effective. ‘Aspire’ is aimed at supporting female candidates from associate director to director level, while female assistant managers are targeted by the more condensed ‘Accelerate’ initiative to move them through the promotion pipeline.

Breaking down language barriers to diversity

As part of its drive to create greater gender balance, since 2016 Grant Thornton Ireland has focused on the way job roles are described – both from the point of view of our recruitment campaign and staff members carrying out the interviews – in light of how different genders respond to different language. This has resulted in a cultural shift in both the hiring policy, and the wider firm, with unconscious use of nuanced language for male and female colleagues – ‘passionate’ as opposed to ‘emotional’ – being called out.