• by Katy Thorbahn , September 6, 2022

Some 53% people who work in U.S. ad agencies identify as women. That means they are your core target audience, both in terms of talent retention and hiring. So that begs the question: Is your agency built to be women-first? If not, you’re limiting your growth potential.

What does it mean to be women-first?

It means clearly recognizing the challenges women face in their professional and personal lives and proactively solving for them. Women bear the brunt of inequitable working environments, take on more responsibilities at home, and are increasingly seeing their civil rights eroded throughout the country. As leaders, we need to solve for those issues. And if prioritizing one gender over another makes you uncomfortable, rest easy, because those actions will benefit everyone else on your team, too.

Here are a few examples of what it means to have a women-centered agency:

 Ensure your compensation is truly equal pay for equal work.

According to Pew Research Center American women on average make $0.84 for every $1 a man makes. More and more companies are getting focused on addressing this, but do you know if yours actually does? Don’t just have salary bands for roles. Take active measures to ensure women are paid equally by publishing salary ranges in job descriptions and conducting compensation reviews at least every six months to identify and rectify any issues. Women will benefit and so will other team members because the policies are consistent, transparent and equitable.

 Create a performance evaluation process that is truly unbiased.

There have been many studies that show women tend to be more reluctant to put themselves forward for promotions and new opportunities, or even to evaluate their own performance positively. Viewed through that lens, a solid performance evaluation becomes critical in order to equitably identify individuals ready for promotion.

The problem, as reported by Harvard Business Review, is that many performance evaluations lead to unplanned bias, primarily hurting women. HBR suggests different ways to solve this including: ensure specificity in what performance is being evaluated; create a rubric for writing the evaluations; and review all reviews for consistency. Women’s contributions are seen more clearly with unbiased reviews. That is good for them and the entire agency because it can uncover unseen strengths that can be leveraged for individual and collective success.

 Allow for flexibility to accommodate personal needs.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research published a report on unpaid household and care work, derived from the 2018 American Time Use Survey, the latest available. The survey showed that women in the paid labor force full-time, defined as 35+ hours per week, spend an average of 4.9 hours per day on unpaid work, 22% higher than men. How can your agency help with that?

Flexibility for when and where people work is a big step, as is allowing people to take time during the day to deal with things like doctor’s appointments. The impact will be most profound on women, but will help everyone by providing them the same flexibility to take advantage of when needed.

Ensure that women’s access to healthcare and civil rights are not limited based on location.

This issue has come to the foreground with the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs, which assigned access to abortion care back to the states. Limiting access to contraceptives may be next, and data empirically shows that effective contraception is critical to keeping women in the workforce. Help all the women at your agency by ensuring that, regardless of where they live, they’ll always have company-supported access to needed healthcare. This obviously helps women, but it also helps everyon on your team because it guarantees that regardless of what personal rights may be reduced in their state, the agency will continue to ensure they are not negatively impacted.

Women aren’t more important than men. But solving for their needs is one of the most important business decisions you can make for your agency.