The Managing Director/CEO, Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC), Chizor Malize, has called on organisations to equip millennial women with the resources to cope with the challenges of the corporate world.
At the Employee Marketplace in Lagos, themed “Millennial women in the workplace: Building career resilience post-pandemic”, she said women combined their homes and careers at middle level and needed to be empowered with the right skills that would enable them thrive.
She said the Employee Marketplace Initiative (EMP) was a knowledge-sharing network designed to deliver insights on the workplace, and how organsations can harness the talent of millennials to stimulate innovation.
The event, the fourth by the EMP, brought together business leaders, entrepreneurs, and millennials from diverse sectors to take part in the review of its research focused on millennial women at work.
Malize charged millennials to understand that they could be the best by building up their competencies and skills and finding mentors to shape their career growth.
“As millennials, you must first desire growth for yourselves, by creating and defining your growth vision, creating a ladder of how to get there, positioning yourselves and seeking to learn always. Confidence comes from knowledge; the more you know, the more you can do. This, in turn, translates to growth,” she noted.
The EMP convener, Nduneche Ezurike, noted that the objective of the research was to determine how millennial women believe that their work environment enabled gender parity and inclusiveness.
This set the tone for the panel conversations which comprised three key personalities and leaders: Malize; founder, WILAN Global, Abosede George-Ogan and Ezurike.
Ezurike, who is the Group Head of Strategic Brand Management and Communication, Polaris Bank Limited, added that organisations and senior leaders should make their workplaces conducive for women, because women have a lot to offer.
Malize noted that millennials are innovative, dynamic, and creative.
“The problem is, therefore, not lack of women coming into the workplace; rather, it seems to be how to retain these talents.
“The reality is that with the millennials, there is barely any line across gender, because everyone is aspiring to do great things. So indeed a greater number of women are coming into the workplace and are challenging themselves to take the reins in a lot of areas. The problem, therefore, is retention,” she noted.
She said women tend to drop off at middle level, due to the challenges of the corporate environment, and in other cases, due to the inability of holding onto their homes and careers at the same time, leading to fewer women making it to top level management, and translating into other leadership positions.
“More deliberations should, therefore, focus on flipping this around and equipping dynamic millennial women to further develop their capacities, be prepared, and become the best version of themselves, to get to leadership positions and be in the boardrooms and other places where decisions are being made, to catalyse inclusive growth and make an impact in their generation,” she noted.
For George-Ogan, young girls should be taught modern skills in secondary schools as this is the defining phase in their lives.
“Digital skills, public speaking, critical thinking skills, should be included in school curriculum as this is a catalytic point in their lives,’’ she said.
She added that for opportunities for millennials lie in their ability to upskill and reskill to bridge the digital divide.
The Principal Consultant and CEO, NECCI Consulting, Nkechi Ali-Balogun, called on women to redesign their stories and narratives. She added that woman leaders followed due process irrespective of gender.They look out for results and will work with any one who contributes to the business goals, she said.
She charged women to deliver on their jobs. She said research had shown that women either lacked digital skills or were yet to fully embrace them.
Malize noted that there was a disparity between gender digital embrace, usage, deployment, and conversion.
“Men are more curious and inquisitive.They want to unbundle things. Thus, for instance, this attitude can be seen and projected unto technology platforms as they want to be able to understand what is going on behind these platforms.”
Women, on the other hand, are more amenable to nurturing, preserving, and grooming, whereas a lot of the things around technology sits around the things that can be unbundled and developed, but that is not to say that it should be a limitation for women.”
She urged millennial women to be as inquisitive as their male counterparts, because with trends, women are greater when they are in STEM, they are better engineers, pilots, doctors, and considering that women are naturally wired to nurture and grow, they are known to go the extra mile to add that ‘icing on the cake’, by taking their natural disposition and capabilities to the digital space. “Whatever it is that men can build, women can build and conquer, it all starts with killing the fear” she added.
Malize called on women to take up the responsibility of bursting the myths that women do not support women. She noted that the best thing that has happened to many women is having another woman in their corner. She challenged women to constantly be a light unto other women, be deliberate and intentional about holding the ladder up for other women to climb and introducing women to opportunities that will catalyze their growth.
“The best thing that happened to me happened based on the fact that I have had a powerful network of women all of my life, from the time that I started my career, I systematically identified and connected with great, successful, and accomplished women who have walked the path that I was about to walk, and they were able to guide me in a lot of ways”.
Furthermore, she added that women must not only create the opportunity for other women to get into leadership positions, but they must also create an enabling environment that gives women the confidence to know that they can do so much more than they are doing, while deliberately recognizing and rewarding them for the great things they are already doing.
Malize explained that people tend to do better and do more if there is a recognition of how well they have done, therefore, women must be deliberate about encouraging other women and pointing them in the direction of improvement where need be. Millennial women must also sit up, shape up and take responsibility for their career advancement, because most female bosses demand performance, challenge you to be better, and will not likely let responsibilities slide by handing them over to their male counterparts. She noted that this goes a long way in helping women grow in their career. “This is why a lot of female bosses might not come off as nice, but in reality, they are only helping you to get better and hone your potentials” she noted.
The FITC boss urged females at the workplace to lookout for one another, create bonds amongst themselves that will make it possible for them to share and discuss the issues and challenges that they face and how best they can navigate the world of work, be it the physical or the virtual workplace. She also charged executives with creating opportunities for women to build communities to thrive, and to position themselves as mentors to younger people, mentors who come with a wealth of knowledge, experience, and who would add value to young people. “Senior people have a role to play in reinforcing actions that prioritize the wellbeing of people in their work environment, creating mentorship frameworks and also being able to guide, advice and ensure there is openness in communication within their organization,” she said.
