Nicky Lowe [00:00:06]:

Hi. I’m Nikki Lowe, and welcome to the Wisdom for Working Women’s podcast show where I share insights and interviews that support women to combine their family, work, and life in a more successful and sustainable way.

Joy Burnford [00:00:22]:

So, welcome Joyce. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast show. Thank you, Nikki. It’s lovely to be here. It’s very strange being on the other side of a podcast.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:31]:

Yes. because you’re normally the host of yours. So I really appreciate you making time for this because I know you’ve been incredibly busy since your book launch. Yes. And I would love if you could kind of give us that brief overview of the idea behind don’t fix women and actually how it came about Yeah. Absolutely.

Joy Burnford [00:00:52]:

so I I think we’re still so far away from kind of closing gender gap in in economic participation and opportunity. so we’re still, like, 268 years away from from closing this gap according to the, World Economic Forum. So still, it’s unbelievably. I still can’t get over. Like, that’s, you know, like, not even my children’s children. it’s it’s a long way away, and I think progress is being made around gender equality, but the dial isn’t moving fast enough. And and I started my business, 5 years ago focusing all around confidence my business is called My Confidence Matters. And it was around women, I believed, you know, needing more confidence to speak up in the workplace. and I still feel feel very passionately about that, and we maybe took a little bit more about confidence in a bit. But, I think the thing that’s really struck me is that it’s not just women that lack confidence, a lot of men lack confidence, and they lack the confidence to say they lack confidence. And it’s not really, you could be really confident. And if organizations are not designed and set up in a way, to allow progress and understanding of individual needs and things like that, then women just leave. And I think for me, this was the sort of the big kind of turning point 2 or 3 years ago, and I started, you know, talking to clients and talking to a lot of women. I used to, written about 70 articles for Forbes took, you know, into doing a lot of senior women within business. and whilst everybody I spoke to said, you know, the confidence in the past, but the conversation always kept coming back around to actually, it’s the organizations that need to change. It’s not the women that need to change. and this is, I think a lot of organizations were built by men for men. And this isn’t, by any means, you know, having a go at men. It’s just the way things have been in history. You know, that’s just the way things have evolved. and I think what we need to do now is really recognize not just the difference between men and women, but all genders, intersectionality of lots of, you know, each individual person, the works for an organization is an individual at the end of the day. And everybody needs something different and I think it’s being really mindful of what that what that, that looks like. So, and I think, yeah, that’s sort of where the the sort of the origin of the idea, came from. And so when did you start writing the book? Was it around lockdown time? Or — There’s no. I couldn’t do that during lockdown because I was so busy homeschooling. Spanish time of homeschooling. I started, I suppose, having some thoughts around doing it over lockdown. and then I started. It took me 18 months in total from kind of concept to do a a sort of a, I did a proposal challenge with my publisher, and, that kind of kick started the process. And it’s funny from talking about confidence. I have very little confidence in my inability to write. So the first conversation I had with my publisher was don’t think I could do this. Maybe I should get a ghost writer, and I really just didn’t think I had it in me, to do it. So that was a massive — challenge for me personally. And as you know, being a business owner, it’s you have to kinda push yourself to do these things. Nobody’s telling you that, you know, you have do it. And I was like, well, I’ve told everybody I’m gonna do a book, so I’ll have to do it. So it was, yeah, took me about 18 months, I think. And I had Claire my my, right hand, person who was just amazing. She’s at every step away with me helping me with the book. So it’s been a, you know, a fantastic learning journey for me personally, as well as hopefully being a good resource now it’s out. It seems to find very good feedback and and positive, you know, Amazon bestseller and came out with Michelle Obama. It was on the sort of the the tops Rankings next to Michelle Obama at one point, which is very exciting.

Nicky Lowe [00:04:21]:

Which is phenomenal. I mean, it is

Joy Burnford [00:04:24]:

such a brilliant book. And, you know, the work that’s gone into it, so like, just huge congratulations to you. And and I really appreciate you sharing that, actually, it didn’t come easily either. You know, there’s we often assume that authors are like, oh, yeah. Just, you know, they totally own their their identity as an author. So I appreciate you showing that. And it was actually the analogy I used in the book was a kind of career mountain rather than it started off being a ladder, but then I realized very quickly that actually is not a it’s not a ladder anymore. Everybody you know, squiggly careers we have as, Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis will talk about that, you know, you have this kind of squiggly career and you go up a mountain. And for me, it was wasn’t just the analogy of the book. It was like a mountain, you know, climbing a mountain writing book as well, but, it’s nice to be down the other side.

Nicky Lowe [00:05:08]:

yeah, absolutely. So If we talk about, like, this concept of fixing women, because as you say, you know, when I’ve fallen into that in my work previously, It’s almost so deeply ingrained in our culture. Can you share kind of what are some of the common misconceptions or stereotypes that we kind of come across with this? that contribute to the problem. Yeah. And I think confidence,

Joy Burnford [00:05:31]:

is a is a big one as I talked about. And I think, you know, I was guilty this because I set my business up thinking it was that women needed more confidence. And actually, I’ve learned over time that it’s really important. Everybody needs to have confidence, but I think that’s something that you know, it’s not just about women, lacking in confidence. Women often just talk about it more, I think. so that’s one, I think. And I think with that, it’s in particular, I think women may be lack confidence possibly a little bit more than men if they’re in a caring position and they may be doing you know, childcare or then, you know, having lack of sleep and and that sort of thing or or potentially, you know, other situations in their life. and they don’t have the time practice or prepare for if you’re doing a presentation. A lot of the time, organizations might say, right, we’ve gotta present something in the morning, and and and a woman might be thinking, well, I’ve gotta go home and do my second job now. So I think there’s that potentially can, you know, is probably where there’s a confidence, you know, gender split might come, I guess, if there is anything like that. And I think there’s another bit of concept that people think, you know, women who have kids don’t maybe like working, and this is like mass exodus, and we’ve just actually just done a piece of research that we launched last week called Why Women Leave. and we surveyed 4000 women, in this survey, which is an incredible number of women we heard from. And actually, one of the really positive things was people were really positive about working. So 67% spoke really positive positively about the culture of their organization. 82% spoke positively about the team they worked with. So, you know, women are really happy in in in in working. And this is despite having, you know, if people have children, menopause, we we found that there was a sort of propensity to leave of about to 38% in the next 2 years of women. and having children and and medical symptoms didn’t have any impact on that on that. Yeah. I saw that in the report, actually, and I’ll link it in the show notes for people because it’s really fascinating

Nicky Lowe [00:07:18]:

piece of research. And I I I was really intrigued by that. I was like, so are we?

Joy Burnford [00:07:24]:

So and the and the the thing about age that age doesn’t have much of an impact at all on whether, you know, are we sort of always assumed that perhaps, you know, during motherhood or maybe late in the forties, fifties when people are maybe experiencing menopause, it might drop out of the workforce, but it seems that actually, even with, you know, women who are are going through menopause, they rank menopausal symptoms, I think number 11, that’s kind of big five big factors, and things like culture, line management, career progression, day to day work and amount of work are the kind of top 5 things that people say would be the, you know, biggest impact for them leaving. which is really interesting.

Nicky Lowe [00:08:04]:

Absolutely. So, obviously, in the book, the premise of it is you advocate the shift in focus from fixing women to the fixing of the systems. So what are the kind of things that organizations and leaders need to be thinking about?

Joy Burnford [00:08:20]:

to empower women instead of, almost, like, trying to change them. Yeah. And that’s something I think about this question, actually, and I do love my, illiteration. So I’ve come up with 3 c’s, another another sort of, you know, we haven’t got this in the book, but I’ve just sort of come up with it now. But I think there’s something about confidence And as an inclusive leader, having that confidence to, to be really curious and You know, for example, line management, I think is is a really key thing. We know this from our research, you know, just not just this research, but other research as well. And Bad line managers can be detrimental to, anybody’s career, but especially for women, I think when when line managers don’t understand things like, what I call the 4 m’s, which is m monthly miscarried maternity and menopause and care and responsibility. So 9 managers who are not curious who don’t have that, confidence to have those kind of conversations. is when I think, you know, that’s sort of the some of the basic things we can try to sort of change and and and shift within organizations. So there’s kind of 3 seasons’ confidence to have that, conversation be curious and coach. And sort of coaching can come in, you know, coaching mentoring sponsorship, I’m gonna put in that, in that sort of bucket, they’re all very different things, obviously. but we find that organizations that have a coaching culture, so asking the right questions and listening is a really great place in terms of creating an inclusive organization. That’s a really great place place to start. yeah, so that’s something what what I would if you want some sort of simple sim simple ways of thinking about it. and obviously, I talk about it in my book about the PACE framework, which I know you were sort of quite keen to to think talk about as well. Can you share a bit more about that? Cause I thought that was a great kind of model and talks about the kind of 4 traits. Yeah. And I think I interviewed a lot of people from my book including lots of, business leaders, CEOs. I was really in I was really interested to talk to a lot of men, male leaders because I’ve written the book for male leaders is not a book written for women. I mean, obviously, women enjoy reading it, and it’s it’s very useful, but it was actually written from a more of a business mindset. And the the people who I spoke to who were really doing well around this, had these 4 traits, which I’ve called the PACE framework, and it’s called called pick up the PACE. So it appears for passion, a is for accountability, c is for curiosity, and e is for empathy. So, passion. I mean, this a good example of this is, somebody called Nathan Co, who’s the CEO of Autotrader. and just when I spoke to him, he was so passionate about this. It’s like part of talk about a DNI in his DNA, and it was part of what he did every day. He come to work, and it was part of his agenda every day. It wasn’t something he put on his agenda once a year. to think about, which a lot of organizations and a lot of leaders do. They’re like, oh, got gender pay get reporting. Let’s let’s, you know, get the HR team and see where, you know, where we’re at. then it forgets about it for the rest of the year. and, you know, people like Nathan were just so passionate about it. It was, really makes a difference. And that’s that, you know, results in in great, you know, profit visibility, and and they’ve got 5050 women, at the top and that sort of thing. So it’s really, really does make a difference. organizations that had leaders who were really accountable, and they’ve sort of set themselves up and said, like, we’re gonna do this. This is what we’re going to achieve and being really sort of, again, passionate, but also kind of nailing their, whatever it is, sailing sales to mass, whatever the expression is, you know, really sort of saying this is what we’re gonna do and I’m gonna be kept accountable to this and not leaving it just to the HR team. Curiosity, as I’ve said before, this is, I think, one of the most important things that leaders can do not just leaders, you know, anybody within an organization, being curious and not being afraid to ask questions, if you’re not sure, and it’s okay to not know the answers. and I was at a I was at an event recently, and I met a a trans man, and I was interested to find out a bit about his experience of menopause because I was thinking I’ve never never had this conversation, and I was I could have just not even brought the subject up, but I was really interested. And I Look, I’m probably gonna say all the wrong things here, and please forgive me if I do, but I’d love to know what your experience has been, you know, around menopause. And, so interesting. And I think often people don’t say anything because they’re just too scared, and they and they don’t want to say anything. I’ve actually got a quite an interesting experience. I’m and vice president of Mike’s spare time of the East of England Coop. And, we have a board of 16, 13 of whom are are women, which is quite interesting. and the exec team recently, the chief operating officer has done an amazing job at bringing, putting period products into the into the facilities. And, you know, I’m now sort of openly chatting about periods at work with with the men on the team, and it’s brilliant that they’re, you know, he’s he’s willing to talk about it and bring it up at board meetings and that kind of thing. So it’s, you know, those kind of things really interesting.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:14]:

Really. And and what I love about what you say there is that often being curious puts us in places where we feel a bit more vulnerable about having a conversation about, am I gonna say the wrong thing? Do I do I know enough to to to step into this conversation? And well done for role modeling that because, yeah, you know, with that with that trans man. And I imagine the

Joy Burnford [00:13:35]:

the insights you gained were so insightful — Yeah. — because of that. And it happened recently as well as on a panel with a, an non binary person as well, and that’s and it’s it’s kind of when you’re not come but it can be quite easy just to hide and not have that conversation. and and we we were also running an Allyship program for law firm recently as well, and and one of the Partners said, by the end of the session, she said, I I didn’t hear he admitted. He said, I didn’t tell anybody what I was going to do today. And what he did, I didn’t tell people I was coming on a 2 a half hour work about allyship. And he said, I’m gonna go back and tell everybody that I’ve done it because he was a bit afraid of saying it at the beginning. then he could go in, sort of talk about it afterwards. So and then the if any, finally, the e for in pace is empathy. and, I think COVID had really helped with them being empathetic and having more empathetic leaders, and and I just hope that that can continue, people being really understanding of of, you know, what’s going on in people’s lives. Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:14:35]:

And and I love how all of those kind of kind of feed each other because actually it takes the curiosity to be able to have empathy. You can’t you can’t be empathetic. That’s something you don’t have insights or understanding of, but you’ve gotta be passionate about actually even being curious, and then how do you hold yourself accountable with that knowledge then to do something about it. Yeah.

Joy Burnford [00:14:58]:

thing I talk about is pick up the pace because, and this is quite funny. I was talking to David Schimmer, not the one of Friends, Motad. the David Schimmer, who’s the head of the London Stock Exchange. and he was telling me a story about when he was I think he was doing a conference or something, and and woman woman in the audience said to him. So what do you do about gender equality? And he said, oh, we’re doing is that the other end? But it’ll take a lot, you know, it’ll take a long time. And he’s he told me, you know, he saw her face. as if to say, well, why is it gonna take a long time? Why don’t you just, you know, prioritize it and get on and do it? So this this, for me, was the kind of the the thing kind of summed up the whole pace framework. It’s actually it’s okay. You know, you need to get on and do it today. You can’t wait. This is something that has to happen today. And it’s almost like climate changes, isn’t it? Everybody’s talking about it, but it’s it’s like, where’s the where’s the urgency in it? And as she said right at the beginning, you know, 268

Nicky Lowe [00:15:47]:

years, that, you know, for it to shift in our grandchildren’s lifetime, it needs to really, really be put as a priority. And so then if we think about actually what can individuals do, so if there’s somebody listening to this and and, you know, the majority of my listeners are women, But if we want to think about, you know, it might be a woman who’s in a leadership position in an organization, what can we actually do to to really affect those changes then and break down barriers. And I love in your book. You talk about turning ripples into waves. What might be some tactical things. Yes. And I think,

Joy Burnford [00:16:30]:

obviously, the more women you have in senior roles, it’s a bit of a vicious circle. The more women you senior roles, the more they can role model, and the more they can bring more women up, through the ranks, hopefully. Not always the case, I might add, but most, you know, if you have a great sort of female, inclusive leader, They will bring people up. They will role model these behaviors. and so it’s sort of we need to get more women in those senior roles to be able to enable that to happen. And I was listening. I was at a conference being run by the Feet a little while ago and Liz, live Garfield from 7 Trent was on the, being interviewed. And I just loved what she talked about. She’s the CEO, and she was talking about she believes her role is creating footprints for other women to follow in her in her footsteps, which I thought was such a lovely analogy. and, we had an event last week in Saia Gambari, who’s the head of a business consulting at E Y, and she’s got a team of 2000. And again, she was talking about, you know, how she’s really, you know, passionate about role modeling this and and really, you know, bringing people bringing people through. so we need more more women like that to be able to sort of be showing that. obviously, that’s not an easy thing to do. So you need to kind of build the pipeline. but, I think some of the other things that are are challenging are things that microaggressions, you know, unintentional microaggressions that still happen day in, day out, which just amazes me that these things, and these are not people trying to be vindictive or nasty or or anything like that. It’s just you know, people sometimes, you know, perhaps maybe talk to a a younger male colleague rather than a senior woman who’s in a meeting, for example, Or, I mean, I’ve heard stories of women having, you know, having left organizations because the male partners were saying, oh, how can you be working when you’ve got children and my wife never worked? And, you know, how do you feel bad about leaving your children in childcare? And just little things like that are really not it’s not called for, and I think we need to all step up and be aware of these conversations and step in and challenge, these kind of comments if you hear them. Absolutely.

Nicky Lowe [00:18:33]:

And I think as you say, as we get more women into leadership, that really, really makes a difference. And what are some of the things that you’re seeing these great leaders actually do, whether they be initiatives, or whether they be, as you say, calling out those microaggressions. What are some of the practical things that if we were to to watch them that you’re seeing that are being most effective in in organizations

Joy Burnford [00:18:57]:

fix the system. Yeah. And I think it’s a that’s a big one. It’s a really big question. And I think there’s, the the research that we’ve done recently, that I was just talking about, the why women leave, shows there are 5 big factors that are impacting whether women stay or go. And those are organizational culture, which is a massive thing in itself, line management and having great line managers, and we can come on to that if you want to in terms of, you know, what does that mean and and you know, there are so many bad line managers, and we’ve gotta fix that. I’m actually bringing this sort of like curiosity and empathy piece. we have things like, you know, career progression is so important for for women, and those organizations that are doing that well, thinking about maybe, you know, thinking about it’s not all about upwards progression. It’s about forwards progression as well and, having, you know, the right training development in place. to support or also just giving people chance to to take time out. I was chatting to Brian McNamara, who, is the CEO of Halian, which was GSK Healthcare, when I was writing my book, and he was, explained to me he hadn’t really thought about it before, but he had a senior woman on his team who he absolutely, you know, valued so much. And she went to him one day and said, look, I’ve just gotta give this whole thing up because I’m I’m struggling with my you know, the time in my life, I can’t do this work and look after children and everything else. So he said to her, just Let’s work it out. Let’s find a way to do this. And and they reshaped her role. They made sure that other people were reporting, you know, took took on her reporting lines. And she went down, I think, to a 3 day some difference of type of flexible working. And after a year or 2, she then went full time again because that was her, you know, situation changed. I think those organizations that are being really aware of things like flexible working, whether that’s, not not necessarily from a location perspective, you know, where you work, because that’s got quite popular now after COVID, but thinking about the kind of, how you work, whether that’s compressed hours, whether it’s job sharing, whether it’s part time, I’m just throwing a little book out about how work is done today is really vital. I think that’s a really, you know, one thing that organizations can really and that’s part of the culture piece. You know, that to me is fundamental part of the culture of organizations.

Nicky Lowe [00:21:11]:

And I think what was coming to mind as you were talking is just making organizations more human centered because as we say, rather than being this fixed model that in a as you said, historically, was set up by men for men is just kinda going, well, what do human beings need? And I suppose that plays into my next question, I suppose, about intersectionality because you’ve already talked there about kind of the inquisitivety of perhaps women of color or lgbtq plus or, you know, women with disabilities, how are there any specific nuances with that

Joy Burnford [00:21:47]:

that is worthless kind of speaking to. Yeah. And I think again, it’s, often people are worried about saying the wrong thing. I know I’m I’m in that So I’m very comfortable talking about gender equality, but when it comes to other, you know, ethnic diversity, and that’s something I’m, I’m always worried because it’s a moving landscape. But I think, you know, worrying about saying the wrong thing is is, you know, front of mind for me a lot of the time. I’m just worried about saying the wrong thing, and I don’t want to get criticized for it. And, you know, it’s such a contentious issue. It can be such a contentious issue in the press and that kind of thing as well. So, I think that, I mean, that the research we’ve done when I said that age didn’t, you know, some personal characteristics didn’t have much of an impact on whether women stayed or left the organization. one thing that really had an in, sort of a a difference was that white women, we found as 37% likely to leave their organization in the next 2 years versus 49% of black women. And there was sort of Asian, and other minorities were were sort of in between those too. But that was really interesting because that was the only personal sort of characteristics or identity that that actually showed a difference, And I think it really is personalization is something I talk about a lot. This, again, like your sort of human being human centric, you know, just asking a question, how are you, you know, startting any conversation. How are you? What’s going on in your life at moment, kind of thing? Just be interested and, like, be a human being. Don’t, you know, we’re we’re all humans at the end of the day. We’re not robots. yet. and, you know, so I think personalization is a big theme for me, and that’s kind of the golden thread that runs through my book. really understanding individuals and, and equity, the difference between equity and equality, and they’re really understanding what you can do to provide what a person needs as opposed to providing something you think everybody needs. and then, AllyShip is a is a topic, you know, we’re talking a lot about with organizations at the moment, and whether that’s being an ally to women, whether it’s being an ally to, somebody with a disability or from a different ethnic, group, then I think that’s really important because it really helps people to understand a bit more about that lived experience of those individuals. So by opening up those kind of conversations and really understanding, what it’s like So in the case, you know, the the workshops we do around our ship, and gender equality is really understanding. you know, what have you ever felt excluded? You know, what does it feel to be excluded? and some people haven’t ever felt like that. So it’s just helping to get them into that into that mindset, and they’re giving them some practical things they can do to to sort of be a better ally.

Nicky Lowe [00:24:26]:

I love that. and there were a number of kind of different things that went through my head as you were talking then, but you’ve specifically talked about the Allyship piece there. And I think in your book, you share this brilliant gender Allys matrix. Would you mind just into that, please, about what what part of that nature. And that’s interesting because I that was one of the the brilliant things about working with my publisher, Alice and Jones, because she’s she was really, like,

Joy Burnford [00:24:53]:

encouraging, which encourages all of her authors, but, you know, to try and help to visualize some of the, concepts in books. So I hadn’t even thought about doing, you know, generalized matrix until I’d done the book. and it was really useful as a as a sort of for me personally in my, you know, developing my thinking and that kind of thing. So I came up with this matrix, which is looking at belief, your belief around, being an ally, and you’d the actions that you’re taking. And it’s a 2 by 2 model in the bottom left hand corner, it’s when you sort of you don’t feel you don’t believe in being an ally and you’re not doing anything. So you kind of I call these ostriches. You’re kind of putting your head in the sand and you’re just thinking, oh, I just hope it’ll go away. It’s nothing to do with me. I’m quite happy as I am. So that’s the kind of bottom left hand corner. And then, if you go to the kind of top top left hand box, you have what I call performers. So they don’t really believe in it, but they’re just doing it. They’re kind of ticking a box because looks good on their CV. they’ve been told they have to do it. They’re kind of measured on it at work, but they don’t really believe in it. and then you kind of go to the bottom right hand side, which is the area probably work mostly with. I call this, this group of people apprentices. So they really believe in doing the right thing. They really want to help. They really want to support. You know, sometimes they may have children, you know, girls. They might have wives they want to support or girlfriends or or sisters. and they really they really wanna help, but they don’t know what to do. So then that’s where they’re kind of low on the action. And then what we do is we work with with those people to help move them up to the top right handbook which is the champion box where they’re really believing in it, and they’re doing loads around action and being in great ally. And they role model that, and they then share that with other people within their within their business. So, yeah, and that and then part of that is part of that pro program that we run-in around our ship focuses on our, what I call our spaces, framework, which bill breaks things down, again, to another level of of details. So you’ve got some practical actions that you can take. because, as you probably can tell, like, why I like practical actions because people can get hold of them and and do them.

Nicky Lowe [00:27:01]:

Yeah. And, actually, what I loved at the the the end of your book, actually, you break it down into actions and these quick wins to try, which I think is brilliant because it really makes it, oh, yeah, that’s something I could have a go at doing. and it reminds me of, I interviewed, Mary Ann Secarp for this podcast around the authority gap. And when she was talking about this kind of ally shift and particularly around, inclusive piece around intersectionality. She interviewed somebody that was doing reverse mentorship So they’re getting people in the organization that might, you know, come from one of those, a minority groups and

Joy Burnford [00:27:44]:

understand how that experience is for them being mental by them. And I thought, oh, that is such a kind of forward thinking mindset. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And that sort of came comes into the sort of the inclusive leadership piece we’re talking about at the beginning about my 3 c’s, and I kind of I rolled I kind of rolled in coaching and mentoring, reverse mentoring, sponsorship, all those kind of things into into one there, but absolutely reverse mentoring, I think, is a a fantastic way to not only give if you talk about women, you know, to give women confidence. So I’ve, you know, I’ve talked to reverse mentoring partners who’ve been a maybe a CEO who’s been mentored by a junior woman within the organization. So it gives that junior woman a massive, opening to sort of share her sort of experience and gain confidence in speaking to the CEO, which is, yeah, phenomenal if you can make that work.

Nicky Lowe [00:28:32]:

and plays so powerfully into that culture piece, isn’t it? It’s almost like we’ve heard so many reports recently of organizations that have found to be, you know, deep racist and deeply misogynistic. And it’s like, well, how would you know as a leader if you don’t see it? Because either unconscious bias or you just don’t you’re not at that level where you see it being played out. So I think that’s really powerful moment. Yeah. And getting that sort of that proportion on the leadership team or senior leadership team that are,

Joy Burnford [00:29:00]:

you know, proportion of women, but feel they can speak up about these things, because I think when you have majority, you know, male workplaces, I think that’s often where the sort of misogynistic cultures happen because there aren’t those, the women don’t feel they can speak up because they’re a lone voice, and they feel like they’re just, you know, they can’t make an impact.

Nicky Lowe [00:29:19]:

And it plays back to your piece about, you know, the the women of color that actually more are looking to to leave because the, you know, the research about being a double only, you know, you might be the only woman, but if you were an only woman of color as well, that that kind of

Joy Burnford [00:29:37]:

yeah, the isolation. It’s a pleasure that I’m actually that the podcast I’m doing on Thursday, actually, is with Pauline Miller who’s the chief equity officer at Dentsu. She used to be head of, culture at Lloyds in London. and she, I think she’s sort of been that kind of the only The only woman and the only black woman in a lot of situations, certainly really interesting to chapter. he, he, Thursday.

Nicky Lowe [00:30:00]:

So there’s so much I would really, really recommend people dive into your book, not only as you say, it’s useful as women because I think some of the frameworks where you’ve you’ve consolidated the thinking so brilliantly, I think, are useful to take into an organization, but maybe to give, you know, male counterparts to give them insight into this. So that is fantastic. So I suppose my one of my final questions is what do you hope readers will take away from your book. And what do you hope that translates into in terms of actionable steps for the future?

Joy Burnford [00:30:34]:

So I think the main thing really is that it doesn’t just help women. I think it’s, you know, by putting in place, this is the thing that surprised me most. I was set out to write a book about how cut up women. And then by the end, I was like, well, actually creating these cultural frameworks around fellowship, flexibility, and coaching. just that benefits anybody. It’s not about being a woman. So it’s like, well, actually, why not? Why don’t we just do this? It makes makes the world a better place at the end of the day. and I think, you know, what you can do in terms of small steps, When I I use the analogy, sort of, the Chinese proverb, say, you know, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, and the next best time is now. So I often sort of say to you you know, what seed can you plant today, and it doesn’t have to be a big thing, but think about what legacy you want to leave. and there are some small things that, you know, you can do really, really easily. I mean, things like, I was talking to an organization this week about special leave because this came up in our research as well, and it was having having leave that’s for things like, you know, maybe well-being leave or, leave for carers or things like that, that actually it’s not that difficult to sort of put something like that in place, and it makes a massive difference to people if they’re thinking more about to take holiday or just make it really clear. So that’s something I think the organizations can do. And also things like putting sanitary products and toilets, and it sounds very basic, but then that can really help. thinking about, things that are nonnegotiable. So as a in a team, if you’re having a team meeting, maybe looking at everybody’s diaries and saying, so this week, what are your nonnegotiables? Whether this is you know, men or women, or any any gender, you know, what are you what have you got coming up this week that’s non negotiable for you? Do you want to show yoga class? Do you want to take a dog for walks? Do you need to you know, what do you need to factor in? And we’ll make sure we respect that time and really make sure that’s, you know, non negotiable for you. and, yeah, things like Job sharing is a that’s not necessarily a small thing, but just I really want organizations to really think about flexibility and allowing people to do work in a different way. Now we’ve got the law, you know, coming in about requesting flexible working from day 1. I think it’s really important for for organizations to throw out the rule book and think, how can we organize our lives and work differently? I think, you know, there’s something amazing for for women in particular who can do job share and when they come back, say, from having children, that they might not have gotten back into the workplace, but actually if they could do a job share, And the organizations can make that more of a reality. I think that would be so beneficial. You get so many more women, I think, coming through the door. back into workplace. so not not little things. So that’s got a long list of small things, but smaller

Nicky Lowe [00:33:10]:

and bigger things. And I think they all kind of stack up. Don’t they? There were some, you know, some really kind of tangible actionable things there that that that can stack up and what I’m hearing loud and clear and which is it just makes me feel so kind of optimistic about the future for for all of us is this piece around, as you say, about, personalization, about actually how we can make organizational life support everybody and so that they can show up and do their best work, but also live well while they’re doing it. So thank you for the work that you’re doing today to kind of contribute to that. So where can people find out more about you and your your work would you kind of point you towards? Well, I mean, if you if you want to connect with me personally, go to LinkedIn.

Joy Burnford [00:34:02]:

I’m Joy Burnford on on LinkedIn. I always love to hear from people. And if you’re interested in finding out more about the business and what we do, we work with organizations, to advance gender equality and especially around the retention of women. So if you’re interested to find out, you know, for example, why women leave your organization looking at the research we’ve just done, you know, get in touch with us, hello at encompassecology.com. And, if you’re interested in adding your company’s data to our sample of 4000 so you can benchmark what you’re doing and how you’re, you know, you can sort of look alongside that, then you’ll let us know, and we’d be, you know, really happy to have that conversation. or, you know, anything around Allyshare or or also any of the topics we’ve talked about today’s or reverse mentoring. And if you’ve got, you want to put any of those things in place, then, you know, do get in touch, and we would love to, to have a conversation.

Nicky Lowe [00:34:49]:

Brilliant, and I’ll put all of those links in the show notes so people can access them. And it’s been, you know, it’s just been great up. I know we’ve been trying to have this conversation for a little while, so great to to dive into the book in your work. So thank you, Julie. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom for Working Mums, please share it on social media and with your friends and family. I’d love to connect with you too. So if you head over to wisdom for working mum’s dot co dot Kaye, you’ll find a link on how to do this. And if you love the show and really want to support it, please go to iTunes, write a review, and subscribe. you’ll be helping another working run find this resource too. Thanks so much for listening.