#GAReads | How Lilly Is Getting More Women Into Leadership Positions

“How Lilly Is Getting More Women into Leadership Positions”:

Much has been written about the troubling lack of women in leadership roles generally and in health care in particular. At Lilly, we have tackled this problem head-on. Our approaches, we think, can be helpful to other companies working to address this imbalance.

In 2015, we conducted a workforce analysis that revealed a significant shortage of women in leadership at our company. Overall, our global workforce was 47%  female — and 53% of entry-level employees were women. But at higher levels, the percentage dropped off sharply, plummeting to 20% at the top. While this number was comparable to the percentage of women executives at Fortune 500 healthcare companies in 2015, it was not a number we were proud of. Companies that have gender-diverse leadership deliver better financial performance than companies that do not – so addressing the gap was not just the right thing to do; it made business sense as well.

Read Joy Fitzgerald’s full article at Harvard Business Review here…