Despite strides toward gender equity, women in the workplace continue to encounter systemic challenges that hinder their career progression. While representation in executive roles has improved over the past decade — rising from 17% to 29% of C-suite positions, according to McKinsey — women, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, remain significantly outnumbered.
In this episode of The Business of Learning, we spoke with Neha Trivedi, CPTM, HR director, learning and development and talent development at Alight Solutions, to learn more about how L&D can help support women’s career growth.
Tune in now to hear the conversation, where we discuss:
- Real-world examples of programs that have had an impact on women’s career growth.
- The importance of coaching, mentoring and sponsorship opportunities.
- Partnering with HR and other business units to create comprehensive development strategies, ensure equitable access to leadership opportunities and embed inclusive practices across the organization.
More Resources:
The transcript for this episode follows:
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Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Hi, welcome back to The Business of Learning. I’m Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, editor in chief here at Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo: And I am Sarah Gallo, senior editor. Despite progress, many women still face unique challenges in their careers, from barriers to advancement and unequal access to leadership opportunities. In fact, recent McKinsey research shows that while women’s representation in corporate leadership has increased over the past decade, progress has been modest, especially at the entry and manager levels. Although women now hold 29% of C-suite positions, which is up from 17% in 2015, men continue to outnumber women at every stage of the corporate pipeline regardless of race or ethnicity. So today we’re speaking with Neha Trivedi, a Certified Professional in Training Management and HR director, learning and development and talent development at Alight Solutions to learn more about how learning and development coupled with more holistic support and policies can be part of the solution. Neha, thanks for speaking with us today.
Neha Trivedi: Thank you Sarah. Thank you, Michelle. And thank you to Training Industry for this opportunity. It’s great to be here and. I’m excited to be part of this conversation, because as you said that McKinsey report was telling there are improvements, but we know that there is a long way to go. So I’m glad we’re having this call and, and I will say this is an interest area of mine. My background is in cultural anthropology at as well, and I really. Enjoy looking at workplace dynamics and culture. So something that I follow and, uh, when you all reached out, I thought what a great opportunity, so thank you.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: I’m, I’m also excited for this conversation today. There’s a lot to unpack. To kick things off, I think it would be helpful if you could walk through maybe some of the barriers and obstacles that women’s women face in the workplace. How have these changed or maybe shifted over the years?
Neha Trivedi: Great. Absolutely. I will start before I jump into barriers by talking about some of the factors that I feel influence how women are treated in the workplace. And to me those include company culture, right? How has the culture run? What kind of industry are we in? Is it traditionally thought of as more of a male dominated industry? That can have a lot of impact. Also, the overall values and practices of the organization regarding diversity and inclusion can have an effect, as well as HR policies, right? So what kinds of policies do we have around equal pay parental leave? Also anti-discrimination types of measures. And then the other one is industry norms. So what are some of those attitudes in the specific industry, as I mentioned, but also then overall, right? So there are geopolitical situations and other things that can impact culture, company culture. So when we think about those and think about some of those negative aspects or the barriers, um, white one hears about the glass ceilings, right? So this is that invisible barrier that might be preventing women from reaching senior leadership roles. There might be certain requirements and maybe they’re not spoken, but again, it’s part of the culture. Additionally, I think of, um, gender stereotypes. And sometimes there’s an assumption that women are less capable or even suited for certain roles based on gender. The other piece is microaggressions, and we can see these sometimes day to day. They’re very subtle, unintentional comments, I would say, and, or behaviors that can undermine women at the workplace. And there are things that as women we might hear, we might pick up on. Sometimes we don’t. They’re just part of the way … in some of the behaviors as people interact. And so sometimes we don’t even notice them and they’re just part of that, that regular day to day. The the other one is around barriers for women to progress, especially if they are taking care of a family, maybe they’ve become a mom or whatever it is. They have certain obligations. And so there are perceptions maybe that well, okay, because you have children or have certain caretaking responsibilities that you’re not going to be qualified to take on a particular role. Right? And, and frequently those women may not even be asked that question. It’s an assumption. And then the other piece, which is more of the, depending on the environment, and hopefully this is not happening, I think, if there’s more attention, but it’s around the unwelcome advances from different people, whether it’s sexual advances creating that hostile kind of work environment. And it would be interesting to see, honestly, and I don’t know if you all have any research on that, but how have things, how have dynamics changed because we are more remote in a lot of different industries. So it’s just an interesting point. But yeah, some of those. Are the barriers that I actually think about when I think about barriers.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah, for sure. Thanks for walking us through some of those different factors and kind of barriers. I’m hoping you can also maybe share a little more on how L&D along with, of course, broader initiatives and policies and things like that can really help some address some of these challenges.
Neha Trivedi: The one thing that I really appreciate about learning and development is it’s ever present, right? Whether it’s in a function or it’s part of the global shared services team. L&D can have a lot of impact with these types of barriers. Maybe some more than others, but definitely when we think about the learning and development team and what it can do, the first thing that comes in my mind is alignment, alignment with shared services. What is the HR team doing? What are other teams doing? What’s happening at the organization, um, that is impacting organizational policy? What are some of the problems that we’re seeing? Are our shared services seeing issues around the talent pipeline, succession pipeline? What kinds of policies are there? So are our leaders thinking about talent succession and thinking about women leaders? How does that look? And so based on broader initiatives and policies, I think L&D can make an impact. And they can address those challenges as well as opportunities. So I don’t want to say challenges only, I want to say opportunities as well. If there is a broader company initiative, is there some educational component that L&D can offer? Like, “Hey, I have an idea. We have this policy….” And as we all know, policies sometimes aren’t the most fun to read, but maybe the L&D team with an instructional design, ideas, creative, innovation [lens] can say, “Listen, let’s make this more impactful.” Let’s create a… it doesn’t have to be a whole online learning. It can be two pages or whatever it is, right? Or it could be a voiceover just explaining the significance of something that might impact this particular population. Also, L&D is like I said, embedded usually within the culture of the organization. So I feel like learning leaders definitely have an opportunity to promote listening platforms. So it could be learning circles, it could be just supporting even like the DEI team on maybe initiatives that they have to say, what are we teaching others? What levels, how is this messaging coming out? The other thing I think when I think about this is programs. So are there any programs that the L&D team can latch onto or supplement in some shape or form again with learning? So, and we can go into some details about that if you’d like, but, those are probably the biggest things I will say. The other way that L&D can [have an] impact is [to] keep your ear to the ground, not only internally, but externally as a learning leader, are we joining external conferences, industry events? Are we learning about best practices from other learning leaders? Are we finding out, are we asking questions? Are we being curious to say, you know, we’re dealing with A, B and C here, or we notice that again, our talent pipeline isn’t as robust as we want it to be with women leaders, what are you all doing? And then bring those messages back to your company. I think that’s really important. We end up focusing on the day-to-day so much and get so embedded. Sometimes we forget to look externally.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Definitely I’d love to hear based on your own experience, um, could you share maybe some examples of successful programs or initiatives that you’ve seen make a real difference for women in the workplace?
Neha Trivedi: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been involved in different industries over, gosh, the past 25 plus years. I know I’m dating myself, but. And I’ve really had the chance to see the way some of the initiatives work out. And so one program, or I guess an offering that I’ve seen work out well are business resource groups. So when a company has some sort of a platform where colleagues can interact for specific themes. So for example, a women’s professional network that is a great driver to help. And promote women because again, you can have those conversations together. Now, business resource groups aren’t typically limited, so we’re not limiting this only to women or certain levels or whatever it is. You could, if there is an opportunity to do something like that, and if the business supports it or the organization supports it, that’s fine, but business resource groups are fantastic because they can bring groups of people together, and they can provide instructions, they can provide training, and as a learning leader, learning leaders can and should plug in to their various business resource groups. And I know what we’re thinking: Well, we don’t have time to do that. But if we are on an email with all of the business resource groups, right? They’ve organized in some shape or form, get on that email so that we can then troubleshoot with them and say, how can L&D [provide] support, or, here is how I might be able to support…. I have seen women’s professional networks be successful at several different organizations, and it’s just a matter of starting small and then building up. So it doesn’t have to be a big, massive rollout or implementation. But just start small. The other ones that I’ve seen that are quite successful are leadership programs that are focused on women. So again, I know we want to talk about being inclusive and all of that, but specifically when we are talking about women and leadership opportunities or even exposing them to the different things that they might not be exposed to on a regular level. These types of leadership programs are fantastic. In fact, I will just share that I’m in one right now where I currently work at, and it is for women leaders, and it’s focused on a specific level. And, you know, these types of programs can be run internally, so they can be created with the help of the L&D team and maybe women leaders at the organization. And also, you know, I keep saying women and women leaders, [but] there are advocates, right? You should and can pull in male leaders who are very supportive. I think that it’s important for everyone to hear those voices and hear a variety of voices. So leadership programs and then I … another program or initiative, it’s not really a program, but I am going to say even policies. So for example, there has been some momentum, and this has been largely in Europe, but a lot of American companies have taken this on as well. And that is the discussion around as women get older, having open and honest discussions around menopause. And informing leaders and managers on how to have conversations or how to be comfortable when a woman comes to them that might be on their team to say, listen, I’m going through perimenopause, or whatever it is, right? And I’m going to need a little bit of your understanding as I work through this. Right? So having those educated conversations, the L&D team can help to support those. To provide some of that training. Again, that’s a specific topic, so depending on the topics that we’re dealing with, either they become more broad-based and rolled out to everyone maybe as an option. Or if the company culture permits and says, no, everyone needs to know about this. Roll it out that way. Or be very specific and at least have it available. So if people need it, then they can use it.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah, I love that. I love what you mentioned around bringing in those male advocates. That’s really key for getting that buy-in and support. And also just remembering to start small, you know, with a lot of these big change initiatives, it can be really challenging just getting started. So remembering that it’s okay to start small and, and keeping that in mind.
Neha Trivedi: I totally agree. And also, there are continuous budget pressures, right? And I know as an L&D leader. We have budget pressures all the time, and so we are, we are constantly trying to be innovative to say, what can we do, right? It may not be this massive thing like you said, but let’s start small and let’s see where it goes.
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Sarah Gallo: I want to take a moment to talk really about mentoring and coaching, because we often see those are ways that organizations do invest in employees career development. Neha, can you share more about the role that coaching and mentoring really play in supporting women’s career development and how can businesses make those opportunities are accessible?
Neha Trivedi: Well, gosh, I think they’re both really important, right? And well, depending on where one is working, whatever organization or industry, I think the first thing is to understand what the definitions are. You know, what do we mean by mentoring? What do we mean by coaching? And so as long as that’s understood by the person. In some cases, some companies use mentoring and coaching in one, right? So they could be completely separate programs or they could be together. The point here is having that support for women so that as they go through their careers, they have someone or even a group of people that they can lean on. So when we think about coaching or even mentoring, it can be a one-on-one relationship. It can be a group type of a mentoring circle, if you will. So that social collaborative learning that we talk about all the time. They play, they definitely play a role because they’re going to help any woman who is trying to navigate her career have a sounding board, right? So we always encourage everyone to have trusted advisors, whether it’s internal or it’s external. But if you’re in a mentoring program or you have an identified coach, someone that is willing to talk to you on a regular basis, then you have more of that personal connection that you’re building, right? And, and that person gets to understand and learn more about your goals, but also guide and they can hopefully be an advocate for that. To say, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to be looking out for opportunities as well.” And so you want to have that. Now again, the other word that you’ll hear in here, so you hear coaches, mentors and then sponsors. Sponsors typically…based on the, I’m just going to say the definition that I have, sponsors are usually those people that will connect you to other opportunities, whether it’s in an organization or outside of an organization. And the mentor and the coach, while they can do that, a mentor is probably going to guide you more in around career planning and thinking through your next steps. A coach can do the same thing, but a coach may be taking it to a different level. They can serve as an advocate as well. So do they have a role? Absolutely. I think that, at least for me personally, I have had a coach for quite a while, oh gosh, I want to say since 2015. And that person is outside of any organizations that I’ve worked for. And for me it was important to have that as a separate thing because then that person is neutral. They’re not about the company or about this or that; they don’t have any sort of an agenda. However, I will say I have had coaches within the organizations as well that I’m working at, because again, they do have that internal knowledge and they do have those connections. So I think for connections, for information, for guidance information internally, it’s great to have a mentor or coach. And then externally, depending on where your career is going or how you are planning it, and how do we make these opportunities more accessible? I think that this is about awareness and it’s about encouraging people to understand that having a mentor or coach will help them as an L&D leader. One can work on trying to embed those messages in maybe onboarding [and] in other types of initiatives where we’re talking about career growth and opportunities, so providing those types of content, the type of content and information is important. The other thing is mentoring and coaching tend not to work if the outer organization or the whole organization is not encouraging time for learning and growth. As much as I hate to say it, there has to be a little bit of that foundation and culture to do it. Will it happen if we don’t have that? It can, right? You may not see these large-level programs or initiatives where the company will say, you know what? We’ll sponsor a mentoring program. Let’s create one and let’s get mentors and mentees. It might be more informal. But again, it depends on the industry. It depends on the culture. So I just, I want to be mindful of that and, and so we’re not thinking, well, we’ll just establish this. A lot of things have to come into place.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Definitely having that culture, that supports and prioritizes learning, um, is so important. And I think it’s worth noting that to truly support women at work, it really takes that support from across the business to be successful. Could you share some ways L&D teams can partner with business leaders and HR to better support women in the workplace?
Neha Trivedi: Yeah, absolutely. And the first thing is what I alluded to earlier is keep your ear to the ground, right? Be in the know. Make sure as a learning leader or a learning team, the team is very aware of what’s happening. Check out the com company’s internet where possible. Partner with leaders to say, “Hey, you know, we have these learning offerings,” or “This is what we do to support the company. How can we connect with your groups?” So one thing that I’ve worked on and also seen successfully done at a number of organizations, and I do it at the current organization I’m at, is joining town halls. So different business functions might have town halls that they do periodically or leadership calls, right? They might, these might be meetings with just 20, 30 people, whatever it is, but they are key people that can help take messaging to others, right? They have large spans. And so if we’re able to create some of those partnerships to say, “Hey, you know, we are here. We’re happy to help, we’re happy to support some of these initiatives.” Maybe there’s an ESG initiative going on. Maybe there’s a DEI initiative going on. Maybe there’s something going on with the employee lifecycle, like performance reviews are coming up. Well, wow. Performance reviews or conversations with the manager, the check-ins. What a great time to talk about even unconscious bias or being more inclusive, right? And bringing some of that learning or training in as a component of whatever is being shared. So that is definitely one thing. Be visible, keep your ear to the ground. The other thing is, I would say aligning again. If you, if we want to align with the business functions or with specific leaders across the business, lean on HR business partners. HR business partners are working with different business functions. My team finds a lot of opportunities through our business partners, the HR business partners to say, “Hey, are there any new initiatives coming up? What are we talking about here? How do those align? And we keep our ears open for specifically whether it is something where we can empower women in some shape or form, inform others, but this can work for anything, right? So, it’s something that learning leaders can absolutely use. And then, see we talked about the intranet, understanding what’s happening, [the] employee lifecycle. I think it’s important if we have those leaders ears, if we’re seeing something happening at the organization or we’re part of different conversations, maybe it’s new hired training, or maybe it’s some seasoned managers or whatever, and we hear specific conversations during activities or whatever we’re leading. We need to speak up, right? Like, “Hey, there seems to be a problem here. There was some issue that happened and, and these managers were talking about succession. What are we doing to help women leaders? Or what are we doing to help promote? What is that messaging? So I, you know, part of this is also being innovative and coming up with different ideas and suggestions because sometimes there might not be an initiative that we can latch onto.
Sarah Gallo: Definitely. I love that you really dug into leadership here because we know that is so important, really for any initiative to be successful. I’m wondering if you have any tips on really developing leaders to be able to better support women on their teams and really champion their career growth.
Neha Trivedi: I think before we approach the leaders we have to embed awareness around whether it’s unconscious bias, whether it’s inequalities, what all of that stuff right from the beginning. So there, there need to be either programs or messaging across the board, and then if, if we can right, go to that manager level. Training and awareness, again is important. So if there is a, maybe a new people manager program, anyone who is new to leading a team, we can embed a certain, like a chapter or some work or a workshop around some of these topics. The thing I want to be careful of is, when we talk about developing leaders who can better support women, remember that, and this is something that I’ve found at most of the places I’ve worked with when, when most organizations talk about training leaders about awareness or whatever it is, they’re talking about people managers, and there are so many individual contributors that can be at a director level or at a manager level or a supervisory [level], right? And they have dotted line accountabilities, but they are accountable and able to influence a lot of people. And so we don’t want to forget them, individual contributors. So I think how can we reach out to those people? Absolutely, training is one way, but also partner maybe with the DEI organization, if you have one, because when they have any specific initiatives, there can be targeted training and messaging and, and it’s good for learning leaders to align because we may not be the experts, right? So let’s partner with our SMEs and make sure that what we are rolling out is ticked and tied. The other thing is to better support women. Most companies have a reward structure where they’re going to reward the manager for getting the job done, right? So you meet your deadlines, have results, all of that. So I feel like some companies are doing this more, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. But how about also rewarding managers that promote inclusive environments? Right, and the question that comes up there, there’s no easy answer here because you’re probably thinking, well, how would you measure that Neha? And so that remains to be seen, I think one would have to be creative in how to do that. But I think it’s important to understand what do we reward, because we can put out all the training in the world, [but] if we don’t have the infrastructure to support that, how well is it going to work, right? And is the company a champion for the colleague experience, for talent mobility, for succession planning, for thinking through those talent pipelines? It helps if they are right in some shape or form so that the L&D team can jump on that.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Definitely. Could you touch on how organizations can align L&D efforts with broader strategies around inclusion to create impactful change?
Neha Trivedi: I think part of this is yes, uh, when, when we’re putting together, whether it’s a training effort or a messaging, or rolling out a program, it’s important to think about sustainability, right? Like, how can we keep this going unless they intend it for it to be a one and done, in which case, when I’m consulting with my business stakeholders and partnering with them, I will say, “Well, what’s the use of this if you’re just going… if it’s a check in the box activity, right?” So, one, how can we align broader efforts? Well absolutely. Think about sustainability. So, and then find that group, whether it is the HR team, whether it’s the DEI team or whoever is maybe rolling out initiatives, especially to support inclusion because that is going to spill over and help create more women leaders, I believe. How do you keep it sustainable? Can you leverage the tools as a learning leader that you have to support some of this? What do I mean? If you have a learning management system or a learning experience platform, you can maybe think about hosting some of that training or whatever is developed that can be tracked because again, we want to be able to see how things are being consumed, who is consuming them? Put it in the LMS. If it makes sense, if it aligns well, because then again, you can be, uh, focusing on that sustainability piece. My team has partnered in different organizations, even now, we partner very closely with our DEI team, and when they have something that they have created or they need partnership with creating something, we will, if it makes sense, put it in the learning management system. That way the training becomes searchable; it becomes more widely available. So if there is a targeted audience, if it’s appropriate, fantastic. Make it searchable, make it widely searchable, or put it in a playlist if you have that functionality. So I think that’s key. The other thing is to align efforts with these different initiatives or DEI and create some of that change as an L and D team, if you do have your learning management system and you’re able to get content that you’re purchasing from an external vendor, let’s say, right, because I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore of any organization that completes or creates all of their training internally. It’s just who has that capacity, right? So if we have catalogs and things, when you are refreshing them or when you’re thinking about a new partnership, what kinds of content do they have? Do we have more inclusive stuff? Is there anything that will support, uh, women leaders? I will say in the catalogs that we have right now, we have women-focused modules, they’re for women leaders, and we can market them that way. And as I mentioned, if you have an internal program or maybe a business resource group that is specific and they’re looking for some of this content, we can raise our hand and say we have it, so what would you like to use? Or, let’s market it. Let us help you figure out how to best market it. And so I… to align and to create that lasting change, let’s leverage the resources we have. I think L&D can be a very powerful resource.
Sarah Gallo: Definitely great tips there. Well, I know we’ve covered a lot of ground today and I’m sure we could keep talking for another hour, Neha. But before we do wrap up, are there any final takeaways you’d like to leave our listeners with?
Neha Trivedi: Well, gosh, I…This has been such a great conversation, but I do want to say, because when we talk about things like this, they can seem overwhelming and we mentioned that, right? Start small. But I will, I’m going to share a quote from Margaret Mead. And you know I’m partial to anthropology in many ways, but she’s pretty well known for this quote. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. And so look, I think any L&D team, no matter how small or large you are, if you have to start small, that’s okay. Things take time. They take time to build. It takes time to get the messages out, but once people know that you’re out there, once you have those partnerships, once you create those, [get] the seat at the table, you can start this process and create definitely more suitable and supportive environments for women so that they can grow.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: I love that. It’s a great way to close out the conversation today. Um, so Neha, thank you so much for speaking with us today. This has been such a great conversation. How can our listeners get in touch with you if they like to reach out?
Neha Trivedi: Yeah, great question. If anyone wants to reach out to me, please feel free to contact me through LinkedIn.
Sarah Gallo: For more resources on this topic, check out the episode description or visit the shownotes on our website at TrainingIndustry.com/Podcast. Lastly, don’t forget to rate and review us wherever you tune in to the business of learning. Until next time.
