Sarah Al Hashimi (left), Head of Communications at Siemens Qatar, with Claudia Massei (second left), CEO Siemens Oman, Professor Susan L Karamanian (second right), Dean of the Colloge of Law and Public Policy at HBKU, and Lana Khalaf, Country Manager of M
The importance of gender diversity in the workplace was the focus of discussion at the Siemens Future Talks: Woman and the #FutureofWork held at the Sharq Village and Spa yesterday which was organised by Siemens Qatar in partnership with the German Business Council Qatar.
During the event, women business leaders from various fields shared at a panel discussion the challenges and achievements they faced in promoting gender diversification in the workforce as well as in engaging more women towards managerial posts in the corporate ladder.
Sarah Al Hashimi, Head of Communications at Siemens Qatar opened the talks by saying gender diversity in the workplace should be treated as a business priority. She added: “More women are graduating with degrees, but the numbers are not represented in the percentage of female participation in the workforce”.
Quoting a McKinsey report, Al Hashimi also said that as much as $12.5 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by improving women’s equality in the workplace. Gender equality in the workplace can also contribute between three to six percent to a company’s profitability, she added.
According to Microsoft Qatar’s Country Manager Lana Khalaf, intentional female hiring created more business impact in her workplace. She added: “Initially we didn’t have quotas in Microsoft, and our diversity when it comes to gender, when we introduced the quota, it was increased from 10 percent to 30 percent. It’s a balance. There is a sense of responsibility to empower people in the workplace, whether male or female. I think today, it is the responsibility of this generation of the women in the workplace to be able to prove to the world they have the right stamina to become female leaders, and they should have the perseverance to achieve this”.
Khalaf also said that Microsoft this year has also just hired its first Qatari female employee. “When I joined, we were only two females, now we’re 25 females in the office. This year I have also hired the first Qatari female in our office. To be honest, I didn’t hire her because she was a female, or she was a Qatari. I hired her because she was the best out of the pool I have. As a Qatari, she had a lot of options available, but we were able to attract such talent because of global exposure,” Khalaf added.
Claudia Massei, Chief Executive Officer at Siemens Oman, who replaced a male CEO, highlighted the importance of training staffs which builds loyalty to the company. Speaking about women who are quick to leave companies, she said: “I think that goes along setting expectations, at some point. It’s a mix of being a woman, of not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, of being millennial wanting to advance quite fast. I think some people, they just don’t have the patience or this attitude to say ‘let’s keep going’, and ‘let’s keep networking and sometime, something may come along”.
Professor Susan Karamanian, Dean of the College of Law & Public Policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University added: “An institution needs to establish a policy in terms of personnel for promoting diversity, and then look at each candidate individually. It’s more of a holistic approach in evaluating a candidate to be a good fit in the company”.
