Mairi Fairley is a uncommon and highly effective voice in each skilled providers and company management, industries historically dominated by males. As a mom who has navigated the calls for of each consulting and senior in-house management, she gives a novel perspective on balancing profession development with household life, difficult trade norms, and empowering ladies in enterprise. Forward of Worldwide Ladies’s Day, she explains the workforce effort at OC&C to assist different ladies break the glass ceiling – within the agency, and past.
You grew to become a companion with OC&C Technique Consultants in 2017 – how did the agency assist you in your ascent?
What made the largest distinction to my development was lively sponsorship. Senior leaders didn’t simply give recommendation – they advocated for me in promotion discussions and put me ahead for stretch roles with actual accountability. I used to be given opportunities to guide main consumer relationships, take on international management roles, and contribute to agency governance.
Equally essential has been the lively assist of each my growth and dealing flexibly. The agency has not solely supplied inner sponsorship, but in addition exterior teaching alongside additionally enabling me to work a 4-day week and take a month off each summer season. These components have all been essential to allow me to work at my greatest in a sustainable manner.
As a companion, how do you now assist to form OC&C’s insurance policies on range, fairness and inclusion?
I’ve had the privilege of main our Ladies’s Community and been a part of the D&I Council, and I’m presently Chair of the Shareholder Committee. In these roles, I’ve focussed on embedding inclusion into how the agency really operates and eradicating a number of the obstacles which our ladies have confronted. This has included equalising parental depart, advocating for higher mentoring and sponsorship, evolving how we assess efficiency and provides suggestions, and fostering connection and communication throughout the agency to extend the visibility of function fashions and different key areas.
I’m notably captivated with formalising sponsorship in order that it isn’t left to probability, and about guaranteeing versatile working works at senior ranges. DEI can’t sit alongside the enterprise – it needs to be constructed into its core methods.
You began your profession with OC&C in 2007, and except for a three-year spell with Hobbs London, you will have been there ever since. What modifications have you ever observed inside the agency over that point referring to DEI?
After I joined in 2007, DEI was strongly rooted in our values however was much less structured. Right this moment, it’s way more intentional and measurable. I (and plenty of others – it’s a workforce effort!) have helped us set targets, observe development extra rigorously, and shift to speaking brazenly in regards to the progress we’re making in addition to challenges we have now. Now we have improved our range throughout all ranges of the agency and have extra seen senior function fashions and illustration throughout our main practical and government management groups.
I’ve additionally advocated for, and seen a shift in how management is outlined. We now recognise that efficient leaders don’t all look or behave the identical manner. Creating area for various management types has been an essential a part of that evolution which I’ve been proud to function mannequin.
The consulting sector’s gender pay hole amongst unbiased consultants is larger than elsewhere in Europe. That means that the issue goes past structural causes inside particular person companies – because it pervades a phase of the market the place ‘workplace politics’ is eliminated. What wants to vary to reshape that tradition?
The sector hole reveals tradition issues past particular person companies. It’s properly reported that girls are much less more likely to self-promote, negotiate and advocate for themselves than their male counterparts. Whereas it’s a multi-faceted and complex challenge, there are a variety of actions that in my expertise assist speed up cultural change:
- Larger lively sponsorship and advocates for top potential ladies, offering them entry to, and confidence to step into extra management roles.
- Valuing a broader set of management types. Management remains to be too typically related to conventional traits reminiscent of assertiveness, confidence, and directness. This slim view limits the potential expertise pool and fails to acknowledge the effectiveness of different management types, reminiscent of collaborative, empathetic, and adaptive management.
- Personally, it wasn’t till I encountered a feminine CEO who embodied a extra collaborative management strategy that I really recognised the chief I wished to change into. I left OC&C to work for her, studying from her model and strategy earlier than returning to the agency as a way more assured and succesful chief.
- Larger promotion of versatile working – not as a concession, however to unlock higher, extra sustainable management throughout the board.
- Proactively assist and speed up careers after parental depart, by being delicate to ramp-up/down durations, providing specialist teaching for newly returning mother and father, and offering advantages and insurance policies that assist working mother and father (e.g. emergency childcare provision).
Tradition modifications when what we worth, and reward, modifications.
What recommendation would you give to different ladies pondering of going into the consulting trade?
Consulting gives extraordinary breadth and affect, and an exceptional studying curve all through your profession. My recommendation can be – again your self and be clear about your ambition. Search sponsors who will advocate for you, not simply mentors who advise you.
Select organisations that genuinely assist versatile working and do not forget that management isn’t one-size-fits-all. Authenticity is highly effective – you don’t want to evolve to a single archetype to succeed.
However above all, know that you’re in command of how you do issues and don’t be afraid to problem the best way issues are completed and make them work for you. A number of the greatest recommendation I ever obtained was ‘perceive that by saying sure right here, you’re implicitly saying no some other place and shaping the system that manner’.
As OC&C is a global agency, it should have encountered totally different cultures and approaches to DEI. How does the agency adapt to every native context, with out compromising on inclusivity?
We’re clear on our international rules – inclusivity, assist, and adaptability – however we implement them in methods which can be domestically related. Tradition varies by nation, and listening to native groups is important. Some challenges are common, whereas others are extra localised, relying on many elements from cultural norms to enterprise maturity, by way of to the combination of people in an workplace.
Over my tenure at the agency, we’ve set targets by market after which centered on amplifying particular initiatives the place they’re most wanted, for instance, growing the regularity of networking occasions for senior ladies throughout our European places of work (since every workplace has fewer people than our bigger UK workplace), and reviewing our advantages packages to align with norms within the USA. We additionally actively share learnings throughout markets on areas like recruitment, so we can unfold greatest apply and speed up enhancements.
Authorities attitudes to DEI have shifted radically in the previous few years. Within the US, the White Home has moved to ban initiatives associated to it, whereas additionally pushing personal firms to drop them – comparatively efficiently. Within the UK, political events main within the polls, and taking management of native councils, have additionally adopted this backlash to DEI. Do you foresee any methods through which DEI champions may efficiently counter this development because it arrives within the UK?
DEI should be framed as a efficiency agenda, not a political one. The proof is evident: various groups make higher selections and drive stronger outcomes.
The UK has grown its board illustration of ladies to 43% throughout the FTSE 350. However in keeping with PwC’s Ladies in Work Index, the nation now ranks 18th amongst OECD nations – falling eight locations since 2020, within the steepest post-pandemic decline of any main economic system. Why do you assume comparable economies are outpacing the UK on this matter?
Board-level progress within the UK is encouraging, however pipeline growth has lagged. International locations that make investments extra in childcare, parental depart and versatile senior roles create stronger foundations.
The mid-career stage is essential. With out sponsorship and structural assist at that time, progress stalls. Illustration at the highest displays the well being of the entire system beneath it.
Italy and France each carried out laws which held firms chargeable for a scarcity of ladies within the board-room. Even with the UK’s present progress on that entrance, it’s nonetheless behind each of them – is there any advantage to the concept of regulatory intervention right here?
Regulation can speed up progress and set minimal requirements, as seen in France and Italy. Transparency and accountability mechanisms can create momentum. Nonetheless, it additionally dangers a component of ‘field ticking’
Regulation alone is unlikely to rework tradition. Sustainable change requires organisations to put money into sponsorship, inclusive management growth and structural flexibility alongside any regulatory framework.
I personally favour focused transparency and accountability mixed with incentives for companies to construct sponsorship and development methods.
With out that, what can UK organisations do higher, to see features past the board-room, which profit ladies at each stage of work?
For my part, organisations have to focus on the complete expertise lifecycle and the tradition and methods inside which they function. Which means structured sponsorship, management growth that recognises totally different types, significant versatile senior roles, and clear return-to-work pathways for fogeys.
My expertise is that clear measurement of progress (at each stage) is one other essential enabler. It permits identification of the place ladies drop out of the pipeline and encourages firms to intervene earlier and extra successfully. Now we have considerably improved and developed our potential to trace and measure this knowledge over my time at OC&C and it has enabled us to be extra focused and efficient in our evolution and interventions.
What’s your key message this Worldwide Ladies’s Day?
When ladies are supported to guide authentically and sustainably, organisations carry out higher – and that advantages everybody.
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