As the conversation around diversity and women’s leadership in travel intensifies, new data from Women in Hospitality, Travel & Leisure reveals how the hospitality, travel and leisure (HTL) industry is progressing.
The report, titled WiHTL Annual Report - Diversity in HTL: From Intention to Action - 2020 Edition, includes research from The MBS Group of data from more than 120 HTL businesses and conversations with 100 chairs, CEOs and HR directors, combined with a survey conducted by PwC of more than 1,500 industry employees.
The findings show that female and BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic people) representation at the most senior levels - board, executive committee and direct reports - has increased over the course of 2019, with women representation growing most at the board level, up 5.3% to 28.9%.
Subscribe to our newsletter below
Some 43% of companies surveyed say the percentage of women on executive committees increased in 2019, and about half (47%) say the number of women at the board level has improved.
The report also finds that women now make up 36.4% of non-executive director roles, though less than 10% of chair roles are held by women.
Although 77% of senior leaders believe their companies have made “significant” improvement over the past year in addressing diversity and inclusion, employees feel differently, with 65% saying they’ve seen no signs of improvement.
In fact, the report shows that 84% of businesses are not on track to reach 33% female representation across the most senior leadership levels by the end of 2020 (a target set by the Hampton-Alexander Review for all FTSE 350 businesses).
Additionally, 15% of companies still have all-male boards, and 10% of businesses are led by an all-male executive committee.
The HTL industry has the most work to do around ethnic diversity: According to the report, 82.5% of companies have no BAME leaders at the board level, about 80% have no BAME leaders on their executive committee and about 40% of companies have no BAME representation at the direct report level, which is the most populous leadership level.
There are also no BAME leaders in the role of chair, CEO or senior independent director at FTSE 350 HTL companies.
Room for improvement
In order to continue to progress diversity and inclusion initiatives, there is a need for more senior sponsorship and adequate resources, the report finds.
Additional blockers to progress include the complexity of coordinating diversity and inclusion strategies, sector pressures that make it difficult to prioritize diversity and inclusion and slow staff turnover.
According to the report, just 25% of companies have appointed someone specifically to lead the diversity and inclusion agenda, and about one-third of companies say they feel they have access to the right internal data on diversity.
On the employee side, just 23% of employees say their organizations have programs in pace to recruit diverse candidates, and only 12% say their companies offer unconscious bias training, which has been proven to improve gender and ethnic diversity.
At the current rate of progress, it will take 20 years to close the gender pay gap, the report also states.
“Gender equality is now a business-critical issue for all current and future leaders,” says Denise Wilson OBE, chief executive of the Hampton-Alexander Review.
“The companies making the most progress have allocated a significant budget, held senior leadership accountable and are lifting the lid on every single people process in the organization, right the way down. Leaders in particular need to inform themselves of the debate and step up, but everybody has a part to play in creating a gender-equal workplace.”
A download of the full report is available here.