Tag: Leadership

TCS shares nearly tripled in value under his leadership 

India-based IT services giant Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS). announced Rajesh Gopinathan will step down as managing director and CEO of the company.

Gopinathan was appointed to the role of CEO in 2017. He was reappointed last year as CEO until 2027. The company said Gopinathan decided to step down to pursue his other interests.

The Board of Directors said it has considered his request and accepted it. Gopinathan will continue with the company until 15 September 2023 to provide transition and support to his successor.

Gopinathan has been with the company since 2001 and has held multiple leadership positions, including that of CFO.

According to Reuters, under Gopinathan’s leadership, TCS shares have nearly tripled in value, revenue has almost doubled and profit has risen about 60%, as of last quarter.

In January the group reported revenue rose 8.4%, as measured in US dollars, in its fiscal third quarter ended 31 December 2022 to a total of $7.08 billion.

The Board also announced that it has nominated K. Krithivasan as the CEO Designate with effect from 16 March 2023. Krithivasan will go through a transition with Gopinathan and will be appointed as the Managing Director & CEO in the next financial year.

Krithivasan is presently President and Global Head of the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) Business Group at Tata Consultancy Services. Krithivasan has been part of the global technology sector for over 34 years, having joined Tata Consultancy Services in 1989. During his tenure at TCS, he has held various leadership roles in delivery, customer relationship management, large program management and sales.

Chandrasekaran, Chairman, TCS, said: “Over the last six years, Rajesh has provided strong leadership as the MD & CEO and has laid the foundation for the next phase of TCS’ growth with significant investments in cloud, agile and automation to help clients accelerate their transformation.”

Gopinathan said, “Having worked with Krithi over the last two decades, I am confident that he is best positioned to take TCS to greater heights along with the leadership team. I will be working closely with Krithi to give him all the support that he needs.”

Share this article on social media

Sweden has most women in leadership roles

Findings from a survey conducted by Reboot Online have revealed that Sweden is the best European country for women to work in while the UK was ranked 12th.

Reboot SEO Agency found that the UK has the highest number of women in leadership positions of all the European countries studied, taking into account wage equality for similar work and estimated income – that’s 317 active-duty leadership positions in 2022. However, the data revealed a disappointing 11.6 paid full weeks of maternity leave which equals a score of 6.9/ 100 for the UK.

The Reboot Online survey also showed that Sweden is the best European country offering the best work opportunities for women in 2023, with a combined total of 241.4 points out of a possible 300. It is unsurprising that Swedish women thrive in the workplace, as the data showed that there are plenty of opportunities for women in leadership positions (93.1/100) which equates to 13.8 fewer points than neighbouring country Norway in third place.

Following in second place was Finland with a combined score of 227.6 out of 300, 13.8 fewer points than Sweden. Finland scored 86.2/100 points for women in leadership positions and economic opportunity. That equated to 65.5 more points for women in leadership than Estonia in seventh with 20.7 out of 100 for this category.

In third place is Norway with a combined total of 213.8 points out of a possible 300, 6.8 more points than Lithuania in fourth. The data showed that the country offers 39.9 full paid weeks of maternity leave, which gave them a score of 55.2/100, equal to the maternity leave in Finland.

Turkey is the country with the least economic opportunities for women

In last place is Turkey, scoring 31 points out of a possible 300. Despite its poor performance, the country surprisingly earned more points for women in leadership (27.6/100) than countries known to champion gender equality, such as Austria (13.8/100 points).

Naomi Aharony, CEO and Co-Founder at Reboot SEO Agency commented: “The overall results have suggested that there is some progress in terms of gender equality in the workplace in Europe. Norway, Finland and Sweden ranked highly, indicating that there are some improvements being made. Although, the disappointing positions of European countries such as Austria and Czech Republic reaffirm that the progress towards gender parity remains slow in Europe.

Although it is good to see some advancement, women still face numerous challenges when it comes to gender equality in the workplace that involves not only the wage gap, lack of leadership representation, government incentives and work-life balance.”

Full report can be found at https://www.rebootonline.com/

Share this article on social media

Outside of the tech industry, women accounted for just 14% of executive roles

Recruitment experts have analysed the gender makeup of Chief Information Officers at FTSE 100 companies ahead of International Women’s Day on the 8th of March.

Key findings from the unique research include:

• Between 2018 – 2022, only 42 women held CIO positions compared to 138 men
• In 2022, there were only 10 more female CIOs than there were in 2018

As we approach Women’s Day, it’s noted that equality is no longer enough and can be exclusionary. Simply put, equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities, but this only works if everyone has a level playing field to begin with.

Whereas equity recognises that each person has different circumstances and allocates the specific resources and opportunities needed to reach the same outcome.

While there has been a bigger discourse around the gender disparity at leadership level in tech over the past few years, research carried out by Frank Recruitment Group shows that progress is slow, as last year, there were only 10 more female CIOs at FTSE 100 companies than there were in 2018.

The findings are consistent with other recent research into diversity and inclusion at FTSE 100 companies. Outside of tech executive positions, Ernst & Young reported that women accounted for just 14% of executive directorships last year. Even looking at management roles as Statista did in 2020, women made up less than 35%.

According to Revolent, it’s a similar story at Fortune 500 companies, where women hold just 19% of CIO roles and have a shorter average tenure.

This all begs the question, is the slow progress due to the tech industry’s failure to embrace equity in its efforts to achieve equality?

Find the full report, including some strategies for increasing female representation in senior roles and methodology, here: https://www.frankgroup.com/blog/where-are-the-female-leaders/.

Share this article on social media

Leaders share insights on how to make a better working world

In partnership with Yahoo Finance Australia, Talent has released ‘Leaders Building a Better World of Work’. This is a list of leaders providing insights on what they are doing to make a better working world.

The list includes leaders such as Jennie Rogerson from Canva, Mary Haddock-Staniland from Timely, Vanessa Sorenson from Microsoft NZ, and Paul Sigaloff from Yahoo!.

The list looks at the thought-provoking side of leadership and provides an overview of what businesses are experiencing in this post-pandemic.  Their insights and actions should provide leaders with strategies to take into the new world of work.

Mark Nielsen, Global CEO, Talent, commented: “True leadership is forged through times of crisis and if there is one thing we have all experienced in the past two years is that the way we thought we did business has been turned on its head. The responsibility and demands from leaders have also changed dramatically, and a one-size-fits-all approach to work just doesn’t cut it. Work-life balance, clarity of purpose, a supportive manager, and inclusion are core focuses to team members. To remain competitive, leaders and businesses need to adapt to this new norm.”

Some of the insights from leaders included:

Stuart Hughes, Chief Information & Digital Officer, Rolls-Royce advised: “People are looking for companies that will engage with them on a personal level, with greater flexibility and work-life balance. Some call this ‘hybrid working’, but I like to refer to it as a ‘borderless office’. If you have a framework that’s very rigid i.e., you have to be in the office two days a week, specifically Tuesdays and Wednesdays, you’re just restricting your teams’ behaviour. Is that really the best way?”

Fiona Thompson, Group Executive, People, Culture & Advocacy, Suncorp said:  “A challenge and opportunity for companies is evolving leadership styles, rituals, and behaviours to enable businesses to transform into their future selves. Leaders will play a pivotal role in creating and reinforcing organisational culture, developing our people, and ensuring talent pools are identified and available.”

Nicole Reid, People Experience, Xero suggested: “For over two years, we’ve been dealing with the impact that living through a pandemic, social justice turning points and other factors have on how employees approach work each day. Companies that are proactive – inviting discussion, initiating events and programs, and providing other support – will enable their teams to not only feel safe to talk about things that in the past were not common practice in the workplace but to feel encouraged and welcomed to speak up.”

Deborah Choi, Managing Director, Founderland commented: “A better world of work acknowledges that there is no ‘one size fits all’ that truly fits all. To be inclusive at work, is to be fundamentally flexible and dynamic, because that is also at the essence what we all are.”

Share this article on social media

Good management key to staff retention following the Great Resignation

New research from people analytics company, Visier, has revealed that 43% of UK employees admit to having quit their jobs due to bad management. A further 53% are currently seeking new roles due to their current manager.

In the study of 2,100 workers, 85% agree that good management is key to their happiness at work. Four in ten said they stayed in jobs longer than they planned because they had good relationships with their managers.

The majority of employees surveyed believe that flexible working is beneficial for both workers (74%) and businesses (69%). But while staff enjoy flexible hours and remote work,  it is clear that lack of face-time has been damaging for employee-manager relationships. The main contributors to this are:

  • Lack of face-to-face meetings (51%)
  • Increased working from home (44%)
  • An over-reliance on emails (44%)

Only 48% of workers are comfortable discussing their personal lives with their managers, indicating that leaders are struggling to build strong relationships with their teams.

Daniel Mason, VP EMEA of Visier, commented: “The old cliché – people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers – rings true, and the pandemic has made it harder for leaders to develop personal relationships with employees.”

“This isn’t a case of leaders becoming bad managers overnight, but instead, they are making difficult decisions with less information available to them.”

“The move to remote and hybrid working has starved managers of the opportunity to observe and meet with team members. Face-to-face interactions and other natural moments to develop a rapport are fewer, so managers should look to enhance their toolkit with data and insights to better understand and anticipate employee needs.”

When asked to identify the most valuable traits of a good manager, the most popular responses were as follows:

  • Treating people well (47%)
  • Listening to workers (47%)
  • Showing respect to all members of staff (47%)

On the other hand, the attributes of a bad manager were:

  • Failure to listen (49%)
  • Being unapproachable (47%)
  • Treating other members of staff differently (43%)
  • Shouting at the team (42%)

The most important factors for happiness in the workplace were:

  • Enjoying their work (45%)
  • Good pay (39%)
  • Good colleagues (35%)

Further data revealed that:

Sixty-two percent of the respondents felt that they currently had a good manager, and 45% believed that they could do the job better themselves. This group was questioned as to how they would improve, and their responses were:

  • 53% said they understood the concerns of other employees
  • 46% would treat all members of staff with equal respect
  • 36% would make an effort to get to know the people they manage better

Mason continues: “Businesses have spent the past few decades using data and other innovations to improve customer relationships and increase revenues. Many organisations are yet to harness these methods to better understand their most important asset – employees.”

“Every organisation already has a wealth of people data scattered throughout. Modern tools and analytics can find and organise this data to generate people insights to help you better understand and manage talent. When these insights are combined with other types of data from across the organisation, the result can drive more impactful business outcomes and unlock the next wave of growth and success.”

With employers struggling to fill vacancies and retain key talent following the Great Resignation, it’s clear that good management is essential to staff retention.

Share this article on social media

Effective handling will determine future business growth

With the constant increase in cost of living and rising taxation, UK citizens are in for a very difficult time. But businesses are also impacted, and business owners may be at risk of forgetting the physical and emotional effect of this cost-of-living crisis on their workforce.

According to Sophie Wade, author of Empathy Works: The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work, empathy is critical to assisting business leaders in understanding employees’ situations, adjusting their management styles, and providing them with appropriate support.

Wade provides the following tips for leading through this financial crisis:

  • Employers need to build a welcoming, inclusive, and supportive corporate culture where the workforce feels safe enough to share or reach out for help.
  • Leaders need to be empathetic, actively listen and show care and concern about their employees’ situations.
  • Create flexible workplace policies that help individuals improve their situations, for example, by reducing commuting costs by working from home.
  • Lead by example by embracing and demonstrating the benefits of cost-saving initiatives.
  • Provide benefits that help employees handle challenging circumstances, such as financial management talks and courses.

Sophie Wade, work futurist commented: “The pandemic catalysed significant changes in workplace environments. As leaders – whether at the senior executive level or as a team manager – we had to manage our businesses with a more human-centric orientation. Our corporate cultures have been transitioning from transactional to experiential, elevating trust and empathy as key values, as we recognize the challenges faced by the people we employ or work alongside and their greater emotional needs. While we are finally emerging from the COVID-19 crisis, the new cost of living crisis is having a significant impact on so many aspects of our lives. We are having to reconsider or limit how we light and heat our homes, commute to work and put food on the table with smaller pay checks as our contributions rise.”

“To manage this new crisis, we can learn from the last two years. As managers, we embraced empathy and practiced it with our teams to be more attuned to what they were going through. Now again, taking the same human-centric perspective, we need to listen to employees, understand their situations and needs, and nurture trust-based cultures that create a sense of belonging and community that can support them. We can recognise each person’s different points of view and circumstances as well as understand that some may be embarrassed to admit their financial and emotional struggles. The empathy that we elevated in our cultures and integrated into management practices during the pandemic should now be pervasive, ongoing, and consistent. Every employee should feel there is someone they feel comfortable to turn to, voice their concerns, and seek out the help they need.”

“I know many businesses are adapting to these new conditions. We must think about how our employees are coping as well. After the pandemic, workers are looking for stability not more strain. We must stop to consider what we can do to support our colleagues. Taking a human-centric, thoughtful, and empathetic approach, we can figure out how to improve workplace culture, benefits, and retention, and ensure the sustainable growth potential for our businesses.”

Clearly, leaders learning to empathise with their employees during this financial crisis is essential for ensuring a sustainable future for their businesses.

Share this article on social media