On Thursday April 12 I will be a keynote speaker at the DiversityBusiness.com Annual Conference. I spoke at the conference last year, to very high reviews and several new clients, about gender communication. This year I will be speaking on “Get GenderSmart! Plug The Brain Drain - How To Retain Women.”

The foundation of this work comes from my 14 years of experience as an expert in gender issues and communication, my GenderSmart® book (see link at right), over 80 in-depth interviews with managers, recruiters, and female employees from all levels and several industries, and extensive secondary research on recruiting and retention issues.

My brief presentation will focus on three key areas, listed below.

1. What women want from their career
2. Key behavorial and communication differences between men and women and how to work with them more effectively while recruiting and managing
3. Specific ideas, initiatives, activities to help recruit and retain women.

Plus, I will be facilitating a small-group activity with the audience of about 600 to brainstorm ideas and activities they have used successfully at their companies, then share many of these ideas with the entire group.

Retention of women is a huge corporate issue - their exodus is a very expensive problem. Most companies are by now aware that aside from the critical diversity issues involved, hiring and retining women is clearly a business issue and a highly financial one, for several reasons:
- Research indicates that companies with the highest number of women executives financially outperforms companies with fewest women.
- Turnover costs, both quantitative and qualitative, are astronomical and rising
- The need for talent will become even more critical as baby boomers retire
- Companies need to mirror the markets they target, so to acquire the growing women’s market, companies need women
- Many studies confirm that both men and women prefer a participative management style. This is also called a feminine style, and more women use it than men. This is part of the reason why the first reason above exists…women (or people with a feminine style) are generally better at managing people.

I am honored to be a part of this esteemed conference again! Participants are supplier diversity, human resources, and other managers and executives from a broad range of excellent companies, several of them already my clients. I’ll report back afterwards with some of the ideas generated.

Till my next post, happy retaining!