Transcript - Gender Pay Gap Review Panel - Diversity in Change - 24 January 2019

Gender Pay Gap Review Panel Witness: Ms. J. Hall , Diversity in Change

Thursday, 24th January 2019

[Note: Some parts of this transcript have been redacted]

Panel:

Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence (Vice Chairman) Senator K.L. Moore

Deputy J.H. Perchard of St. Saviour

Witness:

Ms. J. Hall , Diversity in Change

[15:10]

Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence (Vice Chairman):

Those rules, while pertinent, are not entirely relevant to you in the sense that they are principally for Ministers but you are free to read through them and understand them. Thank you so much for coming in and joining us here.

Ms. J. Hall : That is all right.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Louise, the chairman, cannot make it today so I am stepping in as vice chair in that respect. We will start off by just stating our names for the record. So I am Deputy Kirsten Morel , I am vice chair of the Gender Pay Gap Review Panel.

Senator K.L. Moore :

I am Senator Kristina Moore , a member of the panel.

Deputy J. H. Perchard of St. Saviour :

Deputy Jess Perchard. I am also a member of the panel.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

If you do not mind as well?

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes, sure, I am Janet Hall . I currently work at a law firm, as a strategy programme manager. One of the reasons I was asked, I think, to be here was that I set up the Diversity in Change group and also set up the gender pay gap discussion back in October, which I know Deputy Doublet was part of.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Yes, she was a speaker at it, very good as well as I remember. Thank you for coming along. We are here because as a review panel we are trying to understand whether there is a gender pay gap in Jersey and on top of that the effect and the causes of the gender pay gap in Jersey. It is interesting to see it as a quantitative piece on the one hand but equally exploring the effects of it is a more qualitative piece and that is kind of why we are here. I would like to get started just by asking you if you could give a brief overview of the Diversity in Change network and how it came about and what it does.

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes, sure. We are fairly new, we only started in March last year around International Women's Day. The aim really was for me from a personal perspective I have worked in the change profession, which includes project management, programme management, business analysis, change consultants, that type of role. I have been working on an off in that profession for about 20 years and I noticed in the last 2 to 3 years that the number of women who are applying for jobs - because I had been advertising a lot recently - seemed to be declining, and there seemed to be very much a similar type of person applying particularly for project management roles. I suppose it concerned me because I wondered what happened to all the women that I had previously worked with, where they had gone, and why we were not attracting new, different types of people into the role, so not just your classic white male in their 30s to late 40s. I was chatting to a friend, who worked with me as well in project management, and I just said to them: "I think it would be really good to understand why this is happening, how we can improve the profile of what we do as a profession" because I think it is quite a broad profession and it touches on lots of different industries. I just thought: "Let us get chatting." It was really just to get a group of like-minded people together to talk about the issues that we face, not just as women. We started with gender initially but we would like to move on to disability and race, for example, as well, although Jersey has its own peculiarities when it comes to those sorts of things. Gender is what we focused on first. What has come out - because we have not had a couple of meetings more recently, which is partly because of my time but also with Christmas - what we decided was we said about Jersey in particular that there is a lot of not secrecy but there is not a lot of transparency is probably a better way of putting it, around pay. It just so happened that we had a couple of people in their 20s who had moved over from the U.K. (United Kingdom) who had obviously seen all of the information about the gender pay gap legislation and publication of the inflation and said: "Do we not do that in Jersey?" I said: "In Jersey we do not even have equal pay law so I doubt we are going to have a gender pay gap legislation if we do not have the foundation in place." It just sparked a discussion, hence why we ended up having that gender pay gap panel, but also we had a discussion about what it could almost be like a therapeutic group some months because it is talking about the things that we face in our profession. It is not just for women, we have men in the group as well, and that is really important to me that we have both genders in the discussion and also diversity in the types of people and different views, different backgrounds, because as studies show, the more diverse the group the better they are commercially, better thinking and so on. As a group it has been interesting. It has given some of the people in the group the ability to talk openly and honestly about some of the challenges they have faced as women.

[15:15]

In our profession in particular, we spend a lot of time going and talking to the senior members of staff in the financial services sector, in the States, in law and so on and you have to have that gravitas in some ways to be taken seriously. I do think sometimes - I know I have experienced it and people in the group have experienced it - as a woman you do feel the difference sometimes in those situations. We have all said it ourselves, that we have been in a meeting for a project and we are immediately assumed to be the notetakers. For us it was nice to have that group of people where we could be open and honest. What was also very nice is there was one guy in the group who was about to have a child and he said: "I never thought of these things, I had never realised this is what you faced." He is brilliant, I have worked with him before, very open, honest guy but I just think sometimes people, if they have not experienced it, do not realise it goes on. That is why it is important to have men in the room for those discussions, because sometimes they just do not appreciate that is what we face.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

I attended that discussion, it was really well attended, I thought. I was quite surprised by that. Do you think that is because the change management industry is quite a motivated industry or why do you think it was so well attended? There was probably about 70-odd people there.

Ms. J. Hall :

There was about 40, I think.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Forty? It felt like a lot more.

Ms. J. Hall :

Just from talking to people that I know, I think people are just genuinely interested in the fact that in Jersey we have no equal pay laws and that there is all this information that is coming out about the gender pay gap. From a personal perspective, I have quite a lot of contacts anyway because I have worked here for some time and I have worked in lots of different companies. I think we are all a little bit tired of the fact that we are still having these discussions. A lot of people just feel that, with the #metoo movement as well, this is something that we need to start addressing now and things have not moved quickly enough. From a personal perspective, I have a degree in mechanical engineering, my first degree is in mechanical engineering, and when I went to university there was 10 women and 100 guys. Now, I did some research because I do this because it is of interest to me and that has not changed in 20 years. That saddens me. What has happened that we have still not moved on as well as we thought we should be doing. We have had all the push on the S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), push on getting women into engineering and for some reason it just does not seem to be progressing as we would have hoped. I think there is probably a little bit of frustration, people are a bit more fed up about it and because it is a lot more prevalent in the media that is why people are interested in attending. Also, just to add, I think the publication of the States pay was something that has also generated a lot more interest and I wish other industries would do the same thing.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Yes, we will be asking about that. Just literally for the record: do you personally think there is a gender pay gap in Jersey?

Ms. J. Hall :

Definitely. I have done a lot of research in terms of law firms and financial services, reading all of the HSBC, the Allen and Overy, the PwC data that has come out. They have gender pay gaps. It is fairly prevalent, especially in partnerships and especially when it comes to bonuses. We are very much in those professions - financial services, consultancy and legal industries - and I doubt that we are that much different. From my experience of working in Jersey, we are generally behind anyway. My gut feel is it is probably even worse than what has been published in the U.K.

Senator K.L. Moore :

You have mentioned some elements of legislation that do not exist as yet in Jersey. Do you think that the first space for creating change we have dragged our feet perhaps for the last 20 years and you are concerned by a lack of change, where do we start? Is it the legislation or would you say there are other things that need to catalyse change?

Ms. J. Hall :

It is a good question on the legislation because I have gone around in circles. There is the quota bit as well that can be legislated for. I suppose if you had asked me 5 years ago I would have said I do not agree with quotas and I do not think that equal pay law should be an issue because we should just be morally and ethically paid equal pay for equal jobs. The problem is that my experience has not been that and it has continued to not be that. I am pleased to say on the record that I am not talking about my current role, but I can talk about previous roles and that has just not been my experience. There has to be something legislatively that goes hand in hand with other change. If you do the legislation on its own I do not think it is ever effective, there has to be wider cultural types of changes. Just to give you an example of that, in the media recently there was a Future Jersey pamphlet that came out; it took me until about page 20 to find a woman in that. The implication is, reading the Future Jersey document, that it is all about white males between the ages of 30 to 50. I do not know if you have it but if you look at it you will see that. Yes, the legislation is required but culturally we need to challenge ourselves as well to look at those things, because that is really not look at our youngsters, what message is that giving our children if they look at that? So legislation is important. I will not obviously mention the company, but I was witness myself to being promoted twice in fairly quick succession and finding out that one of my colleagues was being paid more than me. So when I got promoted obviously I found out they were being paid more than me in my senior role to them as well.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

So they were subordinates?

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes, they were reporting to me. That is not the first time I have experienced it or have heard other women have experienced the same thing. I would imagine there is more of an issue that people are willing to discuss, because we are not allowed to be transparent about our salaries in the private sector.

Senator K.L. Moore :

In the research that you have done, and this is an area that has struck me through our work, at what point do you think that gender pay disparity begins? Because it is often said it is all about the baby thing but when one considers what happens, it is a common occurrence that when a couple have their first baby they have a discussion and it seems in general it is the woman's salary that is already lagging behind the man and so the decision is taken in 8 out of 10 cases perhaps that it is the woman who steps back and allows the other half to continue, purely for financial reasons. The man is already ahead.

Ms. J. Hall :

I think it is more than that. From the research I have done in law firms, and it is probably similar in principle in the financial services sector, you get to what they call associates, senior associate level, and there is a big loss of women in the profession at that level. What you will find is that is called the baby factor but not every woman wants children, in fact I did not want children for a very long time, but it is the assumption, the unconscious bias, which is a really important point on this. It is the unconscious bias that people hold that women, even though you are in your mid to late 20s and you are successful, at some point in their 30s is now going to have a child. That probably impacts that salary point and it is even if they have not had a child yet. Does that make sense? I think there is an unconscious bias that comes with that. There is research to show that if you look at the pay, in your 20s to 30s the parity of pay is generally equal, so all the way through that age bracket, and it is in the 30s to 40s where it becomes unequal, partly because of that unconscious bias and the assumption made that a woman is going to have a child. It is a difficult one as well, I think, because I do not think it is just about pay, it is a cultural thing. In the U.K. even though they have more equal parental leave, still very much the onus is on the woman. There is a cultural issue here as well that the men should take a role to look after the child, it is not the woman is the primary carer, it is a joint and equal role that you can do as parents. That is what my husband and I do. I have always earned more than my husband generally in my profession, apart from when I was a lawyer, interestingly, but from our perspective he still wants a career, I still want a career, so we look at doing it in an equal manner. Admittedly, his job is more flexible in some ways than mine was previously and it allowed him to work more flexibly, but I do think it is about culturally understanding that this should be something we should be sharing and we should not be constantly looking at parenting as primarily a female role. I think that will make a big difference.

Deputy J.H. Perchard:

How do you think we can effectively tackle unconscious bias without waiting for the next generation to come through?

Ms. J. Hall :

The key thing is you tackle it the media is a good one, as an example. You need to just read some of the news headlines. I am not just saying it is just Jersey but generally the way they report on things. Even Serena Williams, as a classic example, one of my idols, a fantastic tennis player,

but it is the way she is reported. She is strong-willed and so on, she is aggressive. Whereas if Roger Federer did the same sort of thing it would be a very different type of response. There are things you can immediately challenge, we call it "calling it out", even in your day-to-day life. I have a daughter who is 3½ years-old and I have called out with her nursery, for example, when they have parties, it is princesses and superheroes. My daughter loves pirates but she loves princesses, that is fine, and she also loves superheroes. Let us not pigeonhole our children at such a young age. My other big bugbear in Jersey is the education system. Unconscious bias, I think, unfortunately is going to perpetuate in the gender context and probably in a class socioeconomic context with the fact that we have single sexed schools so prevalently high. From working and living in other places, and if you talk to anyone who is not from Jersey, it is quite an odd system to have so many single- sex private schools and a culture and an attitude that they are seen as superior. That is where you start also encouraging almost that split in terms of gender and unconscious bias. That is not an easy one to sort out or resolve. I have my own personal political views on that, but the point being is you are almost perpetuating it from such a young age.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

You mentioned flexibility in work, in your experience, not just your personal experience but working in other businesses. Do you see Jersey as a place that enables that? First of all, why is flexibility important and then is Jersey a place that offers flexibility in the workplace?

Ms. J. Hall :

Flexible working, I think, number one should be seen as something for everyone, it should not just be seen as something for parents, because it is really important that everyone has different choices and lifestyles. Particularly people in their 20s now have a different view of the way they want to work, and I think that is great. In order to support that flexible working is very important. That is for parents, for people who have different they might be very sporty and they want to train, they just have a different way of life and we should be able to support that for people's wellbeing as well as reducing the stress around supporting a family. If you are a primary carer as well for a sick parent, again that is where flexibility is incredibly important. I am sorry, what was the second part of your question?

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Whether you find Jersey has flexibility in the workplace.

Ms. J. Hall :

The irony in Jersey is we have an amazing fibre network. We are so well electronically connected that we should be able to work whenever we want remotely, whether that be in a house or in a café or in the office. Real hot desking in an office, because flexible working can be mobile and agile

working as well. Jersey is a wonderful place to be able to do that. Whether I have experienced it, I think it very much depends not only on which company you work for but who you work for individually. Culturally again I think there is an issue in a lot of companies of presenteeism. Hopefully that is going to get better. Yes, I think the reality is that with schools being the way they are, 9.00 a.m. to whatever it is, 2.00, 3.00 p.m. if you want you are missing out on a massive demographic if you do not allow them to work flexibly. Therefore, our talent pool is being decreased because of that. Our ability to earn more money and make more money has been decreased because of that. That is why flexible working is important but also I think Jersey has an opportunity to be more flexible for some people. The problem is people think about flexible working in the city context where it means they stay at home and they work from home for a day. Jersey does not need to be like that. It can be but what it means is that you might work from 10.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. and then you might work again at night from, say, 8.00 p.m. until 10.00 p.m. Most of our companies are globally based, they have offices in Hong Kong or Cayman or wherever, so logically speaking that should be able to work for us in a lot of contexts but I have not seen it work in many companies, I have to say, so far.

Senator K.L. Moore :

As a group, it seems you are clearly very focused on achieving change. Do you have a plan for rolling that out and do you know what the first target is?

Ms. J. Hall :

The short answer is no, not at the moment. The big thing for us was getting that gender pay gap panel up and running. The next thing for us was, or is, to educate people about what the role is. One of the things we wanted to make clear was it is a great profession for people who want to work flexibly but also want to have more control over the type of work that they want to do. For example, I have been a project manager in the telecoms industry, in engineering, in financial services, intellectual property, legal industry. It is something that gives you that flexibility and interest to work in lots of different sectors. It is trying to raise that profile but say to people: "This is a job that you can you do not have to do 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m., you do not have to be a white male to do it, it is something that everyone can have a go at." I do not think it is probably understood at schools either what the profession entails.

[15:30]

That is more about raising the profile of what we do and saying this profession is open to anyone if they have the right skills and are interested.

Senator K.L. Moore :

In terms of changing the cultures within our education system, how do you think that we can make an effective change? Would you like to see more companies going out and engaging with different groups at different schools, for example? Would that assist?

Ms. J. Hall :

Well, I think it is important if you have single sex schools in particular there needs to probably be more collaborative working between the sexes within the school where possible. I appreciate that is single sex education, people choose that for a reason, but I do think we have to break down those barriers a little bit with our children growing up, that just because you are at a boys' school, just because you are at a girls' school, it does not mean that girls do not do design and technology, for example, do not do science. We need to just maybe educate and make our children more self- aware and give them some more positive images, you know, in schools. I am not a teacher, my parents are, ironically, but I have not ... I do not know what they teach in the single sex schools, but it would be good to know that they present positive role models, both male and female, in both of those schools. That would be important. Yes, I think industry should support these schools more and I would hope ... and I know some do, but I would hope that that is not just at the private school sector. Because I know in particular industries they tend to have a lot more bursary students, for example, coming from the private school sector. Because one thing I would like to say is that when we talk about gender and we are talking about equality, we do not just want to replicate female versions of the white males that we already have. What we want to do is we want to make sure socioeconomically, racially, that it is reflecting that diversity and I think that is important that the industry takes that on board and goes into all schools and looks at all types of children and what they can support them with. I think they do probably a lot more at primary school level, from my understanding, but maybe at secondary school level it is probably perceived as a little bit harder and more effort. That is probably where it needs to be focused a little bit more because that is when people are going to start thinking about careers as well and what is possible. I am sure that maybe if you ask children from specific States-run schools, they probably would not realise that some of these professions are open to them.

Deputy J.H. Perchard:

I just want to go back to legislation. Do you think that we should introduce statutory measures to make everybody report on the gender pay gap within their organisation?

Ms. J. Hall :

Interesting, yes. We have debated this before a few times. It is a difficult one because of the way that Jersey industry is. I would love it but I am not sure how simple it is because we have a lot of small companies. In the U.K. it is obviously easier because you can say over a certain amount ... because I do think it is difficult to get a representative sample under a certain amount because it is probably not going to be truly reflective or a decent statistical sample. So I think that is where your challenge is going to be is the size of the companies that we have in Jersey. There are probably other ways of doing it. I am not an expert in that area statistically, but there are probably other ways of displaying that there is an issue that people are not being, number one, equal ... because to me equal pay could be done. That is more important to me that people are being paid equal pay for equal work. I cannot see why that could not be done because that does not matter about what the size of the company is, but the gender pay gap I think is probably a bit more of a challenge. I think maybe we would need to have a look at it in a slightly different way because of the size of the companies that we have.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

I was going to ask: you mentioned role models when you talk about schools, but in general how do you see Jersey as a place for role models in different ways? I mean, have you found many role models in the Island when you think about young women and daughters?

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes, I am trying to think. When I grew up in Jersey did I think ... I did not really have many role models in Jersey, I have to say. As an adult, I think I have friends who I truly respect and think they are incredibly brave, good people. If I would look now at what my daughter would see as a role model in Jersey, I think for me politicians, you know, not just blowing a trumpet but I think it is great. I do not remember there being many female politicians when I was growing up, so I think it is great. That is an amazing starting point for someone like my daughter, I would say. But beyond that, business wise, HSBC, Tracy Garrad, for example, but otherwise I do not think I have many that I could say I would see as a role model. I would like to say, though, however, that men can be role models, too, and I would call my current boss a good role model and someone I very much respect. So I think it is important that we need to appreciate for some people that role models can be males for females and females for males. I do not think again that is gender specific necessarily, but to truly identify with people sometimes you will seem more likely to ...

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Yes, it is easier in many ways, yes.

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes. Yes, Jersey is a funny place, I think, like that.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Yes. Do you have any more questions?

Deputy J.H. Perchard: I do, sorry.

Deputy K.F. Morel : No, go ahead.

Deputy J.H. Perchard:

We have heard a couple of times of the meritocratic argument when it comes to employing and promoting women as a way of dealing with the imbalance at a senior level. What is your response to: "Well, we need to get the best person for the job, it does not matter what gender they are"?

Ms. J. Hall :

Well, I hate the term "meritocracy" because meritocracy is not objective, it is subjective. People like to say it is not, but it is subjective because there are studies that prove that people will look at other people in a certain way because they identify with them. That comes back to the unconscious bias point again. People will say: "I am employing this person because I think they are the best person for the job. They have proven experience" but they will not understand or be self-aware enough to appreciate they have an unconscious bias even in that statement and that decision. So I disagree with that point. Unfortunately, meritocracy is not an objective pointer. It comes back to people just being self-aware enough. What has been interesting is people I explain it to, including my husband, when they think about the situation they realise they do have an unconscious bias and they do then think: "Maybe I am discounting this person because of X, Y and Z." One of the things I would love people to do, for example, is blind C.V.s (curriculum vitae) would be great, even just that application process. Another thing is when it comes to recruitment, because I think sometimes you are not even getting the right people through the door when they advertise the jobs. If you look, there are companies in the U.K. that review job adverts to say: "This is a very male written type of role." So you are not even having the right people apply for the job so you cannot even get to the meritocracy because you do not even have the right people applying for the job. So it is even that starting point of the recruitment process that I think we are still getting wrong over here and I am sure you have probably seen a lot of job adverts in your time that you have probably been put off for yourself, not necessarily because they are male or female but just because of the way they are written, thinking: "Why would I apply for that?" but you probably would be great for the job. But for me it is that starting point, just getting the right people through the door and thinking about the language that people are using in the application and recruitment process.

Deputy J.H. Perchard:

How important to you then is it that a board of a company, therefore, which is where the culture originates, how important to you is it that the board should be diverse?

Ms. J. Hall :

Oh, it is incredibly important, I think. Diversity, there are so many studies. You can look them up: KPMG, McKinsey, there are loads of them that show that a diverse board is more innovative, financially more likely to be more successful, will make quicker decisions, for example. It is incredibly important to be diverse, and if you think about it, I love my friends but I am sure we probably agree on most things, do you know what I mean? So that is a really classic point I say to people: if you have people who do not just agree with you, that is a good thing. How are you going to have good business? How are you going to get new ideas if everyone is agreeing with you all the time? That is all you are doing if you have a non-diverse board. You are just employing the same people who think the same way as you or who will not just challenge you because of that. So that is why it is important to me.

Senator K.L. Moore :

I think it goes back to the cultural point, does it not, of encouraging appropriate challenge in our community rather than following each other and seeking agreement and reassurance? Have you come across any projects or techniques that are successful in driving that cultural change?

Ms. J. Hall :

To be honest, I think from an experienced exponential perspective, no, because I think it is still too new in Jersey. I have always been quite forthright - I am sure that is not a surprise to you - and upfront in my opinions, so I have always felt like I have been a lone voice in a lot of situations where I say: "I do not agree with that" or: "I do not think that is appropriate." But I know in the U.K. in particular in certain industries, I think like the legal industry, for example, they have what they call "call it out" initiatives where people are allowed to feel comfortable and they can say: "I am sorry but that makes me uncomfortable" or: "I think that is inappropriate" or methods of reporting confidentially to people that these things have been said and it has made them feel uncomfortable. Then it gets dealt with obviously from a more sort of generic training, anti-harassment workplace behavioural training perspective. So that is all I kind of am aware of, but practically from my experience I have not really had it, apart from me just standing up for what I believe in, which sometimes gets me into trouble I hasten to add.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Keep going, in the words of Hillary. [Laughter]

Deputy K.F. Morel :

That is true. Can I ask as well: you talked about ... well, I wanted to ask about the financial services industry where I think you have done most of your work, although change management can be in all sorts of industries. I have thought quite a bit about whether there are certain areas still within financial services which are still seen as predominantly male and others perhaps which are seen as predominantly female and whether that is your experience. So I am thinking predominantly male might be something like business development or sales, that sort of thing, where ... some of my friends are in that area. You know, it is about going to clubs in the evening and this sort of thing, which might not be what other people think. Equally, H.R. (human resources) and marketing are often seen as female areas. So do you think that these are problems or do you think ...?

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes, I have worked in lots of different ... not just ... everywhere I have worked, financial services, legal, telecoms, it is still very much I.T. (information technology) is predominantly male, H.R. and marketing is predominantly female. What is also interesting about that is if you look again at the statistics regarding the pay, on average an I.T. director is paid more than an H.R. director. I cannot remember what the amount was but it is quite a substantial amount because it is very much perceived as male and female roles. Now, the profession that I work in, change management, is predominantly related to the I.T. profession. We work very closely and we have a lot of technical background in that, technical expertise in that, so I am used to working predominantly in an I.T. profession. Pretty much everywhere I have worked, women are ... in I.T. women are always in the minority and that has not again changed over the last 18 to 20 years, which is depressing.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

I think since I.T. was invented, to be honest with you. [Laughter]

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes, basically, unfortunately. I was using a ... this shows how old I am, but I was using a BBC-B from the age of, like, 8, 9. So, you know, why I should be doing I.T., you know, and other women should not be doing I.T. I am not quite sure why it has panned out that way, but it is going to be a long hard slog, I think, to get over that. Look at Silicon Valley and all the reports that come out of Silicon Valley about sexual harassment and so on as well. In those professions it has quite a way to go, but yes, to answer your question, yes, there are still very much pockets of gender-specific areas in relation to I.T. and H.R. and marketing, from my experience. The only thing I would add, though, is the one thing that I struggle with in terms of business development, which is obviously where your meritocracy comes in again, you know, so you are earning more money, bringing in more money, is that if you look at the business development-related events a lot of them are alcohol related.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

That is what I meant, yes.

Ms. J. Hall :

After work, you know, and anecdotally I have heard some ... when I worked in the U.K. as well, I worked in corporate banking and there were shocking stories about some of the comments that we have to endure about prostitutes and strip clubs and so on. It is just again that is obviously an incredibly macho thing so, of course, if you are talking about business development and a way to get on because you are bringing in more money and they are still very macho, male, after-work drinking and those ... you know, or their golf days is another classic example, which are again all very much male dominated. Of course, if the progression is based on knowing those people who are attending, the senior people, and getting that money in, of course that meritocracy is always going to favour the males who are attending those types of events.

Deputy K.F. Morel : Absolutely.

        e

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Do you have any more, Jess?

Deputy J.H. Perchard: No, I am good, thank you.

[15:45]

Deputy K.F. Morel :

I do. [Laughter] One was about the change management industry itself. Without any reference to any specific employers, do you think there is a role in the change management industry to take these messages to their clients, if you know what I mean, in the sense that to be a more effective business, if it does mean diversity, particularly at board level, is that a message that the industry does take with it or not?

Ms. J. Hall :

I think it is a difficult one for change managers because obviously we are employed by other companies as consultants. Interestingly, I have always worked in-house. I have never been a consultant. It is one of the reasons why it has not appealed to me because I would rather stand up and say: "I am sorry, I disagree" or I think something should be done in a certain way. Unfortunately, if you are a consultant you do not always have that opportunity. But I would agree, I think there is ... I think they should say if they feel something is incorrect or someone is being treated unfairly. I think they should be able to do that. Whether they are or not and whether they will lose the contract will be another thing. However, what I would like to say, though, is that in the change management profession there are quite a few consultants who have been set up over here and as far as I am aware only one is set up ... well, no, sorry, 2 are set up with women on the board, whereas the majority of them are again male dominated in themselves, especially at the senior level. So it is an interesting one because that is not just about the change management profession per se. I think it is about setting up your own business.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

I was going to ask about entrepreneurial ... yes.

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes, and I think that is the other issue in Jersey is that it is encouraging women to feel that they can set up their own businesses. Again, I think it comes back to the partner/family point probably. From my experience with friends, it is that the male partners will generally feel that they can do that, whereas the female partners probably do not feel that that is an option to them because they have been principally seen as the primary carers. So that change management trend I do not think is just a change management trend. I think it is something unfortunately that is prevalent in Jersey particularly.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

I am not sure if Jess has asked this already, but from your perspective you mentioned you did not agree with quotas in the past. I was just wondering if you might expand and explain why it seems you have changed.

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes. I did not in the past. Because I started my life as a mechanical engineer, one of the things that I struggled with right at the beginning of my career was that I had a lot of comments. So I got offered sponsorship by Yarrow Shipbuilders and I was also offered quite a few of the graduate training schemes by Scott ish Power and British Shipping and so on. I remember the comments from some of my colleagues and from the other students at uni that it was because I was a woman and they needed to up their quota. So I think for me I always felt that I spent a lot of my early career trying to prove myself doubly that I was good if not better than my male counterparts because I always felt that maybe I ... there was always a nagging feeling that I was a bit of an imposter, you know, there was the imposter syndrome as well, but I always had this nagging feeling that maybe I was not as good as them and maybe it was because I was a woman I got the job and I always felt I had to kind of work doubly hard to be better in some ways. So that is why a quota has always been a bit of an issue for me because I have always worked in a profession where it is male dominated and I have always felt that that quota thing, or positive discrimination obviously as it was back then, counted against me in some way. However, having now worked in the profession, worked for 20- odd years, and seen, like I said, in engineering that not changing and seeing that at senior management level things are not changing still, that the FTSE100 ... I cannot remember the percentage but how low it still is C.E.O. (chief executive officer) wise for women.

Deputy J.H. Perchard: Ninety-four per cent.

Ms. J. Hall :

Yes, and you just think how ... and, you know, there are more C.E.O.s called James than there are women, do you know? It is just ridiculous and I think to myself if we are not changing our behaviours and we are not changing our attitudes, then we almost have ... it is almost like we have to treat it a little bit like ... we have to force the issue a little bit. It is a bit like having a child and making them do something again and again so they do it, you know, they say: "Thank you", do you know what I mean? That is why I think, I suppose, I have come back to quotas because I thought, well, maybe it is because we still have too much unconscious bias and because we are still seeing all these white males between 40 and 60 at the top. Maybe if we started balancing that out and we had, say, more L.G.B.T. (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender), more diverse racially, religious, gender, that that means that if we force that issue, then that will naturally then come lower down and that would help force quicker change as well. So that is why I have kind of changed my views a little bit on quotas.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Yes. I find it interesting just because the number of conversations I have had about particularly women in the workplace and the number of people who say: "Ah, but I do not believe in quotas, I would never believe in quotas." It is a really strongly held feeling, if you know what I mean. I do not really know how to start even challenging it. I am not sure if there is an easy challenge to that idea or not.

Ms. J. Hall :

I think there are enough studies out there as well that show that people will ... and even women do it themselves. Women can be unconsciously biased against women. There are statistics to show that if you just go into a meeting, people are more likely to listen to a male voice than a female voice, for example. It is just those sorts of things, I think. If people can understand the psyche behind the fact why people are promoting similar people, it is not meritocracy, a lot of it is about psychology, then I think that will help people understand the importance of redressing that balance has to go beyond someone just hoping that people will do it. Hence that is why quotas then do become more important.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

More important, totally. Do you have more questions?

Senator K.L. Moore :

No. We have covered a lot of ground.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

I do have one more. I just want to make sure I ... [Laughter] You mentioned pay transparency. It is something that has come up before. I wanted to know whether you have experienced ... we have heard that people have experience of contracts which directly stop them talking to fellow colleagues about their pay. Have you experienced that?

Ms. J. Hall : Yes.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Do you think it is a case of the only way round that really is statutory, you know, to make it law that you cannot and would that be useful if that was the case?

Ms. J. Hall :

It is a difficult one because I do think there is, I suppose, the whole confidentiality and, I suppose, the G.D.P.R. (General Data Protection Regulation) and people's rights to confidentiality. But what I would say is I would rather tackle it from the basis that people are being equally paid for equal jobs. So you do not necessarily need the transparency between me and you and a job, but what you do

need is some sort of body to say: "We would like to know everyone whose job title is X and that they are all being paid Y" or within a set parameter. I think we could do it that way rather than necessarily having to enforce the transparency bit. You could at least enforce the equal pay bit, which is what I assume the transparency is trying to achieve.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Yes. Do you think people should be able to talk about it among themselves? So if you and I are colleagues and we wanted to just talk about our pay ...

Ms. J. Hall : People do anyway.

Deputy K.F. Morel : Yes.

Ms. J. Hall :

We do anyway and that is how I know some of ... I mean, I have anecdotally, so it is not first hand, but I have heard before people say: "Oh gosh, I know that I am earning X amount more than so and so and I think that is wrong. Do you think I should say something?" which is great in itself and the answer, obviously, from my perspective would be yes. So they have to do it in a very careful way obviously because they do not want to get into trouble, but it was dealt with. I think people probably do to some extent. I think we are all ... I think everyone now especially want to be sure that they are being paid what they should be being paid.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Yes, absolutely. That is the end of my questions. Thank you. Do you have any? No. Jess?

Deputy J.H. Perchard: No, thank you.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Thank you so much for coming in. That is really good and really useful evidence as well, which we will use. Ultimately, out of this comes a report with recommendations, hopefully some recommendations. I believe, Kellie, a copy of the report will be sent to Janet as well so you will be able to see ... make sure you see what we have done.

Ms. J. Hall : Brilliant.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Thank you so much. That was very good indeed.

Ms. J. Hall :

Thank you very much.

[15:53]