Ep. 129: Denise Dettingmeijer - Women in Finance

Contact Denise Dettingmeijer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisedettingmeijer/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host, Adam Larson, and I'm here to kick off our conversation for episode 129 of our series. Today you will hear from Denise Dettingmeijer, Chief Financial Officer of Randstad North America. Denise is a dedicated financial leader who is passionate about bringing more women into the field. While she talks with Mitch, she explains what needs to be done and how it can be measured to ensure women are integral part of the future of finance. Let's head over to hear her perspective on the topic now.

Mitch: (00:44)
Thank you Denise, for joining us. Our conversation today is about bringing more women into the field of finance. I know you said this is something you're passionate about. So to begin, can you please share with our listeners kind of your perspective on the current environment, the gender gap in the industry, and really what interests you about this topic?

Denise: (01:02)
Yeah, I absolutely can, and thank you for having me here today. You know, starting with the current environment, we can't not speak about the pandemic, so hope everybody's safe and sound. What that has taught us as an industry, as finance professionals that flexibility, the speed, the creativity, just, you know, crisis management was always one of our skill-sets, but nothing at this level before. And putting that into an environment like a pandemic from a past where those skills were always extraordinary for us, I think just exploded, you know, what we can do for the company. When you lay that over onto the gender gap, there is definitely a gender gap as a result of COVID as well in the industry, not just in the industry, in the world with working women. So focusing down on the finance thing, the one word I have is women are definitely underrepresented in the finance worlds. Statistically there's 38% of finance majors are female and 18% of CFOs are female. Those are for fortune 500 companies., it gets lower when you include all companies, 12%. So when you start out at 38, we could argue that's too low and what can we do about the education and having people that look like me and others, you know, getting involved in the finance stream of universities then accountants and other professionals, but regardless, even at the 38%, if we could get to 38%, that would be quite an accomplishment. We're hovering much, much lower than that. So no matter how you do the math, truthfully, we're underrepresented in an industry and in a function that actually suits traditional female traits and so many career pathing for so many people.

Mitch: (02:45)
Now you are at the forefront of the industry as CFO and through your experience as a finance leader, you talked a little bit about the numbers, but what else have you noticed as far as progress? How have you seen the industry really progress with this topic?

Denise: (02:59)
Yeah, so, the industry, as I think that beginning entry level has progressed. So you see a lot of women in finance when you do finance in general. So whether it's accounting, accounts receivable, payroll, FP&A, you know, the whole scope of finance, you see more and more women at the entry level. Truthfully, I haven't personally seen it progress in the upper ranks since I've been working, it's still a unique position. There's not a lot of women when you go to CFO events, when you look at panels, it's just an underrepresented group in this area. So while the industry has progressed toward, more soft skills, being able to connect people, it used to be a really kind of a technical function. It's progressed to understanding bigger pictures and teamwork and traits that perhaps are generally more seen as female traits, the female representation and finance hasn't progressed along with that. I think there's things we can do about it, of course. But until now it's really, it's still unique for me to see another female CFO. And every time we join a meeting, we're still counting. We're like, okay, there's 20 of us, there's three, that's more than 10% great. Right. We're still counting and when we can stop counting, I think we've made a difference.

Mitch: (04:23)
It's very interesting and you know, very, as you just said, minimal change from the target, the goal that you're really looking for. So obviously there's room for improvement. When it comes to, you know, closing this gap, how do you recommend the industry improves? What is, what is still lacking? What needs to be done next?

Denise: (04:42)
Yeah. So, there's hundreds of things. I think for me, the, the big ones are, it's hard to make this change, right? And I know people talk about unconscious bias and you know, you hire people who look like you or who have the same experiences. We've got to crack that and crack it for so many reasons, not just women, but race and all of the other, you know, gender issues or diversity issues that are happening. We no longer have to, you know, 15 years ago we had to put forth the business case of why diversity matters, how come companies perform better with a diverse leadership team. Those, we don't even talk about that anymore. Everybody understands that agrees with it, it's scientific, it's proven. So I think it starts now with the humans and the fact that we can all learn and admit we have unconscious biases, here at Randstad, we switched that and go, you have to have conscious inclusion. So there's a difference between saying, yeah I'm unconsciously biased, I can't help it everybody has it. To I will consciously include, and in this case women and finance, I will consciously include them at the table. If women have trends when they enter a room of more than 10 people with, you know, eight chairs at the table and five along the wall, they'll sit against the wall cause just don't want to take up a chair. Ask them to take a seat at the table, literally. We tend to when asked what we want to do with our careers, we say, well I want to add value and be happy. Men tend to say, I want to be CFO. And so if you can not let women get away with that answer and instead of, you know, ripping off the bandaid, you can say, well, whose job do you want next? What job do you want to do, you know really help us come to the conversation in a way that will be heard because we don't answer questions the same way, we don't communicate the same way, we don't act the same way. So I really think if you change your unconscious bias, become aware of it, but flip it to that conscious inclusion and really make an effort, it'll make a huge difference. The other thing I have to call out is the elephant in the room and it's money. You gotta pay us the same. And right now for me, you can do all those other things, but if it comes down to a life-changing moment, elderly care, child care, a spouse at home, a partner at home, and somebody makes less money than somebody else, generally speaking, the one who makes less money stays home. And unless you start paying women the same, they're going to stay home. So to me, start with the pay, you're not getting a bargain if your women in your department are getting paid less now they will leave. You will have a brain drain, pay them the same and then consciously include in the conversations in the career progression, speak the way we need to be heard and help us speak so you can hear us.

Mitch: (07:34)
You know, I really love that conscious inclusion and we have done a lot as far as unconscious bias and we just released a report on, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion. As you said, all of these, everybody's aware of them at this point, you know, everything going ...