EDI Case Study resource 2025
Spotlight on the specific challenge of diversity at CEO level
“We are a small team at senior level and we have had no occasions to recruit in over 10 years thus it being difficult to take steps or create a plan for diversity at the senior level” –IHPN member
One of the quirks of the IHPN members data, and the research more broadly, is that there are many executive teams that are broadly gender balanced but this balance drops off at CEO level.
- One of the reasons for this is due to historic differences in gender balance across different types of roles – for example within IHPN’s members, there are often roles like Chief Nurse and Chief People Officer which are more likely to be female. However, these roles are less likely to be the ones to progress to CEO, which typically is more likely to be the role of Chief Financial Officer.
- A global construction firm (1000 staff, £75m), reflected on this challenge too – the company has a significant representation from women on its executive team and board – as many of the roles are from the strategic and support side of the business including People, Marketing and Strategy. However, it has typically been the case that the CEO would come from the delivery side, a Chartered Quantity Surveyor, where even in today’s graduate classes, there are likely to only be one or two women out of the entire class.
- Where there has been some success, it is where a sector has been able to work cross-organisationally to cultivate a pipeline. For example, the NHS aspiring CEOs programme (which is not limited to any one characteristic but encourages participation from a diverse group), has resulted in 60% of participants now taking up NHS CEO roles and many more taking on significant leadership roles across the wider NHS and at national level.
So what can be done about this? The CEO is typically one individual and so while there is opportunity to increase diversity on an aggregated level, there is only the option to select one set of attributes for each, usually lengthy, CEO term. It is something that needs to be considered as a long-term goal which therefore needs forward thinking on a five to ten year horizon:
- Consider the background/path taken by the previous three or more CEOs. If they are all coming from Finance or Strategy for example, then that could be a specific problem to target – are you cultivating and bringing in sufficient female, ethnically-diverse or other talent into the finance department that could create opportunities for a more diverse talent pool for future promotions in that area?
- Is there a collective approach that could be taken to aspiring CEOs across the independent health sector? Taking a targeted approach to the senior executives across the sector – can we do ‘speed dating’ or networking with the Chairs of all the providers to ensure those women have the network and exposure to set themselves up for applying for future vacancies at the senior level? Are there cross-organisational shadowing opportunities to support the building of a network? Would an aspiring CEOs programme work – not limited to a specific protected characteristic but enabling those who feel the need for some support to access it?
- Are there ways of reshaping roles or structures that support succession planning in a different way? A Deputy CEO with significant operational and strategic oversight for example.
- Do you have stand-out employees in lower grades in the organisation, who are currently focused in an area unlikely to lead to a CEO role, but who have the behaviours and attitude needed, and who with support, coaching and different professional opportunities could be cultivated to support the longer-term succession planning approach of the organisation?
- Practically, are you using the right recruitment approaches and agencies? Are you advertising in the right places to ensure you get a diverse field of candidates in any CEO recruitment round. These are often highly targeted recruitments and some agencies are much better than others at ensuring a talented and diverse field is presented for assessment.
One public sector organisation had a brilliant example where they had an outstanding woman apply for the new CEO role who ended up coming second to the chosen candidate. The Chair of the organisation was certain that she would add a huge amount to the organisation but felt she was just a couple of years’ worth of experience away from CEO level – so created an executive level role and portfolio around her skillset and experience, which when deployed in tandem with the new CEO appointment added a significant injection of leadership energy to the organisation and created a clear future succession plan.