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French-Bavarian Business Dinner

Munich, Sofitel Hotel, November 26th , 2013

Keynote by Anne Frisch, Board Director and Treasurer of EPWN

Slide 1 - invitation

Mr General Consul, Mrs Minister for economic affairs, Mr President of CCEF Bavaria, Ladies and

Gentlemen, it is a real pleasure to be among you tonight and a privilege to share my story and my

perspective on topic dear to my heart : Women in Business. I see also in the room a nice balance

between men and women, this makes me very happy.

I still remember 2 years ago when I left France for Germany a few friends told me, you will see Anne,

Germany is not as women friendly as France, they have this Rabenmutter concept. So I was prepared

to face some issues, but frankly I did not expect that it would be such a challenge.

I came to Germany to take the role of CFO responsible for Finance and HR of Publicis, a well known

advertising agency. I made the move with my 3 children and my partner who at the time had most of

his business in France.

The first thing that struck me was all the young ladies around me at Publicis who looked at me with

big eyes and kept asking how I could manage at the same time a senior executive role and family, all

this in a new country. I felt like an alien, an exception, this had never been the case in France where I

was always surrounded by successful business women raising also a family.

The second thing that really annoyed me was when some of my colleagues came to me and asked

me to make sure the young mothers that were currently in maternity leave would not return to work

after their “Mutterschutz” time. I found this horrendous, and it was not even men asking me for this,

but also women. My answer was always “they have a job with us and I will make sure they can come

back to this job”. I was really angry and when I discussed this with my friends here in Munich I found

out that this was a common practice.

So I decided to take action and join a women network here in Munich. Back in France I never really

felt the need for this, beyond light networking within my school network HEC au Feminin, but here in

Germany I could see the necessity for raising awareness and building support groups to drive change.

And the numbers show it, there are less than 8% women in senior executive roles (Vorstandebene) in

the german companies. So you really need a looking glass to find them. Unfortunately Germany is at

the bottom of the list right before Japan who has only 7%.

This is why I joined EPWN as one of the founders of the Munich chapter and also as a Board Director

and Treasurer of our Federation.

Slide 2 – EPWN map

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Let me present you briefly EPWN, we are network of over 3500 members across 25 cities, in Europe

and beyond. Our mission is to advance gender diversity in the professional world, by supporting our

members, who are mostly women but also men. We organize over 600 networking events and

workshops per year. Our chapter here in Munich is a good example of this. It is led by Katia Triggani,

she has been organizing wonderful evenings for our members with great speakers that help our

members to build self-confidence, widen their professional network, and learn new skills. There are

many great events coming up, open to everybody, even if you are not a member.

In addition to events we have been running for over 10 years now a very structured mentoring

program, all our mentors are volunteers, helping their mentees usually through a period of 6-9

months to work on specific personalized goals such as balancing work and personal life, improving

communication skills, being political savvy to name a few

We are also running a Women on Board program to help our senior women being more visible for

Board Director positions (Aufsichtsratsmitglied) in many different countries, some that have

implemented quotas, like France and Norway, but also in many others that don’t want to go that

road like UK.

Slide 3 – picture with men and women

Finally one of our most important programs is “Engaging with men”. What we want to achieve is

diversity through gender balance, we are not activist feminists, we want a healthy cooperation

between men and women. It is beneficial for both to have balance. Firstly because companies with

higher diversity have better performance as we heard from Mrs XX from McKinsey. But also because

a lot of men want it, especially in the younger generation, they want to enjoy also a personal life,

they want to see their kids grow up and they want to have partners that not only have the same

academic level but who are also professionally active and successful. Dad´s also want to have it all.

And of course men are the decision makers, they hold the positions of power and have the ability to

open the doors to women.

Since I graduated from HEC where we had a perfect gender balance, achieved in less than 10 years. I

have always worked in male dominated environments in energy, manufacturing and industrial

services, so I have learned the codes. And believe me it is not an old boys club, men are competing

fiercely against each other. I have played the game by these rules with a big smile and a strong will.

The new frontier now is not between men and women, it is between men who want more diversity

and are courageous enough to speak about it and act, vs. men who want to maintain the status quo.

Slide 4

I have spent a lot of time considering the differences between France and Germany, why is Germany

so much backwards compared to France. Of course there are the obvious reasons like the childcare

and the school system, as well as family policies. It is interesting to see that East Germany had a very

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different approach to this, with a real gender balance at work. Although I am not a communist, but a

liberal, I find it sad to see that after the reunification West Germany did not take the best practices of

East Germany.

As we know Germans are very efficient and well organized, so if there are still not enough places for

young children in kindergarten, it is not a lack of organization, it is a mindset which slows down the

change. I am still wondering where this mindset comes from. I had a very interesting discussion with

a group of ladies at Areva in Erlangen where I led a diversity workshop back in June. Their comment

was that after the war and with the Wirtschaftswunder life was just so good in Germany that families

did not need a double income, and the success stereotype for men was my job, my house, my car

and my beautiful wife. I know times are changing and I see now young german fathers that want to

take their paternity leave, even if they are a bit looked down by their colleagues.

Slide 5 – Christine Lagarde and NYT article

So change is necessary and it has to accelerate in Germany. Germany cannot remain the laggard of

the developed countries ranking in gender diversity at the bottom of the list with Japan. There was a

few days ago a very interesting interview of Christine Lagarde, IMF chief and former French minister

of Economy. She linked the economic stagnation of Japan in the last 10 years with their lack of

diversity. Actually the IMF published last September a very interesting and very serious report about

women, work and the economy, where it states that the GDP per capita of Japan could grow by 4% if

their female labour participation rate were to reach the G7 average . This is an excellent piece of

thought for Germany.

There was also a very good article in the New Yorker recently about the german gender mystery.

Although the German Parliament has now 36% women, in Corporate Germany women are still

underrepresented. In the last couple of months four of the country’s best-known female executives

left their positions as Vorstandsmembers : Fr Ederer and Fr Kux at Siemens, Fr Delgado at SAP and Fr

Stachelhaus at E.On.

We should not look only at the most senior women, because this is a topic for everybody, and the

first ones that have to be helped in their professional lifes are the young ones.

But I think it is important to realize that not only the german men and women but the world looks at

Germany and wants to see change.

Slide 6 – Best practices

Now that I have convinced you that change is necessary I would like to go through some of the best

practices that you can implement achieve this.

First and foremost comes senior management support, at best from your company CEO, this is a

highly strategic issue that will make your company more competitive. Diversity cannot be left only to

HR, it has to be fully endorsed by top management.

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Second, I recommend to have clear targets with numbers and to link these targets to individual

objectives and bonus. The company that has implemented this very successfully is Daimler, they have

set a target of 20% women by 2020, they started the journey from 6% in 2006. This means gaining

1% per year. They are on track with 13% in 2013. This is not straightforward, it means that every

third promotion has to be made by a female candidate. I know personally Mrs Ursula Schwarzenbart

the Chief Diversity Officer at Daimler, she has a very strong support of her CEO Dr Zetsche and they

are both very determined to achieve this. She explained me that what made a real difference was

first to break down the goal into annual targets and then to link it to bonus, so that managers who

were not achieving this would be slightly penalized financially. Other companies are doing it also,

another good example is the French group Safran, and Christophe Bruneau who is leading here in

Germany the JV between Safran/Sagem and MTU can give his own testimonial since he has even

implemented it personally.

Thirdly come of course family friendly practices in the workplace with flexible working schedule, part

time work, and even in some cases childcare center at the workplace like Siemens. These will benefit

both parents, and will also help to boost the birthrate in Germany.

Other important best practices are mentoring, setting up programs targeted at young high potential

women, and letting them benefit from the support of senior male or female colleagues to help them

have a wider view on their job and their career. It is important also to grow a pipeline of talented

women, and if you cannot find them internally, look outside, there are specialized headhunters like

Accetis International, who will help you to identify new talent.

Finally I would like to insist on networks. It has been researched and proved that professional success

comes as much from performance and as from networking. Women at work, once they have

overcome the obstacles of finding a childcare solution, tend to focus only on their job, to deliver the

most results in the least time. I know this trap, I fell in it also in my thirties. It is important to

encourage women to take the time to network smartly and strategically. There are various ways to

do this, larger companies can create an internal women network, and some of them even have

several women networks like Siemens. Other companies may lack the resources or want external

input and will make a partnership with a network like ours. At EPWN we have many Corporate

Partners, like Orange, Mercer, RBS, Baxter and Schneider Electric. There are even companies that

have an external network supporting their own internal network like Areva, who is also an EPWN

partner. And by the way networking is not only within women networks, it provides a safe

environment to start with, but women should also be active in other professional networks.

Slide 7 – Conclusion

I could go on forever, but would like to leave time for questions and discussion. To conclude I would

like to say that I know a lot of men in this room who are proud of the success of their partners, this is

exactly what will make the professional world a better place, not only for women, but for

themselves, their families and society at large.

Once again allow me to thank warmly the organizers Christophe Bruneau from the CCEF and Jeanne

Hazard from Accetis for their courage in choosing this innovative topic for our dinner tonight.

Bon appétit!

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Questions

German women tend to take much longer maternity leave than French women, what is your point

of view on this?

I have never taken more than the minimum legal requirement, in France 16 weeks before and after

the birth, meaning you go back to work when your baby is 3 months old. For me it was OK, as I was

healthy and my babies too. I even applied for an assignement abroad right after the birth of my first

son where I took my first CFO position in UK. I also remember very clearly the call I received from my

boss during my third maternity leave, informing me about my annual salary increase. So I took short

breaks and was never disconnected from the workplace. If you take long breaks, people forget you. I

always make a joke saying that I am a triple Rabenmutter.

Also I never really considered taking a career break. I have always enjoyed my full professional life,

this is probably due to my family background. Women in my family have been working for 4

generations, my mother is a physicist, my grand mother was a german teacher and even my grand

grand mother who was a divorced mother in the 20s in Germany was also working full time. So I had

very strong role models, including my father who would be horrified to have a stay at home

daughter.

What difference do you see between men and women in terms of approach to risk ? What do you

think of quotas ?

As Christine Lagarde said, there would probably not have been a Lehmann brothers crisis if there had

been more sisters together with the brothers. It has been researched and proved that women tend

to be slightly more risk adverse, this is why it is healthy to have them on boards (Aufsichtsrat) to have

more balance. There are various ways to achieve this balance. Quotas are one of them, and have

been implemented among others in France and Norway. Norway was the pioneer, but they had 20

years of heated debate before implementing this. Other countries like UK are fiercely against it

because they are deeply liberal. Germany has still to find its own path, but for the moment things are

happening too slowly, and it needs to accelerate.