In the month of March, also known as Women’s History Month, First Credit Services celebrates all month long by honoring women in the history of our financial industry. Today, on International Women’s Day, we celebrated across all our offices and online with our remote staff by wearing purple and having discussions about the importance of Women’s Day. We are proud of the strong women in our company and appreciate their unrelenting passion and dedication to our team. We raise our hand and “Choose to Challenge” and call out gender inequality, gender bias and stereotypes so that we can build an inclusive culture where everyone is valued.
We want to highlight #ThePowerofHer in #leadHERship as we believe in diversifying our leadership within the company to bring unique perspectives, increase impact and drive great results. We are proud to share that 70% of our executives are females. Additionally, 59% of all our leadership roles including managers and supervisors are held by female employees. These women redefine the meaning of empowerment as mentors, teachers, leaders, and innovators. As a largely female led company, we stand by the strong women in our company, support equal opportunity for all, and celebrate the empowerment of women.
The notion of “female leader” still exists because unfortunately, female is still used a necessary adjective to describe a credible and hardworking professional, who only happens to be a women. We wonder when the day will come where female leaders will be considered equal to male leaders, and the term “female” as an adjective will become obsolete. In order for us as a society and as a company to make it possible for women to continue to evolve into successful business executives, we need to do our part.
First, let us level the playing field and give opportunities to women during hiring and promotion. At First Credit Services, about 82% of all our employees are females which makes the playing field quite level. Far too many companies today have women underrepresented and women are not given opportunities despite having equal qualifications and experience as fellow males. Across all of America’s largest companies, the Fortune 500, the data showed as of May 2020 that only 37 were led by women, and only three of those CEOs are women of color. We improve every year despite societal and economic constraints, but it is shocking that a such a wide gap between male and female executives exists. Here at FCS, we try to do our part as 70% of our executives are female.
Additionally, let us focus on the importance of mentoring. The workplace and corporations can help set the foundation for more female representation by creating mentorship opportunities and programs. Here at First Credit Services, we encourage mentoring and coaching throughout all our offices and make sure that leaders in each department guide their team members on opportunities for improvement as well as scope for growth. Our open door policy as well as company wide events provide opportunities across all our offices for not only females but all employees to find a mentor within the company.
Overall, in business world and beyond, we need to support women in many ways as well as our next generation by motivating them and acknowledging their achievements. There’s space for both genders to excel and we are enabling progress in our society and labor force by creating more professionals of all genders, races and cultures.