10 GENDER BALANCE LISTENING EVENTS | BDO
PAUL’S PERSPECTIVE
The events kicked off with Paul sharing why this is such an important topic for him, both personally and in his role as Managing Partner. He shared his own experiences joining the firm as a school leaver and some of the ‘clumsy’ biases and perceptions he encountered.
In his role as Managing Partner, he recognises his responsibility to ensure there is a level playing field for all in the firm and discussed his personal commitment in signing his name to support the Women in Finance Charter. Although seemingly rare at BDO, Paul was also passionate about stamping out those comments experienced by some people - which are at best clumsy but fundamentally undermine confidence and trust. If someone had lashed out physically at work, we would discipline them, but verbal assaults aren’t always so easy to spot and deal with. He was also very hopeful about the opportunity we have now to re-set the dial on working life as a result of the past 12 months, with everyone working remotely. We need to be able to have honest conversations about what success looks like for us , and what pressures we are facing inside of work and outside to ensure we are all truly set up for success.
He went on to share his personal interest in external research on the subject of business behavioural economics, particularly citing the work of Harvard professor Iris Bohnet and her work on de-biasing organisations. Paul was unequivocal in his view that he wants BDO to be a place where colleagues can do their best work, and also a place that we can all thrive as human beings more broadly. Paul highlighted that we won’t achieve this by pushing colleagues to work more and more hours. If there was a choice to be made, he would rather we did not chase down more work if we don’t have the capacity to deliver it in a comfortable way for our teams.
Made with FlippingBook HTML5