Ep. 129: Denise Dettingmeijer - Women in Finance

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

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (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 ...