Chief: Support Network for Women Business Leaders

Women in leadership roles are reevaluating work, and are looking for like-minded individuals that they can connect with to advance their career prospects. Chief, a networking membership club, is looking to meet this demand by fostering a peer-to-peer support system among women business leaders.

by Sophie McKay

Highlights

1. Chief is a private women's membership network that encourages its VP and C-level members to foster more collaborative and supportive work environments

2. Women workers in the US are facing a ‘burnout epidemic’, with high stress levels meaning many are considering leaving their jobs or downshifting their careers

3. People are increasingly looking for development opportunities and guidance in the workplace to acquire the correct skills and credentials to advance their careers

Data

• Over 60% of Fortune 100 companies have Chief members in their ranks, and between them, they’re estimated to manage $220 billion of the US economy

• One in three American women considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers in 2021

• 44% of Americans feel that they don’t have the correct skills and credentials to advance at work or find a good job

Women in leadership roles face numerous challenges progressing in their careers, such as extensive caregiving responsibilities at home, which prevents them from getting ahead and advancing in their jobs in the way many of them would like. Among the women who juggle work and caregiving, 60% say they’re providing more caregiving than they were pre-pandemic. [1] One company aiming to change that is Chief, a private membership network launched in 2019 that focuses on empowering and connecting women executive leaders. It aims to help women get to the top across all kinds of industries, and keep them there. “Women at the helm of companies are navigating extraordinary challenges without a playbook, and now more than ever they need the support, camaraderie, and insights from their peers,” says Carolyn Childers, co-founder and CEO of Chief. “We’re building a bigger table so more women can pull up a chair.” [2]

Women from major companies such as Disney, Chanel, Goldman Sachs, and Uber are part of the Chief membership network. Over 60% of Fortune 100 companies have Chief members in their ranks, and between them, they’re estimated to manage $220 billion of the US economy. Chief has clubhouses in major cities including New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco where women can meet and network, and it connects VP and C-level execs with at least 15 years of professional experience. Members are assessed based on not only their personal experience but also on their history of advancing others to create more collaborative and supportive work environments for women. Their membership has over 10,000 senior women leaders across 7 cities, with a waiting list of 40,000 more executives and plans to expand even further nationally. [2]

In March 2022, Chief announced it had closed a $100 million Series B fundraise, valuing the company at $1.1 billion meaning it has reached unicorn status, making it one of the most successful female start-ups of the pandemic. [3] This success has come thanks to the peer-to-peer relationships it cultivates – creating vetted support systems and hyper-curated peer groups that understand each other's career journeys, workshops run by world-class business professors to address workplace challenges, and conversations with influential women business leaders and cultural icons such as Amal Clooney, Indra Nooyi, and Diane von Furstenberg. By offering its members more than a typical networking event, can organizations like Chief help to change the face of women's business leadership?

Support Systems for Women at Work

“Many women wait to be recognized,” says Lisa Masiello, author, entrepreneur, and advocate for women’s advancement in the workplace. “They go into the office, they do their job every day and they think ‘Well I’m doing a great job so someone at some point will recognize that and I’ll be rewarded.’ Whether that’s more money or another position. And that’s not the case. Because men will be much more proactive in saying ‘Hey look at me, I’m doing a great job’.” [4] Research has shown that the picture of women in corporate America is looking precarious, with the impact of the pandemic hitting women harder than men and working women of all demographics facing a ‘burnout epidemic’ – one in three American women considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers in 2021, and 53% of women globally report higher stress levels in 2022 than in 2021. [5][6] By creating a place where women at work can help one another and offer career insights, Chief is helping people through a period of significant workplace burnout while creating support systems that encourage career development.

Professional Development and Career Guidance

Chief’s objectives tap into a growing trend and desire for career development and for employers to invest in their staff’s development in the workplace. Worries and concerns about progressing professionally are common in the US – 44% of Americans feel that they don’t have the correct skills and credentials to advance at work or find a good job, and 32% feel that they have no idea where to begin to counteract this. [7] This desire for professional development and upskilling has led brands like Hone, a leadership training platform, and Medley, a personal and professional coaching platform, to grow in popularity. Similarly, LinkedIn has created a new learning hub to double down on career development, and platforms like Rising Team and Ureeka are offering professional development and career guidance.

Peer-to-Peer Workplace Relationships

The Great Resignation has seen record numbers of Americans quit their jobs, with 63% of people leaving due to a lack of career advancement and 57% leaving because they felt disrespected at work. [8] Job satisfaction to drive employee retention is in many employers' best interests, with peer-to-peer workplace relationships and good employee engagement counteracting high employee turnover. When employees have fewer friends at work they are less likely to be engaged – only 28% of employees without friends in the workplace said they felt engaged compared to 69% who had multiple friends, and 63% say that having friends at work makes their jobs more enjoyable. [9][10] As such, collaborative and supportive communities like Chief can help people forge meaningful workplace relationships and improve employee engagement.

Insights and Opportunities

Address Women’s Career Burnout

“It is difficult to see meaningful progress when women are constantly facing setbacks,” says Lindsay Kaplan, co-founder and chief brand officer at Chief. “We believe these challenges cannot be solved by companies alone, and women executives need to come together to lead the way.” [2] Women business leaders typically spend more time than men on work that falls outside of their formal job responsibilities, such as supporting employee resource groups or promoting inclusivity and diversity initiatives, all of which can lead to higher rates of burnout. [5] But burnout can also have unexpected effects, as Masiello explains: “So many women have felt burnout. It can be an opportunity for women who have felt burnout to go into something that they’re passionate about. That makes them fulfilled. That gives them meaning. So in some cases, this burnout may actually be an opportunity.” [4] By starting to understand these issues and moving from awareness to action, brands can incorporate training on the barriers and hurdles women have to overcome in the workplace to improve and boost career outcomes.

Recognize and Reward Employees

To foster better career development and learning, businesses can look for opportunities to expand on the successful policies and programs they’ve already established, as well as try new approaches to further employees' professional development and boost morale. According to 2019 research, only one in five employees would recommend their company’s learning and development programs, despite 76% of people saying that a company would be more appealing if it offered greater training opportunities. [11][12] By opening up the conversation about workplace training and offering employees value beyond the parameters of their jobs, brands will be better placed to retain staff at a time when the job market is turbulent. Tyson Foods, for example, has committed $60 million to offer a full college education to its 120,000 workers, enabling them to develop new skills while also encouraging employee retention.

Create Collaborative Work Environments

“There are things we can do as women executives and there are things we can do for women,” says Masiello. ”But there are other things, like flexible working, or job sharing, where they’re not women’s issues. They’re company issues. We have to be careful that we’re not just addressing these things to women alone, they’re company-wide issues and it will then benefit everyone.” [4] Workplace culture is shaped by people’s interactions with their colleagues and managers, and brands can empower their workforce to create collaborative environments where all employees can thrive. This can be done by raising awareness around the benefits of collaborative work culture, and by bringing employees together in informal settings where they share their experiences and knowledge. For example, Nokia, a Next Gen 100 Workplace, introduced informal mentoring as a standard, and Gap has done away with annual reviews, replacing them instead with frequent feedback conversations.

Sources:

Originally published by Canvas8. Canvas8 are a leading behavioral insight practice. Working across media, communication and product design, they harness a range of research methods to reveal practical insights into what audiences really think and do.