This week, Card Factory chief executive Karen Hubbard will leave the business after four years at the helm.
Her departure comes after a long stint of declining profits, a profit warning in January and a strategic rethink, which the business will unveil next month.
Although the retailer said her departure was a mutual decision, her rapid exit – announced just days earlier and before a successor was secured – perhaps indicates she was pointed towards the door rather than walking to it entirely of her own volition.
When Hubbard officially steps down, Ted Baker chief executive Rachel Osborne will be the only woman left running a FTSE-listed retailer
In the world of trigger-happy shareholders and a forensic focus on growth, it is perhaps not surprising that Hubbard’s tenure at the helm of a listed retailer came to an end. What is surprising is the almost total vacuum of other women running listed retailers now that she’s gone.
When Hubbard officially steps down at the end of this month, Ted Baker chief executive Rachel Osborne will be the only woman left running a FTSE-listed retailer.
This is a stat that becomes all the more concerning when you consider the level of change on retail executive boards.
A recent survey by Korn Ferry found that the overall churn of retail bosses was up 25% year on year, marking a seven-year high.
The headhunting firm’s managing director Sarah Lim noted concern about “the attrition rate of female CEOs from listed companies and/or running retail businesses of scale and complexity”.
Chief executives are finding that time to prove their worth is of the essence, and those that are ousted are seldom succeeded by women.
Over the last few years, listed businesses including N Brown, Kingfisher and Marks & Spencer have hired and fired senior female leaders such as Angela Spindler, Véronique Laury and Jill McDonald, only to replace them with white men.
In and of itself, this isn’t an issue – no woman should be in her position as a token to diversity, and if any boss isn’t delivering results it’s inevitable that the exit door will beckon, irrespective of gender.
But compiling lists of the women who have either been given the boot or a top job begs the question: why don’t we do the same every time a man gets sacked or hired?
There are enough men in positions of power that the errors and successes of one doesn’t tell us an overarching lesson about their gender as a whole.
There are similar refrains every time a woman in power exits a high-profile retailer. We are told women lack confidence, we talk about imposter syndrome and the challenges of balancing work and home lives, and various other explanations and equivocations that many men would be politely bemused by if asked whether such factors had ever impacted their career ambitions.
It’s important to acknowledge the pressures that are unique to being anything other than a cis-gender white heterosexual man in the workplace, as just about everyone other than this demographic is under-represented at board level.
And the uncomfortable truth is, however underrepresented they are in retail chief executive roles, women are dramatically more represented than those from BAME backgrounds, who hold just 3% of executive positions among the UK’s listed retailers.
Isn’t the quick solution to prioritise diversity in hiring across entry-level, mid-level, senior-level and executive positions?
Retail Week’s diversity campaign Be Inspired was launched in 2016 to provide the sector with a space to delve into the issues that make disappointing statistics like this a reality.
And while providing that space is important, the fact that the departure of one female CEO has halved the total number of women leading FTSE retailers in 2020 shows talk alone is not enough.
Isn’t the quick solution to prioritise diversity in hiring across entry-level, mid-level, senior-level and executive positions? That way, when a woman is let go in the retail sector, there will be a wealth of talent who could step into her shoes without causing the sector’s overall diversity rating to nosedive.
FTSE retailers would do well to look to non-listed businesses for lessons on how to approach this. John Lewis’ new chair Sharon White has wasted no time in hiring two well-qualified and highly respected women to the three executive-level appointments she has made so far during her tenure.
The most recent, Pippa Wicks, joins from the Co-op, another business which has a greater level of gender diversity than many listed retailers can claim, with four of its six executive roles filled by women.
Co-op chief executive Steve Murrells has recently spoken about the lack of racial diversity on his board as an issue he plans to address with urgency, while John Lewis Partnership has been criticised for the lack of BAME employees across its senior team – yet both businesses are streaks ahead of any listed retailer on this issue.
We are seeing a level of scrutiny in the diversity of retail boards that is unlikely to go away anytime soon
Maybe Hubbard’s successor at Card Factory will be someone that breaks the mould of white men who currently make up 72% of major British retailers’ executive boards.
Either way, the fact that her departure means there is now just one woman left standing at the helm of a FTSE-listed retailer shows this issue runs deep.
Particularly amid the current Black Lives Matter movement, we are seeing a level of scrutiny in the diversity of retail boards that is unlikely to go away any time soon.
It would be a mistake to view this as anything other than a long overdue opportunity for retail to bring new perspectives and talents to the top levels of their businesses. It is an opportunity that shoppers and shareholders will be increasingly pushing the industry to take.
Be Inspired
RWRC’s Be Inspired programme began in 2016 with the goal of promoting diversity at all levels of retail and to encourage everyone, whoever they are and whatever their background, to fulfil their career aspirations.
Find out more about Be Inspired and gain access to more content like this here.
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