Omnicom Group, a global leader in advertising and marketing communications, announced that its UK senior management teams and boards comprise an average of 48% of women—60% up on the existing industry average of 30.2% and 20% ahead of the IPA’s target of 40% by 2020.
The figures were released on International Women’s Day to coincide with the Fourth Annual Omniwomen UK Leadership Summit, which is part of the Omniwomen initiative, designed to increase the influence and number of women leaders across the network. Since the launch of Omniwomen UK in 2015, female representation in senior management across Omnicom companies has increased by 20%, up from 40% representation three years ago.
Clare Cryer and Karina Kielbinska are this year’s Co-Chairs of Omniwomen UK. Karina, who is the Managing Partner at OMD EMEA, said “Ensuring we have a strong, diverse and inclusive leadership team is critical for the future of our business and for the industry we operate in. Our agencies need women in senior positions more than ever to win and to ensure diverse thinking for our clients. This year the theme of the summit is ‘Take it on’, encouraging men, women and their workplaces to enable women to achieve their full potential at work”.
Clare, who is the Managing Director at Integer Group, said: “To see we’re ahead of the curve and the industry target demonstrates a great achievement and gives us a competitive advantage. The key challenge now is to keep on feeding the talent pool and finding new ways of inspiring and supporting women coming up through the ranks. It’s essential to foster an environment where women feel they don’t need to conform to “traditional” leadership stereotypes to be successful, but instead can be their true selves, which in turn will create a more inclusive generation of leaders and positive role models.”
The Omniwomen UK Summit aims to enable women to be at their best in the workplace and to inspire others, the theme of the Summit this year is ‘Take it On’ which aims to encourage women to ‘Take On’ being positive role models and participants to create lasting change. Omniwomen aims to help women reach their potential through the Summit’s practical workshops and inspirational internal and external speakers sharing candid advice on how they built their careers. Some of the themes that will be explored during the day include ‘Being the Leading Lady’, ‘Building Personal Resilience’, ‘Cracking Confidence’, and ‘Lead at Speed’.
The Omniwomen UK Summit includes a line-up of inspirational speakers, including:
- Ruth Hunt, CEO of Stonewall
- Shelley Zalis, founder of Girls Lounge
- Tiffany R. Warren, Senior VP, Chief Diversity Officer at Omnicom Group
- Yvonne Hobden, Marketing Leader at HP UK
- Rob Holloway, Marketing Director at Mercedes UK
- Eleanor Mills. Editorial Director, The Sunday Times
- Sam Phillips, CMO, Omnicom Media Group UK + Chair, OPEN (Omnicom People Engagement Network) UK + Assistant Dean, Omnicom University
- Phil Bartlett, Managing Director CDM
- Sim Scavazza, Head of Global Retail, Education First
Janet Riccio, Executive Vice President, Omnicom Group and Founder of Omniwomen Global, concluded: “Since we launched Omniwomen in 2014, we’ve made significant progress in increasing the number of women in leadership roles. However, as I travel around the globe, we still have a long way to go to fully unlock the potential of gender diversity in the workforce. Which is why I am incredibly proud of the work being done by the members of Omniwomen UK who are inspiring women globally to press forward and progress gender parity by challenging the status quo at this powerful moment in time.”
In addition to the Summit, Omniwomen UK aims to raise £45,000 in clothing donations for Smart Works, a charity set up to provide high quality interview clothes, styling advice and interview training to out-of-work women on low incomes.
