ProcureOne's Women of the Future

ProcureOne surveyed 100 women * to ask them about their experiences working in the Procurement Profession, from how they started work in procurement, to their attitude and approach to development and progression and their views of women in the industry as a whole.

ProcureOne are delighted to share the key themes and trends from our research to better understand what’s going on. A great deal has been written by female CPOs and Procurement Directors but we don’t often hear from the massive community of fantastic women in procurement on their way up!

Here’s a chance to, with ‘ProcureOne’s Women of the Future’.

I fell into it! Aims, Aspirations and Expectations

As more and more organisations realise the value that procurement can bring in increasing profitability, elevating performance and driving efficiencies, a greater number of young people will hopefully look to move into procurement as an active career choice. In reality though, procurement is still often a discipline people fall in to.

Our survey agreed, finding that just over 70% of our female respondents ‘fell’ into procurement and it wasn’t necessarily a deliberate move. The main reasons for ending up in a procurement role were due to moves from other parts of the company (most popular moves from Supply Chain, Finance, Facilities, HR, NPD and Project Management).

30% did however actively pursue a procurement career, more often than not choosing the profession via a graduate scheme or through a placement year at university.

Attracting more women to procurement, increasing gender diversity and diversity as a whole can only be beneficial. Oliver Wyman’s 2019 study (*1) recognized the benefits of having more women in procurement teams with ‘innovative and creative dynamics’ and more ‘efficiency and economic benefits’ being cited by procurement leaders.

Once women find themselves as Buyers or Category Managers what happens next? We wanted to explore motivations and aspirations to see what’s actually going on. How many women actually aspire to become Procurement Directors?

It’s true to say that there are a larger percentage of men in CPO and Procurement Director positions and less women. In the Procurement Leaders’ Procurement Salary Survey 2020 just 14.7% of Chief Procurement Officer level respondents identified as female. But does this mean that women are not aspiring to take up the more senior positions? Our survey found this not to be true, with many more of our women aspiring to reach the top, than not. Around 68% of those surveyed said they would like to one day be a Procurement Director, 19% hadn’t given it any thought and 11% said they would not like to. This highlights that women in procurement are aiming high so perhaps there are other issues along the way which are coming into play?

Having a supportive Procurement Director and ‘championing women’ to progress their careers within the profession is fundamental. When asked ‘How much of a priority is gender diversity to the Procurement Director within your organisation?’, the response was mixed. 43% felt it was ‘very important to them’ but sadly 58% felt it was ‘not very important to them’ or ‘not important to them at all’.

It would be interesting to understand if this varies according to industry sector or maturity of procurement function but undoubtedly organisations need to be doing more to promote gender equality – and diversity more generally - across their organisations.

Women now hold 20% of the board seats of the top 3000 publicly traded companies an increase of 15% from 2016 so we are headed in the right direction (*2). For our women, finding companies which don’t have exclusively male boards was also highlighted as important.

Am I good enough? Self Promotion, Development and Progression

A really positive finding from our survey was that only a small percentage (16%) of respondents felt that promotions at work were affected by gender. Most felt that promotions were rightly based on ability. This does pose the question however, why or what is preventing more females from reaching CPO and Procurement Director level?

One theory which was repeated across our research results was that perhaps women find it harder to shout about their achievements and successes and this is playing a part in preventing many talented female procurement professionals from rising to the very top.

Of the women surveyed, a large number suggested that this is in fact a real problem and encouraging women to communicate the value they bring to the business is a fundamental shift which will make the world of difference, as one stated, “I often see absolutely incredible achievements glossed over, where they should be shouted from the rooftops. We need to be less shy and retiring about achievement, and make sure we receive the recognition we deserve”.

Arming women with the tools they need for self -promotion came up again and again in our survey – we certainly need to do more to encourage women to boast about their achievements.

“Give them more visibility and the platforms, tools (such as coaching) to voice the amazing work they’re doing to wider audiences. Women tend to shy away when it comes to blowing their own trumpets”,one said.

Imposter Syndrome “ a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success” - a trend which is getting more attention recently - did seem to be playing a small part in holding back some of our respondents for going for promotion opportunities.

A lack of flexibility when returning to work after maternity leave was also cited as a real issue and which prevented some women in our research from progressing to procurement leadership roles. In reality they couldn’t see how it would work. This is a huge issue which has attracted massive commentary over the years and which many companies are now addressing with progressive flexible working policies. These are the companies which will attract, retain and develop the best female (and male) talent. It’s worth noting as one respondee succinctly stated, “That flexibility doesn’t just apply to women though – that’s for anyone that is balancing other responsibilities outside of their work, be that parenting or not”.

It’s all about the network…. Our research highlighted that two of the key ways which appear to make the biggest impact on development and progression were Mentoring and Networking.

88% of respondents had never attended a ‘Women in Procurement’ networking event and a similar number had never had any form of mentoring. An opportunity to find a mentor was something many felt they would love to investigate further.

For the small number who had received mentoring the mentor was female, “I think having a female mentor is a great way to help women rise up the ladder and the mentors don’t need to be in procurement. I think sometimes we just need the encouragement and reinforcement that we are good at what we do”.

In general though, having a mentor, full stop, would be important to our women most feeling it’s not necessary to specifically have a female mentor. A Mentor or Coach, somebody who is generally outside your organisation can often have a positive impact and make you question ways of working, relationship management techniques and explore approaches for stakeholder engagement.

Female role models in procurement are hugely important too. 93% of those surveyed felt that the visibility of women in leadership procurement roles is crucial with only 7% saying it ‘wasn’t important at all’. As one respondent put it, “Women encouraging women, mentoring, support and confidence building – leading by example” – it makes a massive difference.

To reiterate, whilst there appear to be some obvious issues playing a part in enabling women to progress (conversations around ‘self promotion’, lack of mentoring and networking and not enough visibility of senior women), the women in our survey were clear that when determining promotions within their organisations gender was not important. 65% said it was ‘not too important’ or ‘not important at all’. When they elaborated it was clear that to the majority gender doesn’t matter, it’s about character, determination and drive. One concluded, “I am of the opinion that everyone should be given a chance regardless of gender. If gender bias is removed, women will rise to the top naturally”.

A problem with image? - Promoting Procurement as a Profession.

Overwhelmingly a theme which came up again and again was the problem with the image of the procurement profession and the effect this in turn then has on gender diversity and diversity as a whole. Promoting the role of procurement as much more about stakeholder engagement, influence and change and not just about hard savings is key. One stated, “we should shout more about that, because those are great transferable skills that many women have in droves”. Even when those outside the function feel they know what procurement ‘means’ more often than not it is perceived as ‘dull’, ‘too process orientated’ or as merely ‘bean counting’ but our survey participants revealed how much they love the role, and the variety and diversity it offers.

Building strong relationships is the key to success and highlighting that will make the profession more attractive as a whole, to men and to women. One respondent noted “the bigger challenge has always been the reputation and poor marketing of the function”.

There are many ways in which procurement can be better promoted including the governing body CIPS taking a leading role. A number of participants in our survey pointed to the issue surrounding the lack of diversity in the CIPS judging panel for the Excellence Awards, one said, “I think CIPS needs to do substantially more in promoting their gender balance at events, where speakers are concerned, and most recently the judging panel for the CIPS Excellence Awards is an embarrassing travesty to promoting gender balance, but is actually promoting the idea that only middle aged white males can be successful in the industry”.

But what about those school leavers and graduates looking to start their career? Is enough being done to attract women (and men) into the profession in the first place? With procurement now a module in the GCSE Business curriculum we are moving in the right direction and CIPS are doing a good job creating content and spreading the word about a career in procurement (check out their cipsibuy.com website). Undoubtedly though more can be done. “I think that Procurement is so often a profession that people fall into rather than plan for. More could be done to market Procurement as a viable career option for young people, thus attracting more women in the process”.

As more and more organisations realise the value that procurement can bring in increasing profitability, elevating performance and driving efficiencies, a greater number of young people will look to move into procurement as an active career choice. This can only be a good thing!

(* To give Context: 100 women surveyed from Feb 2020 – May 2020 made up of 52% Category Manager level, 10% Category Specialist level, 20% Procurement Buyer level, 4% Procurement Administrator level, 14% other. Predominantly based across the South East from a variety of industry sectors both Public and Private).

(*1 Oliver Wyman 2019 Study ‘Women in Procurement – Gender Parity is a Key to Better Performance’)

(*2 Equilar 2019 gender diversity index)