Page 4 - ignITe Award Submission e-booklet

The above TED talk by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of
Facebook, has been highly popular. She encouraged Why do we have
people to bring about changes in the way they
think, treat the female workforce and to take strides
towards building a sufficient pipeline of talented
women - developing them to grow in their careers. too few women

The Beginnings

Taking the cue and believing in the power of the other ’50 leaders?
percent workforce’, IDG joined hands with HSBC, a global
commercial bank, to ‘ignITe’ the fire within their female
managers to help them on their trajectory to success.

In 2016, the former Group Chief Executive of HSBC stated
that for at least 20 years, there had been an underlying
work assumption that women would not want to be senior
leaders, would not want to be mobile in their careers and
also thought that females in front line relationship roles
would not be well received by clients, particularly in the
APAC region. The company had been making progress but
he wanted the bank to do more. In 2017, he committed to
30% of senior roles being undertaken by women by 2020,
50% in the UK.

However, to achieve this, a talent pipeline had to generate
sufficient talented women to grow into senior roles.

ignITe was created specifically for delegates in China
and India to help develop talented women and inspire
them to grow their careers at the bank. The name ignITe
was chosen as it contains ‘IT’ and targeted the Women
employed in Information Technology. The programme
aimed to shift their mindset and spark their interest in
becoming more rounded, confident businesswomen,
capable of significant leadership roles in the future.