At a Network of Executive Women meeting in California this summer, Michelle Gloecker, the NEW board's chain and senior vice president of home goods at Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores, summed up the state of the retail industry when it comes to hiring and promoting women.
“We have made a lot of progress on gender diversity,” she told the audience, “but there is much work left to be done.”
Women make up almost half of the retail industry's labor force, yet they comprise just 18.3% of its corporate officers and 5% of its chief executive officers, according to a 2010 report from Catalyst, an organization specializing in gender diversity and inclusion.
Joan Toth, president and chief executive officer of NEW, agreed that progress has been made in this area, even if it can only be seen in terms of increased awareness of diversity and inclusion.
“Raising awareness and tying the business case for diversity back to the business really has been one of our major accomplishments,” she told SN in an interview about the organization's 10th anniversary, which is this year.
“I think the most important thing is that we've gotten diversity and inclusion on the agenda at retail and CPG companies,” she said. “This is particularly important among retailers, which traditionally have not been as advanced with the diversity and inclusion awareness as the supplier companies may be. What I think we have done is shown that diversity and inclusion is not only nice to do and that it is a legal issue, but it is a good business opportunity.”
Traditionally the supermarket industry has faced an uphill battle in recruiting women. Not only has there been what many describe as an “old boys' network” that has been self-perpetuating, but careers in food retailing have been a tough sell in general for both men and women.
Some supermarket companies have been working hard to change that, according to Richard George, professor of food marketing at St. Joseph's University, in Philadelphia.
His school's program, which includes about 55% female students, has been influenced by the recruiting efforts of companies like Wegmans Food Markets, Wakefern Food Corp. and Whole Food Market, he explained.
“Historically the sexiest jobs have been with P&G and Gallo and Coca-Cola, and probably still are, and Johnson & Johnson has taken our best students, male or female, and they still do,” he said. “But in the last few years, I have seen a significant shift in terms of food retailing.”
He said the message that the school and some of the food-retailing-company recruiters have been seeking to impart is that students who go to work in the industry could be running the operations of a multi-million-dollar business before long as a store manager, which then opens up possibilities for higher management positions.
“I think a young woman now can see that within a few years she could be running a store than does $2 million a week, or a Target store or a Walmart Supercenter,” George said.
“I think the industry has done a much better job of positioning all of food retail, not just for women.”
CPG companies, he explained, have historically touted the career opportunities their companies offered as being sharply contrasted with those available at retail.
“They used to come in and say, ‘You can work 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, no weekends, and you get a car,’” he said. “The supermarkets would come in and say, ‘You work six days a week, including weekends, and you don't get a car.’
“I used to tell people that if you want to work in the supermarket industry, you only work half a day — pick the 12 hours you want to work,” George quipped.
That stereotype of the retail workplace as being overly demanding has long been a turnoff for women who are thinking about balancing a family and a career, explained Jose Tamez, managing partner in the Denver office of executive recruiting firm Austin Michael. He agreed that CPG companies have held greater allure for these women.
“The perception, and reality, with regard to women's views when comparing retail to CPG is that one is tactical, and the other is strategic; one is operations-driven, the other is driven by marketing and new products; one is 24/7, the other has work-life balance,” he said. “When you draw those distinctions, then it is pretty clear to see which path women are going to go on.
“Supermarket retail is tactically and operationally driven. The general view of professional women is that there's no glamor in supermarket retail.”
CPG companies, by contrast, have not only offered a work environment that women perceive as more attractive, he explained, but they have also recruited women more aggressively and in many cases paid higher wages.
In addition, he noted that department store and fashion retail companies also attract women at a higher rate than food retailers, “and subsequently these segments of retail have much better representation of women in the senior ranks.”
The relative dearth of women executives in food retailing should not be attributed to a gender bias on the part of the industry against women, Tamez explained, although he said he does not discount that such a bias has existed. Instead, the asymmetry can be attributed in large part to women's own career preferences.
The path to the executive suite at supermarket companies has often led individuals through the store operations side of the business — where smelly back rooms and buckets of spoilage could be more repellent to female job-seekers than their male counterparts, Tamez explained.
“Supermarket store operations as a fundamental starting point, both as a spoken and unspoken prerequisite, is not a position that attracts women,” Tamez noted. “Operations can be a big hole in people's careers in terms of their advancement. Because the industry is very operations-driven, without that in your background, it becomes a sort of a glass ceiling.”
Several of the top women executives working at large supermarket chains today, he pointed out, were recruited there from CPG backgrounds — Andrea Wagner at Save-A-Lot and Diane Dietz at Safeway both came from Procter & Gamble before launching retail careers, for example, and Linda Severin at Kroger Co. came from ConAgra.
Some of the high-ranking women who came up through operations include Judy Spires, the chief executive officer at Kings Super Markets in Parsippany, N.J., and Laree Renda, an executive vice president at Safeway.
Tamez said supermarket companies will continue to face challenges in attracting, retaining and promoting women.
“As you have more and more women in the marketplace with degrees, they will have more options, and they will not find the supermarket industry any more appealing,” he said. “Degreed women will have more choices, and the supermarket industry will rarely be in the top two or three.”
'Limiting Beliefs'
A McKinsey & Co. report on women in the work force published earlier this year found that discrimination against women for certain jobs is still widespread in corporate America, and that women themselves also have “limiting beliefs” that impact their own advancement.
“Of all the forces that hold women back, none are as powerful as entrenched beliefs,” the report stated. “While companies have worked hard to eliminate overt discrimination, women still face the pernicious force of mindsets that limit opportunity. Managers — male and female — continue to take viable female candidates out of the running, often on the assumption that the woman can't handle certain jobs and also discharge family obligations.
“We found that many women, too, hold limiting beliefs that stand in their own way — such as waiting to fill in more skills or just waiting to be asked,” the report added.
In a presentation at the NEW meeting in California, Craig Herkert, president and CEO of Minneapolis-based Supervalu, cited a recent Harvard Business Review web post titled, “What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women.” The study found “there was little correlation between a group's collective intelligence and the IQs of its individual members. But, if the group includes more women, the group's collective intelligence rises.”
What mattered most, according to Herkert, “wasn't that group members were all really smart, IQ-wise, but that they listen and respect each other,” he said. “It's about respect, inclusion and consideration for many different outlooks applied to a common issue.”
Also speaking at the conference, Michael Bender, executive vice president of Walmart U.S. and president of Walmart West, urged the mostly female audience to keep a work-life balance.
“As much as I love what I do, I won't let it be my sole identity,” Bender said. “I'll always give 110% to my career, but I cultivate my personal interests — family, friends and many other things — so I can be fulfilled.”
Attracting Women Leaders
Some supermarket companies have taken extra steps to make their companies more attractive to women leaders, including Safeway, which won the 2006 Catalyst Award for its efforts to advance women in its executive ranks.
The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company launched a program in 2000 called “Championing Change for Women: An Integrated Strategy,” which helped the company boost the number of women working as store managers by 62% from 2000 to 2009, Renda, who is now executive vice president, told SN when SN presented Safeway with a Champion of Diversity Award in 2009. The program also increased the proportion of women vice presidents from 12% to 25% in its first five years, and has served as a template for increasing diversity and inclusion beyond gender at Safeway.
“It's a huge part of who we are and what we do,” Renda told SN. “We concentrate on all kinds of diversity — it's something we were able to formalize and talk about in relation to women, but in how it has evolved, it applies to all types of diversity.”
The initiative incorporates a strong mentoring component, and also a Retail Leadership Development program through which managers seek out diverse talent among the ranks and train store employees to become managers.
An analysis of women among top management at Fortune 500 companies done by Catalyst last year showed that in the retail industry overall, women are fairly well-represented relative to many other industries.
The study found that 17.7% of board seats on retail companies' boards of directors are held by women, compared with 15.7% for the Fortune 500 overall. In the executive ranks, there is even more disparity, with 18.4% of executive officer posts at retail companies held by women, vs. 14.4% overall.
An analysis of Securities & Exchange Commission filings by large supermarket companies shows that they are actually out in front of retail overall in some respects.
At Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., for example, four of the 15 executive officers listed in the company's latest 10-K filing are women, or about 26.7%, well ahead of the retail industry overall. Two of its 14 directors are women, or 14.3% — right about the retail-industry average.
At Safeway, three of the 13 executive officers are women, or 23.1%, while only one of the company's 10 directors is a woman.
Another Catalyst analysis of women executives showed slight gains among women from 2009 to 2010. In 2009, women held 13.5% of executive officer posts at Fortune 500 companies (vs. 14.4% in 2010). In addition, in 2010 women held 7.6% of the top-earner positions in Fortune 500 companies, vs. 6.3% in 2009.
George of St. Joseph's University said he is seeing more and more of his top students being recruited by food retailers, and many of those top students are women.
“It's still an old white boys network, but it's changing slowly,” he said. “Things are changing for the positive.”
2011 FOOD RETAIL SALARIES
| POSITION | SMALL COMPANY ($500M-$2B) | MEDIUM COMPANY ($2B-10B) | LARGE COMPANY ($10B+) |
|---|---|---|---|
| CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER | $605,000 | $950,000 | $2,000,000 |
| CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER | $350,000 | $650,000 | $825,000 |
| CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER | $325,000 | $475,000 | $700,000 |
| CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER | $315,000 | $450,000 | $600,000 |
| CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER | $225,000 | $325,000 | $425,000 |
| VP MARKETING | $190,000 | $235,000 | $300,000 |
| VP OPERATIONS | $185,000 | $225,000 | $245,000 |
| VP GROCERY | $185,000 | $220,000 | $235,000 |
| VP PERISHABLES | $185,000 | $225,000 | $240,000 |
| VP NON-PERISHABLES | $185,000 | $210,000 | $225,000 |
| VP GENERAL MERCHANDISE | $185,000 | $210,000 | $225,000 |
| VP MERCHANDISING | $185,000 | $225,000 | $250,000 |
| VP MEAT/SEAFOOD | $155,000 | $175,000 | $200,000 |
| VP PRODUCE/FLORAL | $150,000 | $170,000 | $210,000 |
| VP DISTRIBUTION | $170,000 | $210,000 | $235,000 |
| VP REAL ESTATE | $155,000 | $210,000 | $230,000 |
| VP HR-PEOPLE RESOURCES | $155,000 | $220,000 | $240,000 |
| VP LOSS PREVENTION | $125,000 | $165,000 | $210,000 |
| VP RISK MANAGEMENT | $125,000 | $165,000 | $200,000 |
| DIRECTOR ADVERTISING | $125,000 | $160,000 | $190,000 |
| DIRECTOR TRAINING | $115,000 | $125,000 | $140,000 |
| DIRECTOR WAREHOUSE | $115,000 | $125,000 | $150,000 |
| DIRECTOR TRANSPORTATION | $110,000 | $120,000 | $145,000 |
| DIRECTOR MEAT/SEAFOOD | $115,000 | $125,000 | $145,000 |
| DIRECTOR SEAFOOD | $110,000 | $120,000 | $140,000 |
| DIRECTOR PRODUCE | $110,000 | $125,000 | $150,000 |
| DIRECTOR FLORAL | $100,000 | $110,000 | $140,000 |
| DIRECTOR DELI/BAKERY | $100,000 | $115,000 | $130,000 |
| DIRECTOR GROCERY | $120,000 | $140,000 | $150,000 |
| DIRECTOR GENERAL MERCHANDISE | $110,000 | $130,000 | $140,000 |
| DIRECTOR OPERATIONS | $125,000 | $150,000 | $160,000 |
| DIRECTOR REAL ESTATE | $120,000 | $140,000 | $155,000 |
| DIRECTOR INTERNAL AUDIT | $120,000 | $135,000 | $150,000 |
| DISTRICT MANAGER | $120,000 | $140,000 | $150,000 |
| CATEGORY MANAGER | $95,000 | $110,000 | $120,000 |
The table excludes bonuses, special incentives or other compensation factors for corporate office employees and does not cover divisional offices. It is a sampling of the industry based on salary ranges at companies that are seeking to fill vacancies, on current salary data, and Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Salaries have been rounded off to the nearest $5,000.
SOURCE: Austin-Michael Executive Search; www.austin-michael.com
WOMEN LEADERS AT MAJOR U.S. FOOD RETAILERS
| COMPANY | WOMEN EXECUTIVE OFFICERS* | WOMEN DIRECTORS** |
|---|---|---|
| Wal-Mart Stores | 1 OUT OF 12 TOTAL | 3 OUT OF 13 TOTAL |
| Target Corp. | 5 OF 11 | 5 OF 11 |
| Costco Wholesale Corp. | 0 OF 11 | 2 OF 14 |
| Kroger Co. | 4 OF 15 | 2 OF 14 |
| Safeway | 3 OF 13 | 1 OF 10 |
| Supervalu | 3 OF 11 | 2 OF 11 |
| Whole Foods Market | 1 OF 5 | 2 OF 12 |
* Based on most recent 10-K filing with the SEC
** Based on company websites or most recent proxy filing with the SEC
