Oath CEO Tim Armstrong says that he is trying to fill at least half of all leadership roles in his company with women by 2020.
“Having more women leaders is actually an enhancement for the entire corporation,” Armstrong told CNN. “I think every piece of data you see says having a more diverse workforce and having more women involved in it actually leads to better outcomes, better growth.”
{mosads}
According to Armstrong the new company, formed out of a merger by AOL and Yahoo, after being acquired by Verizon, currently has women in 30 percent of its leadership roles.
“I think to get there it requires us to promote from internally, hire from the outside obviously, and then, in some cases, for us to create new positions in areas where we’re going to go into the new business we’re going to have new areas that women can lead,” Armstrong said.
A 2015 report conducted by the management consulting firm McKinsey found that companies in the top quarter of diversity in gender are 15 percent more likely to financially outperform the bottom quarter of the industry.
Armstrong says that he plans to institute policies at Oath that make will make the company a more attractive work environment for women and to improve retention by changing the “behavior of the company, or the behavior of individuals.”
Armonstrong’s idea was born from a conversation he had with Gloria Steinem, in which he explained his original goal of forming a separate company exclusively run and staffed by women.
“‘Tim that’s the opposite of what we need,’” Armstrong recalled Steinem saying.
“‘We need somebody like you in your position to essentially take more risk inside of your own ecosystem. And, by the way, companies perform better when there’s men and women so don’t think about women-only, think about how to combine that,'” she told him.
Armstrong’s goal comes amid revelations of sexual harassment within the tech sector and calls for a more general increase in diversity across the board.