Sales tactics must sometimes be counter-intuitive. Nissan Motor’s sales executives in Japan used to take cars to customers’ homes for viewing, often late in the evening. Now the showrooms and salespeople operate more regular working hours.
The change of approach might sound like a decline in personal service. In fact, it is designed to be the opposite. Cars are no longer just “boys’ toys”, even in conservative Japan. Nissan’s research shows that women make a third of car purchases, and women and men jointly make another third. Female customers overwhelmingly would like there to be more women in the sales teams and half of male customers would, too, the research shows. But the late hours made the job unappealing to women in a country where there is still often a stark choice between work and family.
These findings prompted Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Nissan and Renault, to adopt a strategy to hire and promote more women into the leadership ranks. The task – to drive change in a male-dominated sector – is one that challenges manufacturing and engineering companies the world over.
Since 2004, Nissan’s Women in the Driver’s Seat initiative has more than doubled recruitment of female engineering graduates to 17 per cent this year, no small achievement when only 7 per cent of engineering graduates in Japan are women. Recruitment of female “car life advisers” – salespeople – has jumped from 15 per cent to 34 per cent, partly because of friendlier working hours and a better environment in showrooms.
The number of women managers at Nissan, while still tiny, has risen from 2 per cent to 5 per cent.
“In an ideal situation we should mirror the market we serve – 50 per cent – but there is a long way to go,” says Miyuki Takahashi, general manager of the diversity development office that runs the initiative to woo female employees and customers.
Changing attitudes has not been easy, especially coming after the Renault-Nissan alliance of 1999, which was a big upheaval for what used to be a mono-cultural company in which promotion was based on seniority.
“Some of the men say that working with the French is easier than working with women,” says Asako Hoshino, Nissan’s most senior female executive.
Earlier this month, Ms Hoshino and Ms Takahashi were both in New York to speak about Nissan’s experiences at a conference organised by Catalyst, which researches and campaigns for the advancement of women in business.
Nissan was one of this year’s two Catalyst award winners, not least for having hit its initial target of women making up 5 per cent of its managers in an industry in which the average is just 0.6 per cent.
Nissan says that getting more women engineers into the company, in which 80 per cent of employees are engineers, is important to its success. In a project called fJury (female jury), it uses the views of women employees on everything from product development to the communications strategy for a new vehicle launch.
“Males are attracted by big pictures of cars and specifications about performance,” says Ms Takahashi, who was previously marketing director in Japan. “We found most mothers were attracted by pictures of a family having a great time with the car.”
To prioritise female customers, it has changed the images it uses in newspaper, magazine and television advertising. Three years ago it launched the Serena people carrier, which was designed by and for women, which last year won the top-selling spot in Japan, she says.
“I am convinced that this hit is closely related to women’s advancement in Nissan in terms of marketing and sales,” she says.
The company has also made ergonomic adjustments in car plants that have raised productivity, such as self-adjusting platforms that allow people of different heights to work more easily.
Nissan has tackled the workaholic culture and introduced family leave for both men and women. It runs workshops for managers on why women’s progress matters and how men and women communicate differently. It uses career coaches and management training to support women through promotion.
Can-do girls’ school attitude opened the door to a man’s world
Sally Serenyi is one of 945 women hired last year as field engineers at Schlumberger, the international oilfield services group – 29 per cent of its engineering and science graduate intake.
She works at well sites in Austria and Hungary, obtaining and interpreting data about how deep the oil lies and how easy it will be to extract.
She went to an all-girls’ school in the UK, which instilled a belief that “women can do whatever men can do”. Aided by a good teacher, she chose physics at A-level and university, where she found herself in a man’s world.
“There were about 100 in our year, and seven were girls.”
She was undecided about her career but stumbled upon Schlumberger at a recruitment fair and attended a two-day assessment. “I was one who thought I couldn’t do it because maybe you have to be completely interested in research, or top of the field in your subject. But it is down to attitude.”
Ms Serenyi is the only woman in her location and has joined Connect Women, a web network developed by and for women in the company. She sees no problem working with men or dealing with people “quite a lot older than me”, and expects to relish her first management job.
The importance of the initiative is reflected in the fact that senior managers from different departments are involved. Toshiyuki Shiga, chief operating officer, chairs the diversity steering committee. Significantly, the diversity development office is separate from human resources. This is “to enable it to challenge HR to change the current system for diversity promotion and women’s advancement,” explains Ms Takahashi.
In another male-dominated industry, Schlumberger, the oilfield services group, is also going to great lengths to attract the best of a scarce breed of female engineers. It is motivated partly by demographic pressures: the oil and gas industry is one of the worst affected by the impending retirement of a wave of engineers recruited in the 1970s’ oil boom.
Schlumberger’s engineers operate in often remote and hostile locations. “The reality is that women in almost every country where we work are not attracted to field operational positions in large numbers,” says Jim Andrews, a senior executive with an engineering background who became diversity manager last year.
“Historically, the oil and gas industry has always had a very macho label associated with it. This inevitably acted as a barrier and made it a less attractive career choice for many women.”
Steady change is under way at Schlumberger, which reckons it has a substantial lead over rivals in attracting women. Recruitment of female engineers has risen from 25 per cent to 31 per cent in the past two years. Retention is improving: historically more women than men have left the company, but last year the reverse was true at almost every level.
The biggest growth has been in women moving into their first management job, up from 9 per cent to 16 per cent in six years. The number of women in senior management, meanwhile, has crept up from 5 per cent to 8 per cent.
Schlumberger’s gender initiative, like Nissan’s, is driven from the top and forms a core part of the business strategy, two factors that are crucial for success. The gender diversity steering committee comprises senior managers, 10 female and six male. Other initiatives include a minimum five-day paternity leave across the globe and the creation of a network for women.
The company finds diversity encourages creativity and innovation and it has seen the benefits of having more women in the workforce over the past few years, says Mr Andrews. “We also believe that the workplace becomes more natural and more appealing to today’s graduating population when there is a balanced workforce.”
Both Schlumberger and Nissan point out that initiatives to attract more women can benefit the male workforce as well. As Ms Hoshino puts it: “The redesigned work stations ... were proposed by women and highly appreciated by men.”
Alison Maitland is co-author of Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution
