There’s no doubt about it for the CEO of one of Denmark’s largest companies:

“If we do not focus on gender diversity and get more women into leadership, we risk having too many people who think alike and will thereby miss out on new and different ideas. Diversity equals opportunities and thereby better financial results,” says Mads Nipper, Grundfos.

As the top manager of the global pump manufacturer and its approx. 19,000 employees, he decided last year together with the group directors and senior management to speed up the process of getting more women into leadership throughout the entire company. And things are going according to plan.

In November 2019 - halfway through the initiative - the percentage of women among all of Grundfos’s managers has increased from 20 per cent to 23 per cent. The goal is that women make up 25 per cent of management by the end of 2020.

“We’ve managed to get 99 more female managers in a year and a half. Now 448 out of 1,953 managers who have employees reporting to them are women, so things are moving in the right direction.”

In addition to the mentorship programme, Grundfos works with what is called “unconscious bias” in relation to women.

These are the unconscious biases all people have and which may play a role in recruitment, employment and promotion situations if a company is not aware of it.

Grundfos kick-started their initiative in 2018 by offering all managers training in how to discover and work with their unconscious biases.