From Employees to Enterprise Builders: How HR Systems Can Turn Women Leaders into Founders

Women are often less likely to think of themselves as having entrepreneurial potential and may deselect themselves from situations which would allow them to build a new career. This may be attributable to a lack of confidence or a perception that they don’t have the right skills. For some women, leaving the security of a full-time salaried position may feel too risky, particularly if they have dependents.

However, being entrepreneurial doesn’t need to be a black and white situation, and there are wider stakeholders who can support and develop potential women founders of the future.

What Does a Successful Founder Look Like?

One thing that may be putting women off is that they don’t have access to successful entrepreneurial role models. For some women, there is a lack of awareness of what is needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and therefore they haven’t done the mapping of their skills and experience against what is needed. If they were to do this, they would see an intense match between the knowledge and skills they have developed and used as an HR practitioner in a new context. AI can be particularly helpful when it comes to activities such as talent mapping by identifying where there are matches, as well as the areas that could benefit from further development or enhancement.

One of the most under-valued skills in employees is the ability to communicate across many different levels and wearing many different hats. This would also be seen as a key entrepreneurial skill so illustrates immediately where there could be knowledge transfer.

What Can Organizations Do?

Organizations can benefit from having senior women who have an entrepreneurial mindset, and there are a number of activities that they could take to encourage them to make the best use of their skills. For example:

• Providing mentoring and coaching which focuses around the skills, knowledge and mindset needed.

• Offer opportunities for women to work on innovative projects that may be outside of their normal job boundaries.

• Review job descriptions and person specifications to explicitly mention skills that would be appropriate.

• Ensure that performance management reviewers understand the importance of entrepreneurial mindsets and encourage them to work with the senior women to identify their current performance and future potential.

• Consider whether the current employee reward structure could be reviewed to offer possibilities of rewarding innovation within the organization.

• Consider seed corn funding for prototypes or idea generation.

• Champion examples of innovation that have been led by women.

At a time where there is a real onus on supporting women as future entrepreneurs, organizations could be brave and try something different. For example, allowing innovational sabbaticals or creating roles for investors or entrepreneurs in-residence as a visible sign of their commitment. Senior leadership backing is also a powerful tool.

Organizations and their high potential leaders could also benefit from working on innovation accelerators with universities, which could be a win-win-win situation. Women can get expert support in developing their idea into a reality and making use of the talented faculty resources that are available within the institutions. This could be technical and specifically related to their idea or in other key areas such as understanding how to develop a financial model or upskilling on strategies around sales and marketing. They can also make introductions to the entrepreneurs they are working with (or have worked with in the past) who can share their journeys and the challenges and opportunities that they faced. Universities are usually keen to support such initiatives as it can contribute towards their knowledge exchange agendas.

It Doesn’t Need to Be All or Nothing!

For some women, the best approach may be to dip their toes in the water and look to set up as an entrepreneur as a sideline to begin with. Obviously, they need to be careful that they are not doing anything that would cause an issue with their employer, i.e. around conflicts of interest. This reduces the financial risk of having no salary whilst establishing a business. The benefits of flexible working are now widely understood and forward-looking organizations would rather have this then lose good people completely.

What Can Other Stakeholders Do?

More action is needed to encourage and support women to think about founding their own organizations. In countries where there is a strategy around the development of new ventures and enterprises, governments could consider initiatives which may encourage women as often under-encouraged groups. This could include the provision of funding and/or support resources to encourage the development of new products or services.

Women’s networks could shine lights on case studies where women from diverse backgrounds have made the change from corporate roles to setting up their own businesses. Being able to offer mentoring for women by women can also be a powerful and motivating tool for women who may be nervous about taking the first steps to self-employment. The media can also play an important role in highlighting some of the excellent examples of how women-led enterprises are successful and making an impact at local, national, and international levels.

In many countries there is a clear preference (and often incentives) for organizations to support local or national businesses wherever possible to support the country’s economy. However, this could be extended further to provide incentives for procurement strategies which would support new women entrepreneurs. Similarly, financial services organizations could develop policies that would enable women founders to set up their businesses at reasonable rates and with reasonable terms of agreement.