Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture North America, wants to accomplish what most other executives at major companies have not: Making sure men and women are represented equally in the company’s ranks. Her aim is to get a completely 50-50 workforce by 2025. As of 2017, the firm’s US employee base was 36% women and 64% men.
Julie Sweet feels it is her corporate responsibility to be a leader on equality. Accenture was the first of the big professional consulting firms to publish their diversity statistics in 2017. By being transparent about things like hiring statistics, Julie Sweet pursues to help all Accenture employees understand the importance of this initiative and why the company is getting on board.
Julie Sweet is one of the founding members of the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion, a commitment signed by more than 400 CEOs pledging to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Julie Sweet says. “People who come to Accenture want to be part of collaborative teams that are interesting and diverse. We think it’s actually a real differentiator as we try to get people to come join us.”
The Accenture team have also set incremental hiring goals to improve diversity along the way. They met their goal of hiring 40% women globally a year earlier than they expected. And it’s not just about hiring women. In 2017, Accenture set goals in terms of hiring around African Americans, Hispanic Americans and veterans. They’ve announced that they aim to hire 5,000 veterans by 2020.
The key to her leadership style is having empathy. Julie Sweet says “We don’t always talk about that as a leadership quality. I think what’s really important is having empathy, understanding the experiences of how someone is going to experience what you have to say,”
“I needed and wanted to be someone who was going to make a difference,” she admits, “Now, as CEO, I have even more of an ability to drive change. It is hard, right? But it’s a great privilege to have the opportunity.”