Women’s Initiatives

Our Progress

Armanino participated in the MOVE Project in 2017 and 2020. In addition to MOVE’s relevant benchmark data, we went a step further and performed internal surveys as well as live one-on-one interviews to dive deeper into the reasons why our women were not being promoted to partnership at the same rate as their male counterparts. This data has been a core pillar to strategies and programs we implemented to help close the gaps.

2017 Findings

• Male managers are 2.5 times more likely to believe that they are on track for partnership than their female counterparts.
• Women managers are opting out of the partnership track altogether at a rate of over 2 times their male counterparts.
• More male managers initiated dialogue about partnership than female counterparts.
• The importance of an advocate is irrefutable, and the likelihood of success in obtaining partnership appears tightly linked to executive level sponsorship.
• More male managers believed they had or have advocates/executive sponsors than women managers.

Transparency to Partnership

The MOVE Survey results also showed that both male and female managers were confused on the criteria, qualifications and benefits of partnership. And in fact, women were opting out of partnership at a much higher rate than men. We created a Transparency to Partnership presentation to educate managers on the expectations and benefits of partnership at the firm.

The goal of the presentation is to reduce the number of leaders opting out of partnership as a potential career path. It covers topics such as flexibility, types of paths to partner, workload management, criteria and qualifications. It is made available to all interested employees in order to address misconceptions and barriers. The 2020 MOVE Survey saw fewer women opting out of partnership, and those who changed their minds cited the transparency presentation as the leading reason.

Executive Access Program

The Bridge has a focused strategy on growing a pipeline that will help lead to a greater percentage of women managers being promoted to partners at the firm. Through the MOVE Survey, we learned one of the key levers for a healthy internal pipeline is strong advocacy. In 2018, we launched the Executive Access Program to pair high-potential female managers with firm executives, empowering them to build relationships with key leaders who will help advocate for them.

We participated in the 2020 MOVE Survey, which showed our progress in three years was significant in closing more gaps between males and females.

2020 Findings

• Women’s belief that they are on a trajectory to partnership increased 11 percentage points, shrinking the gap between them and their male counterparts.
• Women’s wishes to opt out of partnership decreased 10 percentage points, shrinking the gap between them and their male counterparts.
• Almost 1/3 of women changed their mind over the past three years from not wanting to pursue partnership to wanting to pursue it.
• Women managers increased their conversations about plans to partnership by 9 percentage points and passed their male counterparts.
• Women’s belief that they have an advocate increased as did their desire for advocacy, on par with male counterparts.