A great hire can push a team to unprecedented levels of success, while a poor one can cause problems well beyond sunk costs. And the stakes are even higher at the executive level. There’s more money, more responsibility, bigger expectations and often, a greater need. Most organizations can’t afford to get these hires wrong.

By now, you’re well aware of the fractional trend sweeping through the U.S., in which organizations are choosing to bring on high-level, high-skill talent on a part-time and project basis in a range of different C-Suite roles. Organizations can save money while getting access to a leader they could not afford otherwise, while also de-risking the hiring process through contract lengths and the ability to turn support on and off based on their needs.

But like any other type of working arrangement, a fractional executive will work extremely well in some situations and be less effective in others. While every organization is different and every situation has its own nuances and complexities, the following scenarios were identified by Canopy’s own experts as those in which a fractional executive would be the ideal choice.

1. Unlimited ambitions, limited budgets

Cost effectiveness is routinely listed as the top benefit for organizations in bringing on a fractional hire versus their full-time equivalent. Whether or not you agree where that benefit belongs on the list, our community of experts agrees that it should be a factor you consider in approaching any executive hire.

It’s well-documented that hiring a fractional expert, especially at the executive level, can save organizations a bundle. When you factor in the timebound nature of the work and the fact that most fractional experts will not receive health insurance or other benefits, the savings can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the case of a financial executive, assuming an average per hour rate of $350 per hour and a year-long contract, hiring a Fractional Chief Financial Officer (CFO) might cost an organization close to $168,000, while total annual pay for a full-time CFO might run an average of $742,011.

If you have large projects on the horizon or you have critical needs that can’t be filled with your internal team, and you’re limited on budget, it makes economic and strategic sense to consider a fractional expert first.

“Even for organizations with a lot of resources and reserves, it can take months or even years to recover from a bad hire. The ability to de-risk an executive hire, even slightly, continues to be a powerful selling point for fractional experts,” said Griffen O’Shaughnessy, founder and CEO of Canopy Advisory Group. “Significant cost savings aside, fractional hiring offers a way to access expert, executive-level talent without locking you in if things go sideways.”

2. Executive leader transitions

An executive-level hire is a big deal in any organization. Even if these hires don’t work out as planned, there’s a ton of pressure on founders and CEOs to “make it work,” at least for a certain period of time. On the flip side, when the new leader performs extremely well, founders and CEOs need to worry about how to retain an individual who will be in high demand.

Regardless of how an executive leaves the business, the hole they leave in the organizational structure presents both opportunities and challenges. From the perspective of the founder, CEO and Board of Directors, the opportunity is to bring in new skill sets and new thinking. The challenge is to minimize the disruption and, in the case of losing someone valuable, limit the damage from their departure.

The situation is often extremely suitable for a fractional hire given the need to bring someone into the business quickly, the strategic nature of the position in a period of transition and the level of experience required to navigate a potentially difficult situation (including the possibility of preparing for a full-time hire in the role within the next year).

“When you lose a high-level executive who was important to the business, there’s often no clear direction, and the team may not know where to turn,” said Canopy Marketing Expert Kate W. “A fractional executive immediate senior-level expertise without the full-time cost, no annual salary, no benefits overhead. They can step in quickly, stabilize the team, assess the landscape, and drive strategic action.

3. Periods of rapid growth

Early on, much of the messaging around fractional hiring centered on the use of fractional experts as stop-gap measures in transition periods. While many organizations continue to use fractional hires to bridge these gaps, a growing number are discovering the value of fractional experts in accelerating growth plans.

Whereas the first two scenarios are clearly tailored more toward hiring a fractional expert than a full-time resource, the growth stage is a situation where you’re making more of a strategic choice. Regardless of the discipline for the role (e.g., CFO, COO, CRO, CMO, etc.), a full-time hire can certainly prove to be an excellent choice, especially if the individual ends up being a longer-tenured member of the organization and is a leader that the founder and CEO wants to grow a team around.

Reasons a founder or CEO may wish to go with a fractional expert in a growth scenario include:

• An interest in keeping costs down while maximizing impact
• The need for speed-to-impact, including areas like faster onboarding and truncated time-to-result
• A desire to bring in an executive leader with very specific situational experience
• A market or organizational situation that prioritizes agility and the ability to react and adjust quickly

4. Navigating large-scale change

While the departure of a leader or leaders certainly qualifies as change, these are far from the only situations where fractional executive hires can be instrumental in helping an organization withstand turbulent times. And unlike a situation where a single leader leaves an organization and the founder, CEO and Board are forced to move quickly to replace them, a large-scale adjustment to the direction, model or structure of an organization can (paradoxically) provide a bit more breathing room for leadership to approach the problem more strategically.

Similar to the rapid growth scenario, founders, CEO and Boards have the potential to be successful in this situation with either a full-time or fractional hire. In this case specifically, the choice can be largely dependent on the strength and clarity of the organization’s business plan. Clarity on direction often brings with it an understanding of the team that’s likely to be able to fulfill the long-term vision, and in these instances, leaders tend to lean toward full-time hires who can grow with the organization. While fractional experts can perform quite well in this scenario, organizations may choose to skip a bridge option and move straight to a longer-term hire.

Conversely, for all of the reasons fractional experts thrive in any organization, founders, CEOs and Boards may choose to bring in an experienced expert to help them build the future direction of the organization. In this case, they can also provide recommendations on who to hire to build a full-time team, and when it makes the most sense to hire those roles. 

We have also seen leaders set a new direction and then compile a group of the best fractional experts available to drive the plan forward. Whether or not this is a longer-term solution, it invariably helps the organization gain the traction and foothold necessary for a new direction to get off the ground.

Canopy Nonprofit Expert Meg G. described what a fractional expert engagement can look like during a major organizational change: “Sometimes during the life of a nonprofit, the Board of Trustees may find that a total restructuring of staff and mission is required. I went through this for a magazine, during which I was called in to supervise the restructuring and to shepherd how the magazine approached production, management, marketing, fulfillment and more. The process took approximately nine months.” 

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Thank you for reading! If you’re interested in hearing more from our experts on when and how to hire fractional executives, check out our guide, Demystifying Fractional Executive Hiring.

The post Hiring an executive? Here are the top four scenarios where fractional makes sense. appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

During these life cycles, the quality of the financial decisions at crucial stages contributes to the company’s development. Most startups don’t launch with finance or accounting teams. Several times, one of the founders assumes the accounting or financial planning positions. However, as the company expands, the need for a specialized finance expert, a full-time CFO, or a team to oversee financial functions becomes increasingly crucial. Bringing in a CFO during the early stages can significantly influence a company’s initial profitability strategy. However, the feasibility of hiring one can be a challenging task for startups with limited financial resources. This is where the expertise of a fractional CFO can be engaged, and when supported by an accounting staff and a part-time finance controller, can provide adequate support for a business that cannot afford to build a full-time team but requires financial expertise.

If you are new to Fractional CFOs, our blog on How can a fractional CFO contribute to Business Growth and Profitability provides a background on the importance of a skilled fractional CFO and areas where your company can see a long-lasting value in growth and profitability.

When to Consider a Fractional CFO

Here are Ten signs that it is time to hire a fractional CFO.

Rapid business growth and expansion

As a startup, going through a phase of swift business growth and expansion brings excitement to the company, usually when revenues are high, net profits are positive, customer retention is impressive, and the business is gaining recognition in its respective industry. However, effectively managing business growth and the company’s finances can become increasingly intricate. Startups experiencing rapid growth and expansion can employ the services of a fractional CFO to navigate through the growth stage while ensuring that the cost and capital structure is optimized to support the business operations.

Raising capital

There is a sense of fulfillment and validation that comes from raising venture capital. Founders and business owners consider this phase a fulfilling one. However, the pitching and fundraising process can be tedious and sometimes unpredictable. The requirements of each funding round change, and a business can leverage the services of a Fractional CFO to manage the requirements of these rounds. In addition, not only can the Fractional CFO function in the fundraising process, but they can advise on the timing of the fundraising and the percentage of debt and equity that is best for the company at each round.

It is also important to note that in the series A or seed funding stages, what investors value most is the idea, management, and scalability of the business. When you are heading towards series B or later stages, the key value driver becomes the financial metrics, profitability, and revenues. Therefore, if you are in the series B or later rounds of your fundraising, this can be a perfect time to have a fractional CFO on your team.

Navigating an audit or transaction

Organizational audit periods can be one of the busiest periods in a company’s calendar year. While internal audits can help a company understand the status of its financial health, there are other cases where the government, investors, or shareholders demand an audit report before making relevant decisions. Audit requests may come last minute, and the complexity of this activity can seem difficult for first-time founders and entrepreneurs. Audit tasks can be contracted to fractional CFOs, who can ensure that the company’s financial statements are accurate against other financial documents and credit card statements.

When it’s time to scale

“Growth” and “Scale” are words often used interchangeably in business. However, growth involves increasing top-line revenues without significant concern for expenses, whereas scaling a business focuses on optimizing revenues while efficiently managing costs to improve profit margin. This concept is known as the “economies of scale.”

Popular approach companies adopt for scaling involves incorporating new software into their manual operational procedures. For instance, they might utilize Zuora for invoicing and Salesforce for managing customer relationships. When a company opts to scale, it can be a smart move to bring on board an experienced fractional CFO. This helps guarantee smooth and problem-free integrations, all while maintaining the company’s workflow undisturbed.

Cash flow issues

One specific challenge that startups encounter is dealing with cash flow issues. These issues can arise due to uneven cash inflows and outflows, unexpected expenses, or delays in receiving payments from customers. In some cases, startups may struggle to determine the average number of days it takes for customers to pay their invoices, which is known as the accounts receivable turnover. A lack of clarity regarding this metric can lead to uncertainty in predicting when cash will be available. A fractional CFO can play a crucial role in addressing cash flow challenges by devising a fresh billing strategy. This strategy may involve setting clear payment terms, offering incentives for early payments, or implementing efficient invoicing and collection processes. Furthermore, a fractional CFO can work with the startup’s management team to negotiate improved payment timelines with customers. This negotiation process may involve finding ways to align payment schedules with the company’s own cash needs, smoothing out the variability in cash inflows. By securing more favorable payment terms, the startup can enhance its ability to maintain a steady cash balance and navigate cash flow fluctuations more effectively.

Optimizing employee compensation and benefits

If you are considering improving your employees’ benefits, payroll, and workers’ compensation, outsourcing these tasks to a Fractional CFO can significantly help companies to reduce their non-operating expenses. For example, the cost of employee benefits, particularly in healthcare, is constantly increasing. In 2022, a McKinsey article reported that the average employer saw a 5% increase in cost of employee healthcare benefits, and will increase by an additional 10% throughout 2023 according to Willis Tower Watson. An experienced fractional CFO is always attuned to emerging economic alternatives and should be capable of suggesting strategies to reduce costs while upholding or elevating employee benefits.

Frequent industry regulatory changes

Some industries experience frequent regulatory changes. If you are a multinational company or have a diverse supply chain, you need to pay attention to the changes in relevant regulations in the countries you operate. These regulations could be reporting, disclosure obligations, or compliance, and therefore require individuals with related experience or professional skills, as the implications of misinterpreting regulations can be reputationally and financially disastrous.

Given that fractional CFOs often possess experience spanning multiple industries, their wide-ranging expertise and understanding of various regulatory demands can facilitate the transfer of knowledge within existing teams, as well as provide adequate insights to the CEO and management teams.

Management restructuring

Management structures often change, particularly after the completion of a merger and acquisition (M&A) or a leveraged buyout (LBO). If investors are not looking to appoint their CFO, some incumbent CFOs and staff resign at this stage, leaving the business without a financial decision-maker to implement new strategies. Moreso, it takes an average of 6 months to a year to hire a CFO, compared to the swift onboarding process of an experienced fractional CFO who can fit into the role on an interim basis.

Influencing the board of directors

Venture or private equity (PE) funded companies end up with diverse board members that hold significant influence over decisions and future trajectories of the company. Introducing a fractional CFO to participate in board meetings and contribute fresh perspectives to business decisions can be beneficial to the company.

In addition, larger companies typically have a more complex board of directors, including independent board members with no significant financial, business, or familial ties to the company and whose decisions should not be influenced by internal interests or conflicts of interest. Occasionally, specific corporate actions may place an independent board member in a potentially conflicted position. During such instances, a fractional CFO can step in as a temporary board member, ensuring unbiased oversight of the matter without any personal conflicts.

Decision-making on budget allocation

High-growth companies expand rapidly with increasing operational demand and often need to make decisions around the strategic allocation of funds. One notable aspect of their decision-making process is determining where to invest their financial resources to achieve high returns for their shareholders. For example, decisions made during Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) can significantly impact a company’s trajectory, market positioning, and competitive advantage. In the absence of a dedicated full-time CFO, which is not uncommon for many evolving companies, the option of engaging a fractional CFO becomes particularly valuable. In situations where complex and impactful decisions must be made swiftly, often referred to as intensive, time-sensitive sprints, the fractional CFO can step in to provide insightful project evaluation.

In the dynamic landscape of business growth and financial management, recognizing the pivotal moments to engage expertise is key. The ten signs elucidated here underscore the critical junctures when a fractional CFO can be your strategic partner. From steering through rapid growth and complex scaling transitions to deftly navigating audits, regulatory changes, and budget allocations, the insights and expertise of a skilled fractional CFO can guide your company to enhanced profitability and sustainable success. As you assess your company’s trajectory, remember that these pivotal moments are opportunities for transformation. To ensure that your financial decisions align with your growth ambitions, contact Canopy Advisory Group for Fractional CFOs today. Let our seasoned professionals empower your journey, ushering you through these crucial phases with expertise, insight, and a commitment to your company’s financial excellence.

The post The 10 Signs It’s Time to Hire a Fractional CFO appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

The main responsibility of a marketing consultant is to help a company develop its brand through various marketing services including website design, event planning, social media, graphic design, and creating an effective online presence. 

A marketing consultant is usually available as an individual consultant or part of a full marketing agency with several professional marketing specialists who can create and implement every part of a marketing plan.

What A Marketing Consultant Does

After implementing a new marketing strategy, a marketing consultant will analyze the results for effectiveness and present the results to the client. When it comes to implementing marketing strategies, a marketing consultant handles the task from start to finish. Presenting the results is vital to the reputation of a marketing consultant since it showcases the level of their work ethic.

The first thing a marketing consultant does is examine a company’s marketing to determine its strengths and weaknesses. This is being done to get a complete picture of which marketing platforms are working and which ones need improvement. 

Performing Market Research

The difference between a second-rate marketing consultant and an amazing one is that the latter goes the extra mile to come up with ways to reliably help your business develop. This entails performing market research to find new marketing trends, as well as coming up with ways to develop current strategies. 

Best Marketing Strategies 

Partnering with a marketing consultant who provides effective marketing strategies will be a huge benefit to your business, ensuring future success. Businesses must have successful marketing strategies so they can be competitive in their industries. 

Your marketing consultant should know valuable marketing tactics that will be helpful for your company, but also useful strategies to aid in your future business growth. 

Advantages of Hiring a Marketing Consultant

If your goal is business growth, it is crucial that you work with a marketing consultant.

A skilled marketing professional will possess the expertise and knowledge to assist your business in achieving its goals. 

How can you be sure you’re hiring the right person? When selecting a marketing consultant, some important questions must be asked before hiring. They include:

• Ask about any experience with similar projects
• Ask about marketing results with past clients
• Ask about references

Denver’s Top Marketing Consultants

With years of marketing experience, a marketing consultant’s services include creating new ideas for business growth. Since they know what marketing strategies work, partnering with a marketing consultant saves you time and money. Your business will benefit from effective email marketing, website designing, and copywriting.  

With so many marketing consultants in Denver competing for new business, why not reach out to Canopy Advisory Group today? We look forward to hearing from you.

The post What Services Do Marketing Consultants Provide? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

If you can’t afford a full-time CFO, a fractional CFO delivers the same expertise at a fraction of the salary. 

A fractional CFO has an active management and leadership role in a company. They provide important information that comes from analyzing trends and helping to develop accurate plans for your business. Additionally, they can identify risks to your business and safeguard you against those risks.

Ways A Fractional CFO Helps Accelerate Your Growth

Top-level of Expertise 

As a seasoned financial expert, the skills and experience of a fractional CFO are tried and true. Engaging with a fractional CFO at the appropriate time brings substantial value to a company. Fractional CFOs are critical in financial problem-solving, complex financial analysis, capital raises, working with new investors, creating incentive plans, and more.

Accounting 

Even though most businesses already have an accounting department, a skilled fractional CFO will be able to effortlessly fit in with your existing accounting team. Partnering with the controller, a fractional CFO will assist with assembling reports and implementing new procedures. 

Being integrated into an organization’s accounting team helps the fractional CFO better understand how the department and company operate. The fractional CFO can use the acquired knowledge to develop new strategies, unique to that organization’s goals and objectives.

Financial Analyst

A fractional CFO will analyze and oversee your company’s financials, including ROI, liquidity, and other critical metrics on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis. As your company experiences growth, a fractional CFO will help your company modify its workflow and processes, managing your increased cash flow and new financial needs.

The Right Fractional CFO in Denver for Your Business

Canopy Advisory Group has the most experienced fractional CFOs in Denver. Schedule a consultation with us today.

The post How Can a Fractional CFO Contribute to Business Growth and Profitability appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

The diversity industry has been around since the 1960s. Yet, many organizations have little to show for their diversity efforts. So my question is, what actually keeps organizations from being more diverse, equitable, and inclusive? Surely it can’t be a lack of resources.

Answer:

The foundation of today’s diversity industry was built six decades ago on a combination of legal compliance and social justice. So you’re right: we’ve had a plethora of time and resources to try and “figure out” how to make our organizations more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. In this light, the fact that our world is 257 years away from achieving gender equity across all races/ethnicities seems puzzling.

So we need to ask ourselves whether the 60-year-old foundation of the diversity industry still serves us today. And what about the current stack of DEI resources at our disposal—do they still serve their function? 

Perhaps the foundation of the diversity industry (compliance and social justice) is crumbling and we need to rebuild it. Perhaps that means we will need to add new tools to our DEI toolbox to reconstruct our strategy.

By exploring these inquiries, we can begin to see where and why our journey to DEI has stalled.

Step 1: A new foundation—moving away from social & compliance-based DEI

We need to change the narrative around diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not a charity cause, it shouldn’t be compliance-driven, and it can’t be relegated to the realm of social justice. Years before the pandemic began, economists and researchers had well established the link between DEI and improved business performance.

My company, Pipeline, confirmed this link in our original research across 4,161 companies in 29 countries, which found that for every 10% increase in gender equity, businesses see a 1-2% increase in revenue.

The pandemic further exposed the business imperative of DEI, specifically how diverse, equitable, and inclusive companies outperform lesser diverse, equitable, and inclusive companies in times of economic downturn. (See here, here, and here.)

In fact, between 2007 and 2009, the S&P 500 declined 35%. However, the stocks of businesses where key employee groups such as women and POC had “very positive” experiences at work rose 14.4%.

The take-away: DEI is a business imperative, therefore it needs to be treated as one. 

• Business imperatives aren’t performative, like a one-time social media campaign.
• They aren’t siloed inside a single department, such as HR.
• They aren’t condensed into a singular initiative, such as implicit bias training.
• Business imperatives are integrated into every part of an organization.
• They are meticulously measured and tracked against quantifiable goals. (HR leaders ranked “lack of metrics” as the #1 barrier to increasing the effectiveness of their DEI initiatives.)
• Such data is visible and regularly reviewed in executive-level meetings. (A 2019 survey of 234 diversity professionals at S&P 500 companies revealed that only 35% had access to company metrics.)

If we want to make progress toward DEI, we need to stop treating it as a compliance mechanism or extra-curricular activity and start treating it like the business imperative it is.

Step 2: A new set of resources—using advanced tech to achieve DEI goals

Once we re-position DEI as a driver of organizational performance, it’s time to evaluate the tools that will enable it to thrive.

For example: Almost all Fortune 500 companies and approximately 50% of midsize companies use diversity training to enable DEI. In fact, US corporations spend $8 billion each year on diversity training alone. Yet, this training has proven remarkably unsuccessful in creating more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces for five main reasons.

Furthermore, a study of over 800 companies over three decades found that companies who conducted diversity training did not hire significantly more diverse managers. Worse, researchers found that the prevalence of diversity training correlated with a decrease in Black women as managers.

If diversity training won’t unlock the power of DEI, what tools and resources will?

Data and advanced technology such as machine learning. <<<

Consider this: Companies make three key decisions about their talent every year:

1. How will we pay our employees?
2. How will we review their performance?
3. How will we evaluate their potential?

For the average Fortune 500 company which has approximately 60,000 employees, that’s 180,000 opportunities to move further from or closer to DEI each year.

The take-away: AI can not only remove bias from talent decisions across the entire employee lifecycle, but it can also augment decision-making to make it more equitable and ensure all decisions are in the company’s best interest. 

Instead of relying on informal relationships or one-off diversity campaigns, advanced technologies allow companies to hardwire DEI into their organizations. And by hardwiring DEI into our organizations, we can ensure that we treat DEI as the business imperative it is, all while using metrics to ascertain progress toward our stated goals.

That’s how we’ll close the intersectional gender equity gap once and for all.

The post Where DEI Strategies Fall Short appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

This group celebrated its first ‘Negro History Week’ in February 1926, these celebrations spanned cities across the nation. In the late 1960’s, with the Civil Rights Movement gaining traction and heightening awareness of the Black experience, ‘Negro History Week’ evolved into  Black History Month. In 1976 President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month, noting the importance of public recognition of the contributions Black Americans have made in America.

For this reason it’s critical that the celebration of Black History Month continues and expands. In addition to community recognition of Black History Month, it’s important that businesses take bold and deliberate actions in the recognition and celebration of the contributions of Black American’s. Diversity creates dimension, and inclusion is the vehicle organizations activate to effectively achieve workforce equity. Inclusion demands action, operational integration, and leadership, and this is an area many organizations have room to grow.

Although the recognition and celebration of Black American’s should be ongoing, initiating Black History Month programming is a sound starting point for businesses as they work to achieve their inclusion and equity goals. Organizations can celebrate Black History Month by:

1. Amplifying Black voices: “Pass the mic” opportunities are an impactful way of humanizing the Black experience. This can be accomplished by inviting external Black speakers, inviting existing team members to speak, and creating moments for Black voices to resonate throughout the organization. Creating environments that support psychological safety enable all team members to show up authentically. Passing the mic is not only a way to celebrate Black History Month, but it’s a collaborative strategy that will benefit the organization beyond the month of February.
2. Education, workshops, and learning: Fostering inclusion and equity in the workforce requires exercising new muscles that challenge thinking and support individual growth. Organizations can champion learning by offering DEI curriculum; sharing books, articles, and podcasts; or engaging in Black History Month trivia as an organization. As businesses work to become more inclusive, it’s important that space is created for team members to be introspective and self reflective.
3. Support Black owned businesses: Organizations can take action and demonstrate their commitment to diversity through the implementation of a supplier diversity initiative. Supporting Black owned businesses highlights the innovation and multifaceted talents of Black founded and operated companies, while adding to the longevity and sustainability of Black owned businesses.

Black history is American history, when businesses celebrate and recognize the contributions of  Black American’s they create space for the acknowledgement of the Black identity in their organizations. Championing inclusivity is actionable, our unique identities must be celebrated and acknowledged. Celebrating Black History Month is a good starting point for businesses as they work to build equitable workforces. But, this commitment to equity can’t stop with Black History Month celebrations, it’s ongoing work and commitment requiring leadership, culture, and operations.

The post Inspiring Equity Through Black History appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

But returning to work two years later when her youngest daughter began preschool wasn’t so easy. Interviews in her field led nowhere, particularly when she asked for a flexible schedule.

So she tried a different approach, thinking less like a midlife professional, and more like a midlife intern. Creating her own series of “returnships,” Ms. Corvino took on a project for a friend who ran a non-profit. Later she found a temporary contract position at a university. These stints helped her find her current role in communications and development for an independent school.

Those short-term roles “bolster your résumé,” she said. “Everyone says, ‘Oh, do some volunteer work,’ and I did that, but it really helped to have some paid gigs.”

Ms. Corvino is not alone. Nearly one-third of college-educated women have taken time off to serve as caregivers to children or aging family members, according to an analysis by the Center for Talent Innovation. The majority of these workers are women, and while most of them plan to return to work eventually, they often find it difficult to navigate their way back into the work force.

That’s changing. A growing number of businesses are now targeting this pool of educated workers with temporary intern-style jobs or more formal “returnships” – essentially midlife internships to help workers rebuild their résumés.

In March, the data solutions provider Return Path announced it will spin off its own 20-week paid “returnship” program into a nonprofit, Path Forward, which works to help companies create similar programs. A new website, Après, just this week began targeting workers like Ms. Corvino who have taken career breaks in hopes of matching them with employers. And last year, the Society for Women Engineers announced the STEM Re-Entry Task Force, which worked with seven companies to create mid-career internships for 2015 and 2016, with plans to expand. The OnRamp Fellowship offers similar opportunities at Baker Botts and in Amazon’s legal department; others are offered at JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs, which pioneered (and even trademarked) the “returnship” in 2008.

Returning professionals have something unique to offer the employer who understands their value, said Carol Fishman Cohen, the chief executive and co-founder of iRelaunch, which works with both professionals seeking to return to work after a hiatus and employers interested in hiring them. While they’re often as eager as the just-out-of-college new hire, they bring more workplace experience, and they often have moved past the stage of needing future career breaks, unlike their younger counterparts.

“These are experienced employees, but also fast learners who are really ready to prove themselves,” Ms. Cohen said.

The Après site aims to connect experienced but out-of-the-work-force employees with employers who are looking for both gender diversity and seasoned mid-career professionals. In addition to traditional positions, it offers options that can help people transition back to work including contract consulting projects, temporary jobs and unpaid pro bono work.

The site was co-founded by Jennifer Gefsky, former deputy general counsel for Major League Baseball, who struggled to return to work after an eight-year career break, and Niccole Kroll, who had left her job as a New York University dietitian and researcher. Both had stepped out of the work force to raise their children.

“We were both surrounded by all these friends in that same category — educated, previously successful women looking to re-enter the work force — and no one knowing how to do it,” Ms. Gefsky said. “Then there were all these companies worried that their mid- and senior-level executives were all men.”

One advantage of working with a company with a returnship-style program, or one that has otherwise expressed an interest in welcoming caregivers back to the workforce, is that those companies are effectively saying, “we know we are going to see résumés with a gap and we’re O.K. with that,” Ms. Gefsky said. These are companies that understand that there are many reasons, economic and personal, for stepping out of the work force — and for returning. “Some women are financially motivated, and some are personally motivated, and both make good employees,” she said.

Workers who can’t find a formal midlife internship can still create their own internship-style path back to work. Erin Gibson Allen, a lawyer in Pittsburgh, created an unpaid internship with Judge Lisa Lenihan, a magistrate judge for the United States District Court in the Western District of Pennsylvania. After spending six months looking to re-enter the legal profession and with no formal re-entry programs in Pittsburgh, her plan was to get work experience and network in the legal community, rather than to find permanent employment with her judicial boss.

Her efforts paid of: After nine months with the judge she accepted a job at a law firm, and then moved to a Pittsburgh firm, Marcus & Shapira, where she now works in the area of competition law. She chose her internship experience wisely: Ms. Allen said the judge, a mother herself, appreciated the challenges of managing both a family and a legal career.

“The judge was my biggest advocate,” she said. “She introduced me to attorneys around town and included me in as many legal events as possible. My time with her was priceless.”

Helen Wolter of Mountain View, Calif, describes her career path before having children as “typical liberal arts major.” She taught high school, she did outdoor education, she worked in film and video. When her son was born, she was a high school social studies teacher. She made it work for a year, but went through “three nannies and a day care” trying to find an affordable and flexible fit.

Ms. Wolter began her journey back to work by pursing a master’s degree in public administration. To keep it affordable, avoid the need to hire babysitters in order to attend classes and maintain the flexibility she needed, she completed an online program through the University of Colorado. Now a graduate, with a son in first grade, she’s taken an internship approach – opting for a six-month contract position with a political re-election campaign as her first job after seven years as a caregiver. She hopes it will lead to permanent work. “I checked with a career counselor to ask if I should take that, or wait for something more permanent,” Ms. Wolter said, “and she told me, ‘Grab it. It’s so much easier to find a job if you have a job.’”

How do you create your own midlife internship? Those returning to work without the benefit of an organized program can use such internships as a model for both how they approach and talk to potential employers, look for the support they need, and find ways to expand their skills. Career counselors offer the following advice.

Keep networking from home: Even if your focus is on caregiving, you can still keep in touch with former bosses and co-workers. You might connect with someone on a soccer field who can help you. And you can revive a connection even if you’ve let links slide, said Cheryl Casone, author of “The Comeback: How Today’s Moms Reenter the Workplace Successfully.” “Comment on Facebook posts, send an interesting article, reconnect first,” she said.

Think about professional development: Even before you return to work, you can rejoin professional organizations, who can often connect you with internship programs. Like Ms. Wolter, you can build your résumé with online professional development courses or a new online degree program.

Don’t shy away from a temporary job: These can be “win-win,” said Ms. Gefsky. “Say, ‘let’s try this. I want to brush up my résumé, and I’ll work for a trial period at something less than the market rate.’ Or take something knowing it’s temporary in order to gain experience and add to your résumé.”

Own your career break: Own your choices, and emphasize your readiness to return. “Don’t be afraid to say you wanted, or needed, to be home with your family,” said Ms. Gefsky. “This is only going to become more common, and employers are becoming more and more used to it.”

The post Starting Your Own Midlife Internship appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

We often hear lopsided statistics about the lack of women at the CEO level, but a new global study of 22,000 public companies in 91 countries looked at something else – what about when women hold a significant percentage of management positions just shy of the corner office?

Is Gender Diversity Profitable? Evidence from a Global Survey — released by the Peterson Institute for International Economics and EY — found significant correlation between the number of women in top management positions and profitability.  Interesting.

From The New York Times:  Women in Company Leadership Tied to Stronger Profits

The study found that female CEOs did not significantly underperform or overperform when compared with male chief executives. While it found some indications that having more women on boards was correlated with higher profitability … that evidence is not robust.

But the data was clear about women in top management positions. An increase in the share of women from zero to 30 percent would be associated with a 15 percent rise in profitability.

The study found that educational credentials and work experience are the key differentiating attributes for these women managers. Social attitudes, corporate practices and national laws were thought to be conditioning outcomes.

Holding on to top-performing women is still clearly a challenge for most companies. In our opinion, reinforced by our clients’ feedback, bringing women to the decision-making table – be they full-time, part-time or contractors — makes for a stronger, more profitable business venture.

The post Why having women at the table is good for your bottom line appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

A shared office space called Industry, in the popular River North Art District, stands as an example of the entrepreneurial forces that are luring a flood of young professionals here.

Formerly a depot for the truckloads of produce that rolled into Denver from Colorado’s farmland, the firm’s 155,000-square-foot warehouse is now an open-air maze of workspaces for everything from ride-sharing company Uber to CirrusMD, which connects doctors and patients virtually.
“You don’t move just because some place is cool,” said Aaron Duke, a 39-year-old San Francisco transplant and CirrusMD employee. “You’ve also got to be able to earn a buck.”
While the new arrivals are transforming the city’s landscape and economy, they also are generating tensions among locals, who complain they are driving up rents and fueling a building boom that is marring some mountain views.

The metro area, which has a population of about 2.7 million, received more than 100,000 out-of-state residents from 2010 through 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That is the fifth-largest influx of domestic migrants in the country, surpassing cities such as Seattle and Washington, D.C.

Some 3,200 new firms have opened their doors in Denver during the past four years, according to city estimates, contributing to more than 165,000 new jobs in the broader metro area and helping drive the unemployment rate to 4.1% in May, among the lowest for big metros in the nation.

Public improvements to lure millennials, such as building bike paths and revitalizing neighborhoods, can result in a nicer place to live, economists say, but for an economy to thrive, more fundamental investments are needed, including a well-connected airport, universities to train workers and a business base that attracts people from around the region, they note.

Those advantages are helping to power Denver’s growth.

“A city like Denver from the beginning was a central place,” said Mario Polèse, an urban economics professor at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique in Montreal. “It was destined to grow.”

Denver has long been a regional hub, with established industries such as oil and telecommunications that leaders have built upon to create thriving sectors such as energy information technology and digital health care.

While Denver is benefiting from a booming economy, residents are dealing with big-city problems such as traffic and skyrocketing rents.

Though rents remain well below New York and San Francisco, they jumped 7.8% last year to an average $986, the second highest increase among U.S. metros, behind San Jose, Calif., according to Reis, a real-estate research firm.  Some critics also are concerned that newcomers are out-competing Coloradans, who tend to be less educated than the recent transplants.

“We’re not growing our own talent fast enough,” said J.B. Holston,dean of the University of Denver’s engineering and computer science school and founder of the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network, which focuses on scaling up Colorado’s promising companies.

Paul Washington, head of Denver’s Office of Economic Development, says officials are committed to spreading the city’s prosperity, building affordable housing and educating residents in disenfranchised neighborhoods.  They’re not giving up, however, on the millennial generation—those born roughly between 1980 and 2000.

“The influx of millennials is extremely important,” said Mr. Washington, adding they “bring energy and enthusiasm and optimism.”

Craftsy, an online learning firm co-founded by former Bay Area residents, has gone from five employees in 2010 to 270. John Levisay,one of the company’s founders, said it made sense for the firm to settle in Denver because of the city’s lower operating costs, its big pool of engineers and growing interest from tech investors.

At IMA Financial Group, an insurance provider, young jeans-clad recruits are helping develop tech products. Since the company moved its headquarters near Union Station, a trendy transit hub, it is getting three times more applicants for every job it posts, says chief executive Rob Cohen.  New development, however, also is pushing some locals out. In Jefferson Park, a century-old residential neighborhood, 11 homes have been replaced with 65 townhouses on just one street.

Rafael Espinoza, who lives there and recently was elected to the Denver City Council after expressing concerns about gentrification, complains that the townhouses are unsightly and are making the area unaffordable.

“You shouldn’t be so fixated on bringing in the new revenue and the new warm bodies at the expense of having a diverse population,” he said.

In the River North Art District, Jim Mills, co-founder of an organic-produce cannery, has seen the former industrial strip transformed into a gathering spot for flip-flop-wearing hipsters and young entrepreneurs. It is the kind of customer Mr. Mills is targeting with his live-fermented Sriracha sauce and rosemary pears. As breweries and lofts sprawl closer to his warehouse, however, he worries he will no longer be able to afford to stay.

“It’s been both exciting and a little unnerving to see,” said Mr. Mills, an out-of-state migrant himself.

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It goes by many names:  corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate citizenship, community relations to name a few.  The intent is the same. It’s about a company’s responsibility to invest in the communities in which it serves; about addressing social and environmental challenges while driving economic growth.  Put another way, it means not just caring about the bottom line, but what you can do with the bottom line.
It’s about having an impact.

It’s also about attracting customers or partners who share your values, attracting and retaining employees who like what you stand for and delighting investors or other stakeholders who are looking for positive growth metrics.
So we’ve touched on the ‘why’.  What about the ‘how’?  Here are a few steps to get you thinking more strategically about your community investment:

1. Identify your most important key audiences, internally and externally.
2. Engage in meaningful dialogue.  Find out what is important to them.  How might you be able to fill a gap?
3. Look inward.  What does your company do best?  And how can you apply that to meet the needs of your key audiences?
4. Align your objectives and your resources.
5. Communicate.  And I don’t mean marketing.  Listen, share, and respond.  Demonstrate commitment.

For many companies, community investment is synonymous with Board leadership or volunteer projects.  Others write generous checks.  Any investment in the community is a good one.  These steps will help ensure your company’s community investment is also a strategic one.

Kecia Carroll is a marketing and communications consultant working with companies and professional service firms on connecting their branding, community investment and business development strategies to further their mission.  Kecia most recently worked as a marketing strategist for Canopy client Front Range Bank.  Connect with her at Kecia@CanopyAdvisory.com, linkedin.com/in/keciacarroll or @keciacarroll.

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A lot of ink has been spilled on these topics, and both individuals and organizations have focused on gender gaps in business and other sectors. Can anything more be said? The 50th anniversary of the admission of women to Harvard Business School’s MBA program inspired us to find out—specifically, to learn what HBS graduates had to say about work and family and how their experiences, attitudes, and decisions might shed light on prevailing controversies.s researchers who have spent more than 20 years studying professional women, we have watched with interest the recent surge in attention paid to women’s careers, work-family conflict, and the gender gap in leadership. Among the most visible contributions to this public conversation have been Anne-Marie Slaughter’s 2012 Atlantic article “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” and Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In, both of which ignited fierce public debate.

A lot of ink has been spilled on these topics, and both individuals and organizations have focused on gender gaps in business and other sectors. Can anything more be said? The 50th anniversary of the admission of women to Harvard Business School’s MBA program inspired us to find out—specifically, to learn what HBS graduates had to say about work and family and how their experiences, attitudes, and decisions might shed light on prevailing controversies.

We trained our analytical lens on these graduates for two reasons. First, attending a top-tier business school is a reasonable indication of high levels of achievement, talent, ambition, and promise, and by looking at men and women who graduated from the same school, we had a level playing field for gender comparisons. Second, HBS graduates are trained to assume leadership positions, so their attitudes and experiences—interesting in their own right—shape the policies, practices, and unwritten rules of their organizations. Read more….

The post Rethink What You “Know” About High-Achieving-Women appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Despite notching significant gains in the legal world, female law-firm partners continue to lag behind their male counterparts when it comes to billing rates, commanding on average 10% less for their services, according to a new analysis of $3.4 billion in legal work.
Lawyer Patricia K. Gillette said some female rainmakers ‘are not getting the credit for what they do.’ Ramin Rahimian for The Wall Street Journal

The gap begins at the junior lawyer level, and is more pronounced among seasoned attorneys at major firms, persisting even when partners possess similar levels of experience and work in the same market, according to the review by Sky Analytics Inc., a provider of software to help companies track legal spending and invoices.

For example, senior male litigators at regional firms in Los Angeles with more than 25 years of experience charged on average 8.3% more than their female equivalents—$487 an hour versus $450.

In New York, the average male partner at a 1,000-plus lawyer firm with 13 to 24 years of experience representing investment banks was billed out at about $679 an hour, nearly 25% more than the average female partner, whose rate was $544.

“It was very significant, across all categories,” said Silvia Hodges Silverstein, vice president of strategic market development at Sky Analytics. Ms. Silverstein, who teaches law-firm management at Fordham and Columbia law schools, looked at three years of billing data from more than 3,000 law firms.

The findings highlight a persistent gender gap in the legal profession despite inroads made by women over the past four decades. The statistics echo results from earlier surveys that found similar discrepancies in the compensation realm.

One-third of U.S. lawyers and judges are now women—compared to roughly 4.8% in 1970, according to U.S. census data—but they remain relatively rare among the top ranks of the profession.

Women make up only 17% of so-called equity partners with ownership stakes at the 200 top-grossing U.S. law firms, according to the National Association of Women Lawyers, and they are similarly underrepresented in management roles and on powerful governing committees. By contrast, an overwhelming majority of so-called “rainmaker” lawyers credited with bringing in substantial business are men, the association’s most recent survey found.

“Women are less likely than men to reach the highest levels…and when they do they are still paid somewhat less than their male peers,” said Stephanie Scharf, a senior partner with Scharf Banks Marmor LLC in Chicago, and a past president of the association.

Ms. Scharf said hourly rates are often tied to a lawyer’s status in the firm—whether an attorney is a department head of a particular practice, for example, or sits on the firm’s executive committee—and don’t necessarily reflect a person’s marketability or skill level.

“To the extent women partners are not advancing into the highest levels of firms,” she said, “then their billing rates will reflect that situation.”

Some women attribute the broader achievement gap to the often subjective ways that law firms evaluate, reward and promote partners.

“It’s all a series of backroom assessments and backroom deals,” said Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. “It’s just like a petri dish for gender bias.”

Firms that responded to the National Association of Women Lawyers survey said key obstacles to women’s advancement include lack of business development opportunities, work-life balance issues and attrition, as women lawyers leave firms for better job opportunities elsewhere.

Some prominent women lawyers say they charge as much—and are as well compensated—as their male colleagues, but note that is not always the case for women with less power.

“If you are a woman and you control a lot of business, the firm is going to want to keep you happy,” said Patricia K. Gillette, an employment lawyer at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in San Francisco who is involved in a number of initiatives aimed at increasing retention of female lawyers.
“It’s all a series of backroom assessments and backroom deals. It’s just like a petri dish for gender bias.”
— Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law
She said the problem often occurs one rung below, among female partners who may bill thousands of hours a year but aren’t regarded as rainmakers—even if their skill, time and energy has helped land a client or significantly expanded that relationship. “They are not getting the credit for what they do,” she said, or opportunities to inherit big clients, which at some firms she said “tend to get handed down to men.”

One of the more surprising findings in the Sky Analytics billing analysis: female associates were also billed out at lower rates, even though junior lawyers are often paid on a so-called lock-step basis according to the number of years they have been in practice. The average hourly billed rate of a female associate at a 1,000-plus lawyer firm was $27 less than that of her average male colleague—$377 compared with $404.

Several factors could affect the averages when it comes to billing. Different practices command varying rates, and legal services typically cost more in top-tier markets. Women may also make up a higher proportion of some practices, such as family law, that charge less, or be underrepresented in the priciest realms of legal practice, such as mergers and acquisitions.

One potential sticking point: so-called origination credit given to partners who are considered responsible for landing a piece of work. Firms vary widely in how they award those credits, but origination has traditionally played a significant role in determining how much partners earn, and therefore how much firms charge for their services.

According to a 2012 survey by legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, the average male equity partner reported getting origination credit for $2.7 million in billings, while the average female equity partner reported $2.3 million, or about 15% less.

Many women feel shortchanged by the process, said Ms. Williams, who surveyed about 700 mostly female partners on law firm compensation in 2009.

Among respondents whose firms awarded origination credit, four out of five said they had been denied their fair share in past years. Many also felt that when they got new clients, they were expected to share origination credits with others, while men weren’t, she said.

Andrea Kramer, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP who has served on the firm’s compensation and management committees, said women lawyers also tend to be asked to take on administrative and nonbillable “housekeeping” tasks that help law firms run smoothly but do little to boost individual pay or internal prestige.

Ms. Kramer, who often writes on gender and professional advancement, said conditions have improved somewhat since the 1990s, when men might not invite female partners out for drinks or to work-related dinners that provide internal networking opportunities. To help even the playing field, she advises women to refer business to other women, and to tout their accomplishments during pay negotiations.

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