The Prime Minister and leaders from Nordic and Baltic countries are attending a summit today which is focused on how to get more women at the top of the career ladder and encourage more women entrepreneurs.

The Nordic Future Forum, which was launched last year to discuss common social challenges between Britain and Nordic and Baltic countries, is discussing women in business and how to keep older people in the workforce for longer.

David Cameron says Britain's economic recovery could be speeded up if there were more women in the boardroom, citing evidence that this improved companies' performance. A 2010 McKinsey report shows that companies with women on their management boards are performing 56 per cent better than companies run exclusively by men, for instance. He hopes the number of women on UK boards can be increased through encouragement and making the business case for it, but if this does not work he says he has not ruled out quotas.

The UK delegation at the meeting included Joanna Shields, Vice President and Managing Director, Facebook Europe, Middle East and Africa, Julia Hobsbawm Chief Executive, Editorial Intelligence, and  Helena Morrissey, Chief Executive Officer of Newton Investment Management Ltd who spoke about the 30% Club's plans to get more women on the boards of UK companies. She said the role of investors was now a key focus. The 30% Club is holding an investor seminar on 24 February and a good practice guide is due to be published shortly which will help investors engage with company management.

The Nordic Future Forum says the main reason for gender inequality in the workplace is children. It says: "In general the participation of mothers in the labour market is 11.5 per cent lower than that of women without children. For fathers the participation is instead 8.5 per cent higher than for men without children."

It continues: "In many countries women still take greater responsibility for the home and family than men. This probably also prevents them from investing in careers as managers and from daring to take the step of becoming business operators. By extension this means that societies miss out on a competent workforce and thereby important factors for growth and welfare."

The Forum will look at questions such as how social security systems can be improved so that family life and work life can be combined; what is needed for men to take greater responsibility for the home and family; how can girls' education can be improved to make them more inclined to take risks and see themselves to a greater extent as leaders and entrepreneurs; and what the state can contribute to level out the differences between women and men.

Launching the summit, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said only three out of ten European entrepreneurs are women and only one out of ten board members of the largest companies listed on the national stock exchange of EU Member States is a woman. He added that the disparity is widest at the very top where only 3 per cent of such companies have a woman directing the highest decision-making body.

He said: "It is clear that we have a lot to benefit from improving the situation for women in the labour market. Not only does it make economic sense in itself to fully use the knowledge and talent of half the labour force. But there is also an increasing body of research showing that gender diversity pays off in terms of business performance."

Earlier this week in Sweden over a hundred businesswomen gathered in Stockholm to listen to give their ideas on how to promote more women leaders and encourage more women entrepreneurs. Some of the ideas put forward included ensuring schools and educational systems encourage entrepreneurship; promoting more flexible ways of managing careers and children; and the need for women as visible role models in companies and mentorship programmes.

The number of women accessing career counselling at these companies has doubled in the last year, it reports.

NATFE has just published its top 50 companies for executive women and says on average they employ 53% of women staff and women make up 23% of board directors, compared to 16% - the Fortune 500 average.

Among its top 10 companies are Proctor & Gamble, KPMG, Prudential Financial and IBM.

Although recent turnover lowered the number of female CEOs at the NAFE Top 50 Companies, which now numbers five total, or 10%, this is still higher than the figure for the Fortune 500 Companies, which stood at 3.6% in October 2011.

The NAFE Top 50 also continue to outpace the Fortune 500 on representation of women at the executive level. Twenty-two percent of executive officers at the winning companies are women, compared to 14% on Fortune 500 companies.

At the NAFE Top 50, women make up 19% of the profit-and-loss corporate executives and almost a quarter of the executives who run billion-dollar divisions.

All managers at the NAFE Top 10 are trained to manage work life issues and flexible work arrangements.

Despite the glowing credentials, NATFE points out some areas in need of improvement. For instance, CEOs at most NAFE Top Companies review succession plans for gender equity, but the task forces representing women and work life issues report directly to the CEO at only a minority of the NAFE Top 50.

Meanwhile although more than half the employees at the NAFE Top Companies are women, they still make up less than a quarter of their corporate executives.

Read more

The pilot, which involves a quarter of its 12,000-strong workforce, aims to push the boundaries of what is possible through flexible working and will underpin O2’s contingency plans to manage expected travel disruption and delays during the summer’s Olympics games. O2 will share learnings from the pilot with other organisations.

It believe the initiative sends a clear signal to O2’s employees, business customers and other UK organisations on the advantages of working flexibly. These range from improved staff engagement and boosted productivity to better work/life balance for employees.

It is hoped that the pilot will also showcase the wider economic business case for flexible working in helping to drive efficiency, productivity and innovation. O2 says it has previously saved over £3 million in overheads through such measures. O2 will evaluate reductions to electricity usage, CO2 emissions and travel time as employees swap their usual journey to work in favour of working from a remote location. These learnings will be applied in line with the company’s ambitious three year sustainability plan, in which O2 pledges to help over 125,000 business employees work flexibly, and collectively save over 500,000 miles of travel and over 160,000 thousand tonnes of carbon emissions.

O2 Business Director Ben Dowd said: “We believe a cultural step-change is underway affecting staff and businesses, as work increasingly becomes something we do, rather than a place that we go. Today’s office-wide flexible working initiative is an opportunity for us to take the next step on our flexible working journey and tangibly demonstrate the opportunity and potential available to British businesses today. We practice what we preach, and by asking O2 employees to work together as a team to test the company’s flexible working practices for themselves, we want to show that there are no limits – no matter how big or small your business is. By sharing experiences from across our business, from business divisions to operations, we hope to encourage more organisations to help their workforce become mobile. ”

For the last two months, a team of 20 people has undertaken more than 50 hours of meticulous planning to deliver the business’ first ever fully flexible working day, ensuring that 3,000 employees have access to the necessary technology tools, services and support to enable them to work completely remotely, for the entire day.

By enabling the workforce to be more mobile, O2 achieved a 53 per cent reduction in its carbon footprint and despite having the same number of people HQ is now operating with 550 fewer desks. It says that while flexible working is increasingly popular with employers businesses’ policies and practices are typically narrow in their focus and hinder the sharing of best practice by preventing staff from working flexibly across teams.

The Government is set to introduce a new earnings trigger for auto-enrolment, following their review, which recommended that workers should only be auto-enrolled once their earnings rose above the income tax threshold (£7,475). They would still pay contributions from the bottom of the earnings band.

However, the TUC argues that women would be the main losers from the new earnings trigger as the vast majority of workers with pay between the lower limit of the earnings band and the income tax threshold are women working part-time. The auto-enrolment trigger should therefore be frozen, says the TUC.

The TUC believes that linking auto-enrolment with the income tax threshold is particularly damaging given the coalition plans to increase it to £10,000.

A TUC analysis of official earnings data shows that the new earnings trigger could eventually stop around two million women from being auto-enrolled into pensions.

More than one in seven female workers (15.5 per cent or 1.9 million) currently earn more than the current lower earnings band (£5,564) but under £10,000, says the TUC. One in three female part-time workers (1.7 million) earn between the current lower earnings band and £10,000.

Men are less likely to be affected by this change as just half a million men earn between the current lower earnings band and £10,000, says the TUC.

The TUC says the Government could increase the band of earnings on which contributions have to be paid if it also increases the upper limit on the earnings band to £42,475. This would keep the link with the National Insurance Contributions upper earnings limit, as recommended by Lord Turner's Pensions Commission.

The TUC also argues that the Government's decision to further extend the timetable for auto-enrolment will leave those in the first wave starting later this year on a one per cent employer contribution for a full five years.

This is because the law requires all employers to have auto-enrolled their staff for a year before the contributions increase to two per cent, and the final wave of small firms will not now auto-enrol until 2016. The final phase for contributions, when staff will pay four per cent and employers three per cent will not now start until 2018.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "Auto-enrolment is a huge advance. But no-one can pretend that contributions are good enough, particularly during the long wait before every company is covered by auto-enrolment and the two years after that before everyone gets their full contribution.

"The Government should use its review of the thresholds to widen the earnings band each year by freezing the lower limit, while increasing the upper band limit in line with earnings. This would give a small manageable increase in the earnings band each year. It's the pensions equivalent of fiscal drag - raising more tax by freezing tax thresholds.

"In particular we urge the Government not to raise the auto-enrolment earnings trigger in line with the income tax threshold, which the coalition is keen to raise to £10,000. Whether this is the best way to help the low-paid is an interesting debate, but it would be disastrous if it had the unintended consequence of excluding a significant proportion of women workers from pensions saving."

The Index, which tracks changes throughout the FTSE 100, 250 and Small Cap component companies over the past year on a number of issues, including average age, time spent in roles, gender, and the number of new board members attaining their first position, found that only one in 18 executive directors is female across all FTSE indices, although the numbers have increased over the last year.

The number of non-executive posts for women has risen faster than that for executive directors, with the age, length of stay in a role and number of roles staying the same. 

The percentage of women on boards across the three FTSE indices has increased: FTSE 100 by +16% to 14.9%; FTSE 250 by +18% to 9.4%; and FTSE Small Cap by +27.9% to 9%.

In the FTSE 100, 26% of NED appointments in the past year were female, and 9% of executive directors; in the FTSE 250 24% of new NEDs were female, and 7% of executives; and in the FTSE Small Cap 17% of new NEDs were female, and 7% of executives.

The best performing sectors on gender balance at board level have been retail, technology & media and health; all male boards are prevalent within the industrial sector, the Index finds.

The Index calculates that based on existing rates of change, the FTSE 100 will miss the Lord Davies’ 25% target for 2015 for the female composition of boards by two years. FTSE 250 companies will miss it by four years.

Barry Dinan of Norman Broadbent’s Board Practice said: “We need to be conscious that NEDs fulfil a vital function in safeguarding shareholders’ interests and the sustainable development of companies. While it is totally understandable and appropriate that there has been a drive to recruit more women to non-executive positions, we should not lose sight of the need for more women throughout executive and senior management roles within business; such planning should be a clear element of a company’s growth strategy.”

Responding to the industrial sector’s prevalence for male directors, Neil Holmes of Norman Broadbent’s Board Practice said: “We are finding that women are appearing on shortlists, but the supply on the executive side is still lower than it should be and this requires companies to invest in long term cultural changes to ensure that in the future, women vying for executive roles have the depth and breadth of experience that is today more prevalent among their male counterparts; this must be about quality derived from retention and experience, and not about tokenism.”

They forecast a dual job market, where specialist roles requiring highly skilled professionals will continue to be in demand, despite general uncertainty facing the economy and jobs market. 

They say this is because companies recognise the need to prepare for possible new markets and industry developments, particularly in the sphere of finance, accounting and IT. Other professional occupations in human resources and professional administrative capacities will also see increases in demand and remuneration in the coming year, they predict. 

They highlight what they say are 12 high-potential jobs for 2012 and their national salary averages:

1. Mobile Applications Developers - As companies strive to reach consumers on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, they need professionals who can develop for the small screen, says Robert Half. Starting salaries for mobile applications developers are projected to range between £31,000 and £55,500, a 10.5% increase over 2011 levels.

2. Regulatory Specialists - With an increased focus on government regulations and the need for transparency in today’s market, people with specific regulatory expertise, particularly around capital adequacy and liquidity are in high demand, they say.  Salaries for regulatory accounting managers within the financial services industry are projected between £78,750 and £95,000 for 2012.

3. Newly Qualified Accountants – The onset of the past downturn resulted in many public practice firms slowing their graduate intake for their training accounting scheme. This has led to a shortage of qualified professionals to help companies manage emerging business opportunities, says the firm. Newly qualified accountants can expect base remuneration between £30,000 and £48,000.

4. IT Project Managers – Companies looking to improve efficiencies through investments in technology are looking for project managers to oversee large scale implementations for enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and/or migration to cloud computing, they predict. IT project managers should expect base remuneration in the range of £36,250 and £71,000.

5. Executive Assistants – With companies forced to do more with less, the traditional EA/PA role has been replaced with a professional charged with greater responsibility, from office management and operations support through marketing, basic accounting, even HR administration, says the report. This expansion of responsibility comes with additional remuneration, with national average salaries in the range of £28,250 to £41,500.

6. Financial Reporting Analysts  - As companies prepare for growth, they seek experienced analysts who can help them understand the story behind the financial data and identify further expansion opportunities. Financial reporting analysts with four to seven years post-qualification experience within the financial services sector should anticipate starting salaries between £55,250 and £66,000.

7. Marketing Assistants – Advancements in online and social media has resulted in increased demand for marketers skilled in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as basic search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) experience. While often an administrative function within the marketing team, there is excellent opportunity for advancement. Salaries range between £18,000 and £22,500.

8. Management Accountants – With the finance team playing a critical role in a company’s strategic direction, management accountants are required to help formulate policies as well as plan and control growth initiatives. Base salary ranges between £34,500 and £56,500 for experienced qualified accountants.

9. HR Business Partners – As companies look to grow and cultivate their existing workforce, HR business partners who share the vision and strategy of the organisation are required to help realise business goals. Ideally, this individual can see issues from both the employer and employee point of view to resolve any disputes. HR business partners will see remuneration between £35,000 and £60,000 in the coming year.

10. C# / Java Developers – With companies looking for more sophisticated databases to meet current and future needs for data storage and reporting, applications developers, particularly in C# and Java programming languages will be in increased demand. Salaries are forecasted between £31,750 and £58,500 throughout 2012.
11. Credit Controllers – As cash flow remains a priority for businesses, credit controllers are required to ensure payment terms are met. Annual base salaries range between £18,000 and £30,250.

12. Network Engineers –Companies' networks are more intricate than ever, increasing the need for those who can ensure the efficient and secure transfer of data and information. Starting salaries for network engineers are expected to rise between £33,000 and £46,500.