International Women’s Day 2023: women bring competitive advantage.

International Women’s Day

On International Women’s Day just like any other day: proud of all the women within NewArmstrong. We are equal, but we don’t always think and act the same. And that’s exactly why it’s good. We appreciate the balance they bring, we come to better reflections in decision-making, they provide counterbalance in the consideration of risks. A significant portion of our clients are also women, for the same reason: they see design, design challenges or formulaic issues differently. Indeed, of our most important clients, CEOs are women.

That two-sidedness offered by collaboration is a competitive advantage: researchby consulting firm McKinsey on the advantage of women’s leadership shows the following:

Women hear a different question in client briefings, see different opportunities in collaboration, and analyze the situation differently. This leads to different results that clients cite as benefits. Women gain insight into a project in a collaborative, inclusive way. Women start designing from collaboration and deliberation and more often test their ideas with a broader group rather than “trial and error.
It also has to do with character traits, but women often gever a view of the broader context and process before they formulate a response.
Women are more likely to be able to add more detail to images without immediately sketching a spatial image, with a mood board, for example. Our male designers are more likely to create 3d model designs in software. We have a number of professional women who “search” with pencil for much longer, and the movement you make when sketching then says something about feeling, space, running lines, direction.

Collaborate

NewArmstrong clients cite the following benefits of working with our female colleagues:

The project goes faster and better
More detail and refined detailing, more layering in the project (mood board and design)
a better connection with the target group because the project is designed for 100% of the target group, not just 50% (also resulting in better sales figures for our clients)
more young professionals involved (diversity attracts a younger team)
earlier in the process involvement of all stakeholders and a different way of building consensus: resulting in:
lower risk in lead time and cost

teamwork

Not only do we welcome our female colleagues: we also believe that treatment should be equal. So no Gender pay-gap. But we do take everyone into account. For some things just as hard for men as for women. If you want to pick up your child from school: that’s no problem, we assume you can do that just fine and finish your work later. If you want to make the best use of your parental leave: we will arrange that with your management colleagues, so that you can enjoy that time nicely with your newborn child ( and the dads are also allowed to take extended paternity leave nowadays). But also simple things like a drawer of menstrual products. It’s so simple and we all know that it comes with it, so what would we make a fuss about. It’s Teamwork, so let’s take good care of each other.