It was a year ago today that Alcatel Chairman, Serge Tchuruk, launched the “Women in Leadership” initiative. In his March 8, 2005 announcement he wrote, “Highly talented employees are one of Alcatel’s main assets, and women represent a large reservoir of talent. In our drive to promote the best people, recruiting and developing women is thus key to Alcatel’s continued success [. . .] The broad goal of the Women in Leadership program is to increase the number of women holding management positions. Things will not change spontaneously. . . . .”

In order to make sure that things do change, an action plan was set up to increase gender balance in top management. The goal is to increase the percentage of women in Alcatel's Leadership Pipeline by 10% by 2008. Alcatel's Leadership Pipeline identifies those employees who have the potential become tomorrow's leaders. Tracking and focusing efforts on the career development of the entire pipeline of potential women leaders at all levels of their career, rather than solely on those in the earlier stages, will be key to increasing the numbers of women in upper management positions. There were 17.3% women in Alcatel's Leadership Pipeline in 2005.

For the Women in Leadership program, 2005 was primarily a year of laying the foundations of the program and building awareness among employees. A number of meetings with local management were held (and are continuing) at Alcatel sites around the world with the goal of heightening awareness of the gender diversity business case and developing an action plan. A “Women in Leadership Corner” was created on the intranet where employees can get all the latest information about the program, as was an online discussion forum where employees from all over the world can exchange their views about issues of importance to them.

Focus was also put on promoting networking activities (both internal & external), training, and mentoring. In parallel to this, a first series of executive women profiles were made as video interviews – giving some Alcatel women more visibility in the company and allowing others the possibility of finding some role models they might identify with.

The Human Resources network ensured that gender diversity issues were specifically addressed during performance reviews and career development meetings.