Speaking at the Investment Association annual policy conference, the former Rio Tinto chairman said there is no doubt that companies with diversified management teams and boards perform better but it was tough to find suitable female hires.
Global companies like BT, which employs about 100,00 people, are complex organisations that require board members with “considerable levels of experience”, he said.
He said all the chairmen he has spoken with believe gender diversity at the senior management level is important but share his view that finding women with the right experience is a “conundrum”.
BT had a mean gender pay gap of 7% in 2017 after averaging data across its British group companies, like Openreach, that have 250 employees or more.
Though the telecom giant’s gap was less pronounced than firms in the asset management industry, the distribution of women in the most senior roles was similar at 22.7%.
Businesses in trouble
The BT chairman also denied that diversity hires at senior levels would be enough to save businesses that are already in trouble.
Du Plessis currently has his hands full choosing a successor for CEO Gavin Patterson who was booted by the board in a bid to win back disgruntled shareholders upset by the telecom giant’s dire share price performance.
As has been previously noted BT’s shares trade at a six-year low and have fallen around 41% since Patterson took the reins in 2013. Dividends have limited the total return loss to shareholders to 24%.
“The notion that an underperforming company can fix its business by putting a few people on the board that come from different backgrounds is nonsense. I feel that very, very strongly.”
Under fire
Several female attendees hit back at du Plessis for his remarks during the Q&A section of the IA panel discussion.
One audience member said she felt “a sinking sense of disappointment” at the chairman’s comments on gender diversity and accused him of “kicking the problem down the road”.
Responding to the criticisms, du Plessis stressed that while he agrees with the agenda of getting more women in the boardroom and into senior roles, large organisations like BT cannot “all of a sudden find female leadership”.
“I will not stand here and say there isn’t a problem. There is a problem, but it is going to take time to address that,” he said.
“You cannot have a situation where people who are too young and too inexperienced are suddenly catapulted into positions when they have not been trained.”
Another female attendee asked whether du Plessis was sufficiently experienced when he became the group finance director for Swiss luxury goods firm Compagnie Financière Richemont at 34.
“I think every job I’ve been given in my life I felt I wasn’t qualified for,” said du Plessis, adding that he worked his way through and just “carried on”.
