Global Female Forum

“The purpose of this year’s forum was to further develop from what we have done before. We added male representatives. That’s been the feedback from previously sessions that we have to include more men to deal with the gender gap and diversity as such”, says Wenche H. Andersen which is the Female Forums corporate sponsor.

This Leadership seminar for females is one of several important activities as part of our long-term effort to increase the number of female leaders in all of Kongsberg Gruppen’s business units.

“Second thing was that we are truly a global company. Previous sessions have been Norwegian leaders. This year we invited all the international operations. Clearly this gave us a different environment and we addressed different topics, and we also talked a lot about the future”, says Wenche H. Andersen which holds the position as SVP Global Operations, Greater China and Korea in Kongsberg Maritime.

At the venue our strategy for Diversity and Inclusion is shared by KONGSBERGs executives and senior leaders. Internal and external leaders are invited to share experiences and reflections about current business topics and leadership.

One of the attendees at this year’s female forum was Amrit Bhullar from Kongsberg Maritime. She was positively surprised by the program and how frank the speakers were about their own personal journey as managers.

“I am honestly inspired by the people that we have heard speak, the honesty that they are bringing about, the reality and the challenges that we are facing as women, but also the diversity and inclusion challenge that we face in our business today. I think KONGSBERG are coming with a strategy and an idea on how to meet those challenges and that’s actually what’s so exiting”.  

The Female Forum was established in 2016 with the purpose of creating a leadership arena for females in KONGSBERG. The results in that period are speaking for themselves:

Female managers on level one to tree: Up from 13 % to 27 %

Female succession candidates: Up from 19 % to 25 %

 Female summer interns: Up from 23 % to 35 %

Female operational managers: Up from 8 % to 17 %

“I am so proud of being here after four five years with this direction and ambitions we set. We thought they were quite tough at that time, but on all elements we are working we are improving. This awareness and what the leaders now are taking into their leadership it changes and it improves. We have more female leaders, in positions, we have more operational leaders and it’s just fantastic to see that this journey is going the very right direction for Kongsberg”, says Wenche H. Andersen.

One of this year’s keynote speakers, founder and CEO of 4ADA AS, Ann-Christin Andersen, praises the work that are being done within inclusion in KONGSBERG.

“I think KONGSBERG has really meant tremendous progress on diversity and inclusion. The statistics that are shown are best in class. Obviously there is something that are working quite well with this. I think main thing is that KONGSBERG are conscious about bringing more talent to the table and looking for the best talent when promoting for the next job”, says Ann-Christin Andersen with has an extensive experience from senior management in Technip FMC.