Flagship · DEI in male-majority field sales
Two-day programmes for women professionals at a large FMCG conglomerate.
- Problem
- Frontline women in a male-dominated sales environment were routinely talked over, and their boundaries were tested.
- What we did
- Two two-day workshops for ground-level women frontline workers: physical theatre, vocal practice and scenes built from their everyday interactions, delivered as part of the client's DEI initiatives. We also set up a peer support structure that the women kept using after the workshop.
- Reported outcome
- More confidence in difficult conversations, stronger voice and presence, more active participation and less emotional fatigue, as reported by participants and the client.
After the workshop we kept supporting each other. It helped us understand ourselves, and now I handle difficult situations better: I am more assertive, I control my voice, and I know what my body is saying.
A frontline sales participant, FMCG programme. Paraphrased from participant feedback.
- What happened next
- The client came back with a harder brief: bring the men into the room. How men talk to women in male-dominated spaces, and how men take over roles without being assigned them.
- What we diagnosed
- Automatic behaviours, not attitudes. Who interrupts whom, whose idea gets credited, who takes the pen.
- How we designed it
- Two cohorts at two levels, two days a week apart, with the Floor Audit, Nine Seconds and the Register Switch, and commitments logged with HR.
- What it shows
- Design from a named behaviour, adapted to hard constraints such as group size, gender ratio and field schedules, with measures set before delivery.
