Kimberly-Clark CEO Tom Falk Explains Why He's Hiring and Promoting More Women

Glamour: Lots of companies try to attract a diverse workforce. Why the focus on women specifically?

TF: To start with, they're half the population, that's a big group of people! But, more importantly, women buy all the products. We sell Kotex and Huggies. Making sure their insight is around the table is critically important. It just makes sense on the business front, because statistically they're in the stores making the purchasing decisions.

Glamour: As a man, did you ever find it difficult to explain to people what you were doing?

TF: I'd stand up and say, "You and I are going to pick an all-star team from this room in front of us. Now, I only get to pick from these 50 people on the left side, and you get to pick from the whole room. Who will have a better team?" If you're only picking your team from a small subset of the group, you can't possibly believe that you have the best team.

Glamour: What about the secrets to retaining female talent? Being hired is important, but how do you keep them?

TF: If people show up and feel their ideas only count 10 percent, they'll get frustrated and leave. So making sure you put people in roles where they have support, where they feel their ideas matter, and where they're not the only one of whatever group helps. We've done a lot of obvious things too, putting lactation rooms in key locations, and allowing flex schedules. And we model this culture [through our] leaders—one woman who runs our Turkish business had young children and made a point that whenever she had to leave work to do something with her son, her team knew where she was going and why. People see if the boss is doing it, then it's OK.

Glamour: Has the women's initiative helped your bottom line?

TF: Interestingly, as we've done this, our results have continued to track up, and we hit a record stock price in the first quarter of this year. There's no question that we all believe that a more diverse and engaged team will get better business results. Most companies tend to do the "regular business stuff," then if they have time, work on diversity and inclusion. For us, I said, no, this is part of our regular business management—it needs to be viewed as a critical business initiative.

Are women being promoted where you work? Did you consider the number of female managers when accepting the job? Share in the comments below!