Highlights
- International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8
- One of this year’s themes is #BreakTheBias, challenging people to imagine a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination
- Corporate director Suet Koon Lai says bias against women in the workplace should be discussed more on IWD
Suet Koon Lai is proof you can “almost” have it all just not at the same time.
As a director of PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, the mother-of-three has risen through the corporate ranks.
But the promotions have not come without setbacks.
As a migrant and former international student, Ms Lai remembers not being proficient or confident using English in the workplace.
Communication intended for her clients often came back with red-pen correction marks pointing out her grammar errors.
Suet Koon Lai receiving a company award for outstanding service and achievement. Source: Supplied
“It hurt. I thought I wasn’t good enough,” she said.
But instead of avoiding communicating in English in the workplace, the Malaysian native made it her prerogative to stare down her language fears.
Combatting English language fears
Ms Lai grew up using English as a second language in Kuala Lumpur and in a home where Hokkien, Malay and broken English were often fused together to form sentences.
“I always had these insecurities about my English,” she said.
Wesa Chau, CEO of diversity consultancy Cultural Intelligence, says, intrinsically, people from non-English speaking backgrounds fear their own language is not good enough.
“Externally, there are people who are biased and (that) feeds into the already existing intrinsic fear,” she said.
She adds that non-native accents can create a perception that the staff member has less political skills, which are crucial for moving up corporate ranks.
“The bias creates a barrier for culturally diverse women, then that further impacts on people's own intrinsic fears,” Ms Chau said.
She says one solution is to develop confidence so that language becomes secondary and personalites “shines”.
This is precisely what Ms Lai did. To improve her language skills, she said she asked for more report-writing work and opportunities to send out internal company emails.
Once she had harnessed these tasks, she said she began looking for the “next frontier”, a platform where she could engage a broader English-speaking audience.
Becoming a LinkedIn influencer
Ms Lai thought the best space to practise her English was before her 900 existing network contacts on LinkedIn.
Every morning at 8am Sydney time, Ms Lai writes a post with personal advice on leadership, money or life under #.
“I took it as a personal challenge to overcome my insecurities about my English,” she said.
In her posts, Ms Lai draws on her own experiences as a young graduate, working parent and migrant navigating her way through Australian corporate life.
The feedback has been positive, says Ms Lai, who has had some readers comment on no longer “feeling alone” in an English workplace setting after reading her posts.
“Telling personal stories resonated with more people than I realised,” Ms Lai said.
In two and a half years of daily posting, Ms Lai has attracted 25,000 followers to her social media page, almost a 30-fold increase from its humble beginnings.
Suet Koon Lai with her husband and three boys. Source: Supplied
Trick isn’t to write using ‘big’ words
Ms Lai believes through her daily habit she turned her weakness into her strength.
Feeling insecure, she started by posting using plain English.
“I had to write simply but writing simply is hard for a lot of people,” she said.
This made her realise that delivering complex messages in a simple way was actually a skill, she said.
“Sometimes we feel the pressure to use big vocabulary to show that we are better,” Ms Lai said, adding that if a communicator was respectful of their audience’s time, they’d realise that the majority would be more appreciative of the use of simpler language.
Ms Chau says the purpose of language is to communicate and so long as that purpose is achieved, that’s all that matters.
“Keeping the language simple is always useful,” she said.
Most roles in the Australian workplace can be fulfilled without the need for high-level communication skills although language can play a part at more senior levels where high-level verbal communication is a need.
Pregnancy and childrearing pauses
To juggle corporate life, while being present for her sons, 13, 11, and 7, and husband, Ms Lai says she’s had to be pragmatic mother.
Were the early years stressful? “Yes,” she replied, “You don’t stop for lunch, you don’t stop for morning tea. You don’t stop for chit chats. You go in, you’ve got stuff to do and you crunch it out.”
But Ms Lai says her boys were “coached” to be independent from a young age, and her husband has learned to take on both parenting roles when Ms Lai has been away for work.
“I do a lot of unconventional parenting,” she said.
Diversity consultant Wesa Chau says barriers for women and people from different cultures in the workplace are real. Source: Supplied
“I ask my kids a lot of questions, rather than tell them what to do.”
Ms Lai also says her children face no over-scheduling in activities after school. Experts recently suggested to the that too much structured time may erode opportunities for children to develop characteristics such as coping on their own.
“The reason I don’t fill up their days with back-to-back activities is because I want them to have the time and space for other stuff, including being bored,” she said.
Ms Lai says working part-time to raise her children until they reached school age negatively impacted her career progression even though she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“I made a choice to have kids early and put my family first before my career,” she said.
Rising above the bamboo ceiling
Since returning to work full-time and getting promoted, Ms Lai says she realises the impact she has with her title.
She tells the company’s new recruits to never be ashamed of their cultural values and diverse backgrounds.
“You always think that others are better. Rise above the bamboo ceiling. We can lean on our own cultural background and bring that to the company,” she said.
Ms Lai says she wants to mark this year’s International Women’s Day by acknowledging biases that women have been through in the workplace.
It’s not just about biases against women, it’s also about biases against men.
“People still comment on men not being as competent as mothers but that’s not true anymore. They are just as good, they are just as competent, and they are just as willing to be a part of the parenting partnership.”
Ms Lai says occasionally she does get asked questions about how she “does it”, mixing work with having kids, a husband, and “doing all the things you do on LinkedIn”.
To which end, she reminds readers in her posts: “When I came here [Australia], I thought I could have kids and still do it all.
“But I [later] realised, I can have it all, just not all at the same time.”
