Supporting Working Women - October Voice 2021

SUPPORTING WORKING WOMEN:

A talent retention strategy

It could improve your company’s profitability

By Caitlin Pusateri, Rockford Chamber

Looking to increase the profits of your organization? Check your Executive Team. If you see nothing but suits and ties, your organization is likely lacking gender diversity – and the benefits that come with it.

According to McKinsey & Company’s January 2018 Delivering Through Diversity, “Companies in the top-quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 21% more likely to outperform on profitability and 27% more likely to have superior value creation. The highest-performing companies on both profitability and diversity had more women in line (i.e., typically revenue generating) roles than in staff roles on their executive teams.”

But creating an environment that supports working women is more than just promoting them through the ranks (though that doesn’t hurt). For much of the United States’ corporate history, women have been fighting for equal pay for equal work; slamming into the glass ceiling from a ladder with a broken rung while simultaneously working against the glass wall and within a leaky pipeline; and statistically doing more unpaid/invisible work both at home and in the office.

Unsurprisingly, the rate of burnout and exhaustion mid-pandemic is higher in women than in that of men. According to McKinsey & Company’s 2021 Women in the Workplace report, the gap between men and women who feel overwhelmed has nearly doubled.

In a world where stress runs high and the talent pool is shallow, what can local organizations do to attract, retain and support women leaders? While long-lasting systemic changes are necessary in many areas, what follows are two small, but impactful, ways organizations can support working women.

Evaluate Organizational Norms

For many woman, taking on unpaid leadership roles or additional invisible labor, has been considered a sign of a good leader or a true team player. In reality, these tasks often pull women away from measurable work directly tied to metrics that are frequently used to determine promotions.

Right or wrong, these unspoken organizational norms tend to pigeonhole women and saddle them with extra work that is not typically financially compensated or perceived to be of value when considering promotion. When thinking about your own organization, ask yourself:

In group meetings, who takes notes/ minutes for the group? Is it typically a male or female employee?

When looking at employee appreciation efforts, who typically buys birthday or anniversary cards? Who plans the Christmas party? Who organizes the Zoom Happy Hour?

If the break room runs out of creamer or additional coffee packets need to be grabbed from the pantry for the conference room, who usually notices and completes this task?

While often unintentional, assuming that women will fill these roles or allowing men to simply pass on the responsibilities (thus making women feel like they have to pick up the slack) puts women at a disadvantage.

Next time your organization is looking for someone to take notes or plan the company Christmas party, assign the task to a male… and don’t let him pass it off to his female counterpart. And if a woman volunteers? Find another special project that is more metric-based for her to lend her talents to. Allowing her to complete tasks that are easily associated with conventional “success” or corporate wins positions her better for a potential promotion.

Check the Schedule

Somewhere in the time between pre-pandemic and wherever we are now, we lost the traditional 9 to 5 schedule. While COVID is not entirely to blame, the ever-present, ever-ready, all-hours on work schedule has become the increasing norm – and women are paying the price.

Because women traditionally still hold the majority of the child-rearing and housekeeping duties, they are disproportionately impacted when they must step away from work to attend to family matters. Sadly, women attending to her children or elderly family members is seen as a liability to her organization, while men traditionally are described as heroes (should they be the one who takes time away from work at all). When thinking about your organization, ask yourself:

Are the hours at which I am holding meetings (virtual or otherwise) conducive to all members of my team? Early start times may interfere with school or daycare drop off; end of the day meetings that run late could add undue stress or hardship for parents in charge of pick-up duties.

Are performance reviews or informal evaluations putting unintentional (or, perhaps even intentional) emphasis on long hours, butts in seats and email response time vs. goal-based outcomes?

Consider the personal side of people’s lives and how your organization can support women through small changes like moving a 7:30 a.m., meeting to 9 a.m., or pushing back a 4 p.m., that always runs late to 1 p.m. Develop evaluation rubrics that focus on organizational and team member goals and the outcomes achieved by individuals rather than the perceived input it took to get there.

Move away from praise of the 2 a.m., email or the race to respond after hours. Model appropriate work-life boundaries and have the conversation with employees who consistently blur those boundaries.

When women succeed, organizations, families and communities succeed. To truly recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations will need to take special care to ensure that women do not lose a decade worth of progress in a short 18 months. Intentionality and attention to small, but meaningful, details can make or break a person’s experience within an organization. In a world of talent shortage, losing women simply is not an option. v

Obstacles & Barriers to Women’s Success Defined

GLASS CEILING. A metaphorical invisible barrier that prevents certain individuals, i.e., women, from being promoted to managerial -- and executive-level positions within an organization or industry.

GLASS WALL. The phenomenon of occupational segregation where female managers tend to be concentrated in business support functions, such as HR, finance and administration, where they have limited decision-making power or strategic input, and therefore limited opportunities to rise in the company.

BROKEN RUNG. Women continue to face a broken rung at the first step up to manager: For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 86 women are promoted. As a result, men outnumber women significantly at the manager level, which means that there are far fewer women to promote to higher levels.

LEAKY PIPELINE. The proportion of women tends to decline as the level of management increases, meaning that men continue to dominate chief executive positions and boards. When women are not present in the highest positions in business, they lack the influence to alter the workplace culture, and so the cycle of male dominance continues. As long as women are under-represented in decision-making roles, the pipeline will continue to leak.