This article, “Attack of the Women-Dominated Workplace”, published last month in MORE Magazine, is a great summary of what companies need to be thinking about to attract and maintain women, and up their overall talent.
Now if you don’t think this is an issue, read this excerpt from the article:
“When researchers examined the profits of Fortune 500 companies, they found that companies with the most women in senior management positions were over 30 percent more profitable than those with the fewest. And when consultants at McKinsey examined 89 European firms with the highest proportion of women in power, they found that those companies’ stock prices climbed 64 percent over two years, compared with an average of 47 percent for other firms in the same sector. Numerous studies support these findings. “
The entire article is good, but a couple sections stood out to me as critical for companies to consider, and not just for women.
- Customized “career latices”. Deloitte is cited as an example… each employee there talks to a career counselor on a yearly basis to scale pace, schedule, location and role. This is clearly critical for women wanting to ramp up and down in different ways while having kids, but so many men these days want these options too. It is no longer just about women trying to balance having kids, its men doing the same and all kinds of people wanting flexibility for different reasons.
- Untethering the workforce. I haven’t officially worked in an office since 2002, and I’ve gotten more productive every year. The challenge for me is how not to be productive at home. But may companies have yet to realize how successful some of their workers can be when working remotely. They need to move to results based evaluations, and this is where women who desire flexible schedules can really flourish. And where the company as a whole can raise the bar of their performance by actually paying attention to it versus when people show up to the office.
There are also some good points on what laws need to change, how women need to be promoted and paid more fairly and what’s going on with women in academia.
Good stuff! Let me know what you think.
