Change the Workplace, Not the Woman
Fourteen years ago Felice Schwartz penned a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article describing an all-too-common work environment where the best women were recruited but then left to languish, where women who wanted to take a leave of absence were written off, and where those who left faced enormous hurdles and steep penalties in coming back.
Now in 2006, one would think the picture Schwartz painted would have changed significantly, but recent articles tell another story. Large numbers of highly educated, experienced female professionals are still leaving the workforce.
For every 10 men in the executive ranks, there is one woman. On average, women who return after an absence to the business world lose more than 25 percent of their earning power.
Nicole Kuroiwa, a bilingual customer service specialist at Alcoa Inc, recently took leave after having her first child. She was allowed six weeks off under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Upon returning to work, she had no options for adjusting her job to her new responsibilities as a mother.
“It would have been nice to come back to some kind of flexible hours, like 4/10 [four days a week/10 hours a day] or to have a childcare fund that helped offset this new expense,” she said. “I would definitely take that over an end-of-year bonus or profit sharing.”
If she had decided to take a longer break from work, Kuroiwa would face other penalties.
“Right now if I were to leave for say two years, I wouldn’t be able to get the promotion that I am up for.”
So why have these trends failed to diminish significantly over time?
Blame cannot be placed on any group. On the whole, women and men, employees and employers, governments and private businesses alike have failed to take on sufficient responsibility to level the playing field systematically.
Three steps are needed to make substantial changes. Managers must recognize that women leave for a variety of reasons, that they usually intend to return, and stigmas associated with a leave of absence are a roadblock.
- Women leave the workforce for many reasons, and managers have multiple options in helping them return.
In an HBR article entitled “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,” authors Sylvia Hewlett and Carolyn Luce categorize these reasons into pull and push factors.
Pull factors include having children, but also encompass the demands of caring for elderly parents or other relatives. Push factors are aspects of the job and workplace that are less than adequate. They range from unsatisfying or meaningless work to under-stimulation or lack of opportunity. In most situations, pull and push factors are present simultaneously. One often intensifies the other.
- Managers involved in the hiring process must recognize that women who take an “off-ramp” intend to return to the workforce, but cannot always find an “on-ramp.”
According to Hewlett and Luce, 93 percent of highly qualified women who are currently not working want to return to their careers. Of the 74 percent who successfully return, only 40 percent return to full-time, professional jobs. Only one in 20 women wants to rejoin her former company. Managers need to create more flexible paths back to the workplace.
- Managers have a key role in removing stigmas associated with leaves of absence or job flexibility.
Adding policies to the employee handbook is not enough if the company fails to guard against cultural beliefs that discourage job flexibility. Such cultural beliefs include: “She is not really committed to the organization,” or “They will never make it to the top if they take off time now.” Everyone in the company must actively try to identify these cultural values and help create solutions that address underlying causes, not just symptoms.
For example, a large retail company was having trouble retaining its female employees. It discovered the real problem was a lack of clarity and discipline about scheduling time. In response, senior management could have required that all meetings be held between certain hours, or that people with similar time constraints be paired on projects. But these solutions were only temporary fixes. Real change occurred when management began to model a more disciplined use of time.
Once organizational culture is addressed, new policies to ease the outflow of talented individuals are more easily implemented. These could include:
- Paid parenting leave time bank -- Give three months of paid leave to employees with children that can be spread over 18 years.
- Restructured retirement plans -- Eliminate penalties for career interruptions.
- “No-worries” career breaks -- Allow employees to take unpaid breaks with the assurance of a job when returning to work.
- Reduced-hour careers -- Provide high-level jobs that permit reduced hours and workloads on an ongoing basis, but still offer the possibility of promotion.
- Flexible work days -- Keep it open for when, where, and how employees do their work.
- Former employee alumni status -- Grant outstanding past employees a special rank (something like active retirement) so they can be tapped for advice. Pay dues and certification fees to help them keep professional standing.
- Outlets for altruism -- Support desires women may develop while out of the workforce by providing mentoring opportunities and formal women’s networks within the company.
Men can also benefit from these programs by having more flexible work days, outlets for altruism, and restructured retirement plans. Kuroiwa – the bilingual customer service specialist - notes, “It’s been really good for my husband to have time off through FMLA as well, but it would help a lot more if he had other options for time to be with our daughter and bond with her.”
Working together, business managers and employees have an opportunity to create an environment conducive to retaining talented executive women as HBR author Schwartz imagined. She described this level as an environment “where the whole management structure is a jungle gym with lateral sidebars and many-leveled challenges, with help and rewards available for employees at every step.”
Perhaps the next 14 years will move organizations closer to that level.