4 ways businesses can empower women to stay in their organisations and advance in their careers
By Ivana Osagie
Most career women aspire to top management positions much the same as their male peers do, especially in the early days of their careers. But in many organisations, women advance at a far slower rate than men and are less likely to be promoted even when they merit it.
In male-dominated workplaces, women are by default excluded from informal networks. The result is that they do not benefit from having career sponsors. Yet sponsorship is critical to career advancement, particularly at more senior levels. In The Sponsor Effect: Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling — a Harvard Business Review report based on research collectively sponsored (no pun intended) by American Express, Deloitte, Intel and Morgan Stanley — the authors conclude that:
“Women who are qualified to lead simply don’t have the powerful backing necessary to inspire, propel, and protect them through the perilous straits of upper management. Women lack, in a word, sponsorship.”
Like begets like. A senior male leader is more likely to sponsor a mini-me — another man who looks, thinks and acts like him. Most of us are more comfortable with people similar to us, which is a source of bias we all need to watch out for, particularly in our roles as leaders. This unconscious bias also means that male bosses are more likely to put male subordinates forward for promotions rather than their female staff. This puts the woman at a disadvantage regardless of how well she performs on the job.
As a result of being denied opportunities, many women get frustrated and leave the organisation. At best, they stay on, but feel undervalued and may therefore not be fully engaged.
Another reason many women drop out is because of the challenges of balancing the demands of work and homelife. It is exacerbated by inflexible work conditions and policies which make life even more difficult. For these reasons, women are more likely to leave their jobs just as they begin to climb the career ladder, which is typically when they have young school age children to tend to.
Here is an illustration of the typical talent pipeline by gender in most organisations:
At entry level, women are usually in roughly the same proportion as their male peers and may even be a bit more in number. However, as they all rise up the career ladder, men begin to outnumber women for the reasons adduced above.
When women leave, organisations lose out on the potential value this talent pool can create and also on the investment made by the company in training and developing them. A study conducted by KPMG found that globally, the cost to businesses of recruiting and training new staff to replace women who quit after having a baby is in the region of $47 billion. That is a lot of money!
What can organisations do to stop this expensive female brain drain? Here are a few ideas.
- Be deliberate about building a gender inclusive organisational culture where women feel valued and not merely tolerated. It is not enough to have gender diversity; we must go beyond counting numbers and push for inclusion. Diversity is about having women at the table; inclusion is about having them at the table, fully involved and driving the agenda, the conversations and the decision-making. It is about women being given the same opportunities and privileges as their male peers. Building an inclusive culture requires a paradigm shift. Men and women both need to confront their biases — conscious and unconscious. One way this can be achieved is in a workshop via a series of moderated conversations and exercises that focus on both male and female perspectives, cultivating a deeper understanding of the differences. Another way is to inculcate inclusive leadership practices. The objective is to institutionalise the desired behaviours and practices that will drive inclusiveness — an objective that can only be achieved with full commitment and participation from the top.
- Check the data. Collecting and analysing gender-disaggregated data for key events in the employee lifecycle, such as recruitment, performance reviews, promotions and exits, will reveal any underlying trends or patterns. Employee surveys and exit interviews can also reveal how people feel about the level of equity and fairness in the organisation. The combination of qualitative and quantitative data will show you whether there are trigger points for women leaving the organisation. Based on what the data reveals, effective solutions can be developed to address areas of concern and reduce the attrition rates.
- If you don’t already have one, set up a women’s network for your female talent. These sorts of employee resource groups have proven to be powerful platforms for providing specific and targeted support to minorities in the workplace. In addition to setting up the network, implementing a career sponsorship program can be an effective way to develop your female leadership pipeline. Incentivise senior leaders to seek out high potential female talent to actively sponsor them for key opportunities and help them advance their careers. This may sound outlandish to some, but senior men regularly adopt and promote the careers of male proteges. This program would simply encourage them to do the same for women, and by so doing, give competent women an equal foot in the door. It is also an opportunity for reverse mentoring, where female staff can help male leaders understand the perspectives and lived experiences of women in the organisation. With that kind of understanding under their belts, senior male leaders are better positioned to drive the needed change to enable the business to reap the financial return on gender diversity and inclusion.
- Finally, if you have not already done so, consider implementing family-friendly policies such as paternal leave, provision of crèche or nursing-room facilities and options for flexible/remote working. Luckily, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that, when implemented properly, remote working can be done successfully in one form or another. Such family-friendly policies make it easier for women to stay on at work instead of quitting when they start a family. It also demonstrates to female talent the value the organisation places on them, which will boost employee engagement and in turn increase the bottom line.
Ivana Osagie is a member of The Room and founder of the PWR Advisory — a leading African diversity and inclusion practice focused on building female leadership capacity and accelerating gender parity towards achieving the UN SDG5.
