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Article from Human Resources, Hong Kong, May 2005
HK HR Magazine - May 2005 Issue
BRING THE WOMEN LEADERS BACK
Many societies often stereotype women as ‘the weaker gender’. Traditionally, women are also ‘supposed’ to be less career minded and more ‘family focused’ – they are the ones who will cook, wash and look after the children. This goes back to stone-age days. Remember the Flintstones? Who is always carrying the baby, and caring for the family? Certainly, not Fred. This is still a reality in many societies, although changes have taken place in many Asian countries and around the world as well. Jennifer Broadley, a fellow coach I spoke to recently in London shared her views that husbands can now be found playing the role of the ‘home maker’, for a variety of reasons, but mostly as their wives are able to bring in a larger plate of bacon each month. Makes practical sense, I would think. If you take a closer look at who is running Fortune 500 companies, you should not he surprised to find that many are of the fairer gender. 2004 saw Fortune magazine rating Meg Whitman, CEO of runaway success e-Bay.Com as the most powerful women in business. Here in Asia, Hewlett Packard’s Lien Siaou Sze comes to mind readily. Lien’s name appeared on the same Fortune list, incidentally.
It is a pity that some of our more successful women may end up (and some actually have) terminating their contributions to society prematurely when the stork arrives. Be they be from the corporate world, politics or as successful entrepreneurs, they put a permanent or temporary halt to their careers and re-focus their priorities on the baby and the family, just like what their parents, and their grand-parents did a long, long time ago.
Given the challenges of low birth rates and the ageing population, it will be a waste if these women do not continue contributing to society. Hence, as CEOs and HR professionals, we must create the environment and put in the processes to encourage their return and make the transition back to the corporate arena as painless and as attractive as possible. Here are some possible avenues that we can consider.
1) Tenure of Employment
Let’s shift our mindset 180 degrees. Let’s embrace part-time, interim, contract and project professionals, together with those in regular employment. In other words, we treat employees as “employees” per se, period. We do not create differences based on their tenure of employment. One key resource – human capital, and this embraces every Tom Dick and Harry that contributes in one way or another to the success of the business. Wow - yes, I was not mincing words when I say: “…shift 180 degrees”.
Ernst & Young’s success in keeping women on the path to partnership is an example that has been cited publicly. In 2004, of the total number of employees who got promoted to “partner” level, 22% were women. What is encouraging is that of the total number of women partners, 10% are on a flexi work arrangement!
2) Perks & Benefits
Accord all employees the same package of benefits. So, those who work less than the typical 8 hours a day, for example, will also enjoy annual leave, paid medical and dental benefits and insurance coverage etc. Of course, the quantum and magnitude of these benefits will be proportionate to the time they put in their jobs vis-a-vis the employees who work 8-hour days. This will surely motivate more women to return to the workforce, whenever they are ready and this could dispel the notion that anything less than ‘regular’ employment is less important to a business, which is utter nonsense.
So long as these women folk stay in-touch with changes and developments in the corporate and business world, we should not begrudge them for being ‘absent’ for the 6 months and even the 1 to 2 years they take off to look after junior (or plural for the more productive ones!).
In a survey done in the US by the Harvard Business Review, a high 44% of women respondents gave ‘attending to home responsibilities” as the key reason for their leaving the corporate world. The likes of high profile women executives, Sari Baldauf, Brenda Barnes and Penny Hughes of Nokia, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola respectively are good examples to cite of women who quit their high profile roles to take care of their families. It may make sense then, that companies try to provide as much support as possible in this area.
Provision of what is now standard fare like child-care facilities and EAP (Employee Assistance Programs) can be augmented with creative and value-add benefits such as butler services to help employees with their personal chores so that can spend more time on the business – this may help women make that final decision to return.
3) Career Paths
Organizations can and should provide the support for women employees to explore career paths that suit both business as well as individual needs as much as possible. HR managers can easily provide the tools and put in-place infrastructures for self-directed career management, helping employees to better understand their core interests, key work values, business skills, etc to allow them to take better charge of their own careers.
In designing career paths, organizations can exercise some innovativeness and create routes that all employees can aspire to take, regardless of their tenure of employment. As an example, a HR manager can still work hard and aim for the HR director’s role, so long as she possesses the core competencies to do that job, and has proven her capabilities. So what if she works from home half of the time.
4) Alumni
Why not? Universities have them, and I know of alumnus that have been set up by ex-employees e.g. General Electric & Schlumberger. The key motivation, I suspect, is for these folks to stay in-touch with each other as many of them would have become close friends just by working in the same company for many years. Hardly surprising as we tend to spend the majority of our waking hours at work. Organizations can initiate an alumni of sorts to stay connected to women who leave for family reasons. Keep them in-touch with what is going on, movements, promotions, corporate restructuring, new product lines etc. When it comes to the year-end D&D, why not invite them back as well? The idea is to keep them engaged – these ex-employees have a wealth of knowledge in their heads, understand how things work in the organization and are also aware of political sensitivities. These are valuable resources worth keeping, and when these women are ready to return to the workplace, come up with a package that will really appeal to them. Win-win for all parties involved.
5) Mentorship
In conjunction with (4) above, mentors can also be “assigned” to these women. The basic role of these mentors is to ensure they stay engaged with their mentees and to provide whatever form of support necessary to maintain the links. Such mentorship roles could be assigned to the HR division but the best person to take this on is the ex-boss. Granted, time is preciously limited and everyone has to spend productive time meeting their key deliverables and a responsibility like this could easily be relegated to the back burner and even forgotten after a period. Fine – then make this a deliverable as well for the ex-boss!
The world we live in has changed enormously. Decision makers have to shift many mindsets and do many things very differently if they want to continue to thrive. The issue of ‘losing’ women talent to the family is very real. With declining birth rates and the ageing population syndrome permeating through many societies, spending some quality time thinking (and acting) on this issue may be time well invested as the ramifications and potential pay-back for society and businesses can be enormous. Final word from Melinda Wolfe, head of global leadership and diversity at Goldman Sachs – as quoted in the March 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review: “A large part of the potential talent pool consists of females and historically unrepresented groups. With the professional labor market tightening, it is in our interest to give serious attention to these matters of retention and reattachment”.
Paul Heng, CMF
NeXT Career Consulting Group, Asia
Founding President, Asian Association of Career Management Professionals
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