Sarah Gawman

1
Women in the Workforce Making the Future Work

• Sarah Gawman
• Practice Leader Sydney
• Hudson ITT
• April 2007

2
ICT Talent The Critical Factor
The ability to make good decisions regarding
people represents one of the last reliable
sources of competitive advantage, since very few
organizations are very good at it.
..Peter Drucker

• "Take our twenty best people away and I can tell
  you that Microsoft would become an unimportant
  company.. . Bill Gates

3
Insight the major demographic forces re-shaping
our world
Action how we create opportunities and
competitive advantage for our businesses and
ourselves.lets not be victims!
4
Workplace Transformers

• The increasing role of women (Diversity in
  general)
• The Ageing population
• The growing skills shortage
• Generational change
• Large scale changes in the structure of employment

5
The Growing Skills Shortage
No doubt that the ICT talent pool will not grow
at the same pace locally and globally.it may
even decline especially in NSW and VIC
The War for Talent, especially in ICT will only
become more and more fierce
No doubting that demand for labour, especially in
ICT will continue to rise
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Making the Increasing Role of Women Work for Us
18 - 69 more profitable
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The Increasing Role of Women

• Womens participation has climbed to the highest
  rate everexcept in ITT!

• Australian University Graduates1996 - 82000
  women and a mere 63000 men graduated

• in vast contrast, less than 25 of enrolled ITT
  students are female.and declining!

• Senior Executive Positions

• 2004census showed that 10.2 of executives from
  our listed companies are women and strengthening
  against 15.7
• in the USA

• In vast contrast, less than 20 of the ITT
  workforce
• is female and as per the enrolment
  statistics.declining

8
Women remain underrepresented at management levels

• Persistent occupational segregation means that a
  narrow range of occupations and management
  positions tend to be available to women compared
  with men, resulting in women remaining
  underrepresented at managerial levels.
• Both NZ and Australia still segregate men into
  managerial jobs by almost three to one, whilst
  women remain clustered in clerical and service
  areas.

9
Australian Labour Force Participation (November
2003)
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Female labour force participation and educational
attainment are on the rise

• Declining birth rates have seen an increase of
  womens participation in education.
• Women comprise nearly 50 percent of the graduates
  in business and law fields of study.
• Female students in higher education tend to
  perform better, with greater success rates,
  passing a greater proportion of their units than
  males in almost all subjects.
• Yet starting salaries for women graduates are
  still lower then their male counterparts.

11
Higher Female Promotion Rates

• Of those employees who had worked with their
  current employer of a year or more, approximately
  12.5 percent of men and 14.7 percent of women had
  been promoted or transferred in the last 12
  months.
• Lack of a correlation between promotion rates and
  increased status and salary of women.
• Women still remain lower in the organisational
  hierarchy.

12
Women are Opting Out

• In Australia and New Zealand a growing number of
  women are opting out of positions in corporations
  to start their own businesses
• In Australia, women have gone from comprising 11
  of total self-employed to 31 in 2003.
• The masculine ethos of current Australian
  business culture is no longer sustainable there
  is an absolute need to foster tolerant and
  inclusive organisational cultures

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Some reasons for under-representation of women in
management roles

• Organisational power architecture and
  occupational segregation
• Stereotypes about women that position them as
  deviant in organisational management culture
• Career aspirations of women themselves
• Work-life balance
• Multiple roles
• Inaccessibility of informal (boys) networks
• Unavailability of appropriate mentors

14
Common Stereo Types Hindering Women

• Traditional feminine qualities are contrary to
  behavioural skills deemed necessary for
  managerial roles
• Common stereotypes
• Women passivity, emotionality and dependence
• Men dominance, aggression, rationality and
  independence.
• They are in opposition to characteristics or
  behavioural skills deemed necessary for
  fulfilling the managerial role. Therefore, women
  may be seen to be incapable of a full range of
  activities, and instead assigned softer, more
  sex appropriate roles.

15
Womens Assumptions

• Women in management may feel compelled to adopt
  traits and behaviours traditionally associated
  with males in order to succeed in organisational
  cultures.
• When women themselves are questioned about what
  it takes to succeed in management, they speak of
  the need to be better and tougher.
• Women are often criticised for switching between
  masculine and feminine modes of behaviour.

16
Networking your way to the top

• Formal and informal networks act as a powerful
  determinant of career success
• Available networks are often defined by sex,
  thereby limiting womens access to the dominant
  coalition
• Womens preference for more intense relationships
  limits network size

17
Shortage of Mentors

• Shortage of potential female mentors limits
  womens entrée into influential social networks.
• There is strong evidence to suggest that
  mentoring is related to career success
• When selecting a suitable candidate to mentor,
  senior executives may select on the basis of
  similarity, with more men likely to be mentored
  than women.
• Mentors prefer mentees who share similar
  characteristics age, sex, ethnicity.

18
The Business Case for Gender Diversity

• Women are 50 percent of the equation. Choosing
  not to work with the women is like trying to
  progress with one had tied behind your back.
  Ernst and Young Australia CEO, Brian Schwartz
• A study of the Standard Poors 500 found that
  businesses committed to promoting minority and
  women workers had an average annualised return on
  investments of 18.3 percent over a five year
  period, compared with only 7.9 percent of those
  without such policies.

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Making the Increasing Role of Women Work for Us
20
Making the Increasing Role of Women Work for Us

• Coaching, teamwork, empowering employees
• Sharing responsibility, consulting rather
  than dictating
• Motivating others, fostering communication,
  listening

21
What Can Businesses Do? IBM example

• Employer Choice for Women in 2003, IBM,
  developed a course focused on personal and career
  development for high-potential middle level
  women. The aim is to support the advancement for
  women, including flexible working arrangements
  such as
• Part-time and job share
• Flexible work week, time off in lieu,
  start/finish times
• Flexible leave including exam and study leave
• Leave of absence, personal work-life leave
• Paid maternity, paternity and adoption leave
• Parenting rooms
• Employee Assistance program

22
Overcoming Gender Conflict

• Change programs must focus on both awareness and
  support to enable women to realise their career
  potential
• Strong formal support and encouragement from
  organisational leaders
• Critical mass of other women
• Increased use of networks
• Flexibility and family friendly work practices
• Explicit commitment to values.

23
Recommended Strategies for Employers

• The CEO and executive team being committed to
  supporting diversity, particularly gender
  diversity, with clear and explicit messages
  deployed about the benefits to all of an
  inclusive diverse workforce.
• The CEO and executive team providing and acting
  upon a clear statement of organisational ethics
  and values, in order to attract senior executives
  with a commitment to diversity.

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Recommended Strategies for Employers cont..

• Introducing programs targeted at women that
  encourage the development of appropriate and
  clearly stated careers goals
• Developing and implementing mentoring and
  coaching schemes for women and men to assist with
  career planning and with succession planning.
• Developing organisational unit plans that
  incorporate actions for career planning,
  sustainable workplace culture and flexible
  working arrangements

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Recommended Strategies for Employers cont..

• Adopting ILO maternity leave standards (i.e. 14
  weeks paid maternity leave)
• Incorporating gender awareness training in
  management development and programs
• Raising awareness of the benefits of maintaining
  a healthy balance between work and life.
• Including targets related to improving the
  situation for women in managers performance
  reviews.

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Summary

• It is the responsibility of both organisations
  and women themselves to promote the advancement
  of women in the workforce
• Organisations must be committed to a clearly
  defined diversity strategy
• Structural workplace and policy changes to
  increase the representation of women without
  cultural and attitudinal change are likely to be
  ineffective
• With the growing skills shortage it is vital
  these changes occur now!