Where are the Women?

by Emily on May 8, 2012

in Career Choices, Women Entrepreneurs, Workplace Flexibility

TheLadders.com

This may be the phrase of 2012. We’ve seen variations of this question everywhere from Capitol Hill hearings to questions about diversity and inclusion at executive and board levels, to which political party will capture the majority of women voters this election year, and the unfortunate resurgence of mommy wars.

So where are the women? We know they are leaving corporate America to start their own businesses at an astonishing rate. Perhaps because our global competitors are outperforming us in this area, we also know more women rising up in executive ranks are poised to take on executive positions. Faith Popcorn, the well known futurist, claims 2012 is this year of “She-Change”. We’re seeing a huge shift in conversations related to diversity and inclusion for the better. The Bentley Center for Women and Business hosted an inaugural forum in late April and Bob Moritz, Chairman of PwC gave an excllent presentation on what diversity and inclusion meant to him personally and to PwC, the need for integrated work lives, and the notion that keeping women in the workforce is not just a good idea, but critical for global business success.

I’ve always believed career advancement and flexibility isn’t just a woman’s issue nor is it only an issue for those with families. Sue Shellenbarger with the Wall Street Journal wrote about the pressures men are also facing in balancing everything today in her article, What’s In It For Men? Managing a life, a family, a marriage and a career on full tilt when you hit your 30s and 40s is no easy feat and this is when ambitious professional women start opting-out. A majority of these women want to reduce their work schedules after having children, seek workplaces where they are assured the workplace flexibility they need, and yet part-time tracks rarely lead to executive or board positions. Women report that their careers plateau during this phase and there’s little incentive to get back on track when peers (who haven’t opted-out or reduced their schedules) have accelerated at a much faster pace. In larger corporations many executive women continue to follow a career path with conditions of success largely established by men. These women leaders still face heavy travel schedules around the globe and have to attend requisite after hours business events, client dinners, and conferences regardless of whether they have a family or not. They either outsource the needs of life at home, (marketing, dry cleaning, doctors appointments, school drop offs/pick up/events and more), or have a spouse who stays at home to take care of the rest. We hear stories of leaders leaving their offices to attend soccer games, but workplace flexibility is a constant challenge among the executive ranks which is why a lot of women say thanks, but no thanks. I found the McKinsey report, Unlocking the Full Potential at Work, hopeful, yet also interesting that part-time work or flexible hours weren’t discussed more as a strategy to keep women in corporate roles during the leaky pipeline phase.

So with this as reality, how are we going to close the gap or will the gap ever really close?  Some suggest long sabbaticals may help, allowing employees to stay loosely connected to their employer while taking a time-out for raising a family. Reduced schedules allow women to address pressing family needs between 3-8pm, but presents career hazards of its own. We should be looking at how to incent and reward flexible careers and offer opportunities for women to succeed during this phase of life. Public school system hours need revisiting as they make it difficult for women to do anything other than opt-out, work reduced hours or outsource their family needs. Perhaps it will be the women starting their own businesses who will pioneer the ability to successfully be both a chief executive and one with a flexible work schedule because they will be fierce competitors for talent. While no panacea exists, the good news is that there are bright spots on the horizon, and we are facing these issues far more head on than we did 20 years ago.

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The Power of the Universal Solvent and Culture Change

by Emily on April 17, 2012

in Managing Change, Organization Cultures

I attended two great back-to-back events recently. CRE High Performance/Alternative Workplace Strategies: Three Case Studies in Progress sponsored by the IFMA Boston chapter, and Women Making a Difference in Healthcare Innovation sponsored by the Institute for Executive Education at Suffolk University. Both were great in unique ways and touched on some similar themes related to change management.

One of the three companies profiled in the high performance/alternative workplace strategies case studies was Akamai, a mid-sized global technology firm that launched a work from home program in 2010 as a pilot with 40 participants and then formalized the program more broadly in 2011 as their ‘work anywhere’ program. To get to this point, Akamai required a focus on three things: 1) the need to discern what other technology companies were doing around the development of a mobile work program, 2) the need to learn best practices on how to increase efficiencies through collaborative office design (and the associated cost savings), and 3) the need to focus on change management as an essential piece of making the ‘work anywhere’ program successful. I am interested in learning more about what has made this program so successful that they now want to roll it out in their Europe and Asia offices.

The Women in Healthcare Innovation event focused on how changes are manifesting across the continuum of care in non-profit healthcare settings and what kinds of innovative healthcare practices are taking root across ACO’s and community hospitals. Aside from how health reform and technology has completely changed the game in healthcare, it was also interesting to hear similar themes about the need for focusing on change management as an essential component to evolving and improving the continuum of care. One community-based hospital in the Boston area, Winchester Hospital, places a strong emphasis on working hard to ensure employees feel valued and that they are making a contribution to increasing service excellence. Employees and customers are engaged in providing solutions for change, a large shift from task forces of the past that typically engaged senior executives in coming up with innovative ideas alone. At this event, there was universal acknowledgement and consensus about the following: that to understand how to affect culture change, a broad representation across people and domains was needed, which resulted in much stronger employee engagement and satisfaction.

Which brings me back to employee engagement and telework/mobility strategy. We know that executive sponsorship is critical to ensuring success of a mobile work program, but without the engagement of employees across all levels in creating, promoting and sustaining the vision for a work anywhere type of program, the wheels eventually fall off. If saving money is a recipe for creating value in an any organization, mobile work programs have to demonstrate not only how to save costs (across IT, HR and real estate/sustainability efforts), but also how to engage employees in a more meaningful way that produces lasting change. Peter Brill and Richard Worth, authors of the Four Levers of Corporate Change wrote about the power of the universal solvent in manifesting change; how changing culture cannot be done in a silo and that the process for engaging employees requires a more democratic approach, removes the power of the boss as an obstacle to communication, and captures emotional commitment from employees/workers. John Kotter speaks about capturing the hearts and minds of employees in institutionalizing change. The most successful organizations who are implementing changes now are finally learning how to do both.

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The Boston Blackout

March 26, 2012

This month the City of Boston experienced an unusual blackout that affected 21,000 residential and business customers, closed T stations and made traffic coming into part of the city harried with traffic signals and street lights out. The cause was an explosive transformer fire which shut down many businesses for more than a day. In [...]

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Do Virtual Teams Foster Creativity and Innovation?

March 11, 2012

I attended a CoreNet Global New England Chapter event in Boston that featured Google’s Facility Director, Adam Lutz, from their New York office. The presentation, meeting the needs of diverse work styles, highlighted Google’s New York office approach to office design by emphasizing collaborative team planning.  What resonated with me is challenging ideals of what office [...]

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The Growing Independent Workforce

February 29, 2012

MBO Partners Independent Workforce Index September, 2011 I really like the MBO Partners Independence Workforce Index published last year.  Among the Independents, 48% are Gen X, 12% are Gen Y, and 30% are Boomers. I found it interesting that 58% of independents are highly satisfied with their working arrangements and 75% are committed to remaining this [...]

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Managing Organization Change

February 15, 2012

I recently facilitated a workshop on Leading and Managing Change with a great group of women executives. Change management is a integral piece of any successful program, whether deploying a new strategic initiative, implementing a model for streamlined operations, or engaging stakeholders. Each undertaking requires a deeper understanding of how individual and organization DNA embraces [...]

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Mobility and Telework in Massachusetts

January 28, 2012

It’s a great thing when you can take a photo of the Boston skyline and feel like you’re really close to the pulse of the city. It’s altogether different when you get in your car to commute to the city during rush hour. Congestion issues plague this metropolitan area that can rival big cities like [...]

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Workplace Flexibility in 2012

January 10, 2012

Where is the dialogue on workplace flexibility going in 2012 and beyond?  I’ve thought about this a lot as I hear about challenges organizations face in knowing how to make flexible work a strategic business imperative. When I worked for Work/Family Directions (now WFD Consulting) back in the 90′s, the conversation was centered around how to [...]

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Five Key Questions about Co-Working

November 29, 2011

An interesting thing happened to me over the past several weeks. I met two local professionals, one an architect, the other a marketing/branding expert, both balancing flexible careers and family needs, and both with a keen interest in co-working.  After initially meeting as a group, we’ve discussed that the demand for flexible co-working space exists [...]

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To Leave or Not To Leave

November 16, 2011

That is the question I have been facing for a long time.  After a successful 8 year tenure with one company and over 20 years in the corporate and government worlds, I have moved on to the next stage in my career. What I’ve discovered in the process is that moving on is not for [...]

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