To get more women into senior level positions, firms must engage with what Sylvia Hewlett, of the Centre for Work-Life Policy in New York, calls women’s “non-linear career paths”.
The vision is simple: a workplace where women are not penalised for opting for a non-conventional career path.
This is something that many women choose to do during their careers. According to Hewlett’s research - over a third of professional women leave work at some point, to look after children or family members, and a further third to go part-time for a while. Hewlett argues that when re-entering work, women are penalised - in terms of both salary and career progression - by a system that naturally favours a record of ‘unbroken service’.
They key to making the workplace work for women, according to Hewlett, “is to make flexibility totally universal, and to make it very real.” That means making flexibility available to everyone, not just women: The decision to work flexibly “hits men even harder than women. Men get really clobbered if they take some of this [flexibility] stuff. But it’s very important to figure out how to get men centrally involved because then you can really change the culture of the workplace, and it becomes kind of normal”.
So, if you listen to Hewlett, the key to creating an inclusive and fair workplace is flexibility for everyone, regardless of gender. But what’s in it for businesses? According to a Chartered Institute of Personal Development report - quite a lot.
In their survey, which questioned over 500 organisations in the UK, 47 per cent believe flexible working has had a positive effect on staff retention, 70 per cent perceive employee motivation as having benefited, and over half have seen positive effects on recruitment.
Though these finding are not directly linked to the assertion that flexible working can help women pursue what Hewlett brands the ‘non-liner career path’, they do provide evidence that flexible working - on its own - has measurable positive effects for businesses. If these business-related benefits also serve to create more women (and men) friendly workplaces, then really, everybody wins.
Read guide - Benefits of flexible working
Read guide - Women in business - support for businesses in the South West
0 Responses to “Women, men, and non-linear career paths”