It might not come as a surprise but there are companies that are losing their best female talent every day. It sounds crazy, especially as it’s the best people who are hardworking and ambitious in your company and will ultimately impact the bottom line and have a greater impact in your industry. Yet still companies are losing incredible employees and aren’t making the necessary changes to prevent it.
It’s happening all the time and there’s plenty of stories and frustrations to be heard from both sides. On one side are those women who have recently left a job because they didn’t feel valued and on the other, are the companies who have been surprised when crucial and devoted staff hand in their notice, seemingly out of the blue.
Women are fed up and feel undervalued and HR teams are frustrated because their best staff are looking elsewhere, so is seems like the right time to look at why this keeps on happening and what can companies start to do about it.
The Root Problem
Firstly, it’s important to ask… what do women want from work? It might seem like a daft question because everyone would say it's to be paid. That's the whole point of work. At one point it may have been but over the years there has been a shift.
People want more than just a good salary from their employer. They want a positive culture, career progression opportunities, and most importantly, they want to have an impact and make a difference with their work. There’s plenty of research to highlight this, most of which stems back to the issue of women feeling undervalued.
Women just want to be valued at work. They want to feel that their job is worthwhile, and the company appreciates they are good at it and are therefore recognised for what they do. All of which contributes hugely to a woman’s visibility in the workplace and has a knock-on effect to their career progression and their loyalty to the company.
The 8 P’s of Career Progression
There are a number of things that help women feel valued. Most will say it’s all about pay and promotions. Both of which are important but there are actually 8 total elements that work together to help women feel valued within a company, demonstrated in our ‘8 P’s of Career Progression’ framework:
1. Pay
2. Promotion
3. Personal development
4. Proactive
5. Preferences
6. Performance
7. Possibilities
8. Partnerships
(Framework by © Gemma Stow 2021)
It’s about a lot more than just money. Which for companies should be great to hear because supporting, developing, and retaining their female talent is therefore not always going to come at a cost.
This does not mean female employees shouldn’t be paid their worth, but there are other options available for companies to make sure they are valuing, recognising, and therefore retaining the talent they've already got.
Why do women leave companies?
There are endless real-life examples of why companies need to better their focus on retaining their staff. One woman who has recently found a new job said:
“I’m leaving because I kept getting overlooked for roles and had been promised promotions that never materialised. Looking elsewhere for a job showed me that my skills and experience are highly valued and that’s not something I had felt for a long time in my current role.”
Another said:
“One of my biggest drivers at work has been to better myself and progress up the ladder so to speak. Opportunities for promotion are a big deal for me and unfortunately I found that I could not progress at my previous organisation as quickly as I would have liked, so I made the decision to look elsewhere”
Here’s a response that should be shocking but unfortunately happens regularly within companies:
“The further up the management ladder I rose, it was clear a boys' culture existed. I was told to just agree with everything he says and he’ll leave you alone. But more often than not what he was saying was wrong and, in some cases, unsafe. I left my previous role because the male leaders were narcissists and had zero leadership skills, they would openly mark female employees out of 10 - and not based on their abilities at work either. When this was brought up through the employee survey and taken to the CX and still nothing was done, I knew there and then that I had to leave, I made the decision at that point I didn’t want to work for an organisation that allowed their leaders to treat employees in this way. I do feel it is very industry based as I had worked previously in the financial services sector where gender inequality was never an issue. I have also worked with some incredible male managers who are real female allies. But no amount of money or promise of promotion would have encouraged me to stay.“
It’s clear ‘boy’s clubs’ are still well and truly alive and causing issues for women in some industries, but there’s plenty of other barriers:
“I spent over 10 years in a management role in a previous company. During that time, I also had my two children. When planning my return to work after my first child, I was told that my working pattern options were full-time or part-time job share. I didn’t want to work full-time anymore mainly due to the company’s expectation that I would need to be in the office 8.30-5pm Monday to Friday. Combined with a commute, this would have meant hardly seeing my baby. So my only option was to work half the hours a week which meant substantially less pay and fewer opportunities to gain experience. I had my second child a year later and was actually grateful for working fewer hours with two young children.
As time moved on though, I offered to increase my hours to cover workload, but the rigidity remained, and I was only ever ‘allowed’ to do this on a temporary basis. More senior roles with the company remained out of reach as they required full time hours. Training was limited due to fewer working hours which meant many of the company’s development opportunities were also out of reach. Despite receiving top scores on appraisals and achieving a huge amount while only working part time, there was nowhere for me to go next. I therefore made the difficult and slightly scary decision to make a sideways move and leave so that I could eventually move upwards.”
There seems to be an impression that women leave their roles due to family commitments or because they want to work less - this couldn't be further from the truth for a lot of women. Most are ambitious and want to be valued, recognised, and rewarded at work. They want more, not less.
And by recognising this fact and acting on it, companies are going to be able to retain their female leaders of the future rather than losing them to the competition.
So what is going wrong and why are companies losing their best talent?
Lack of recognition
The majority of companies know that to keep people you have to value them, but what they aren’t always clear on how to do it. They understand the need to get to know their employees and understand what they need to thrive in the organisation, but action (i.e. promotions and pay reviews) isn’t always taken. However as a company these aren’t your only options to make sure you retain your best staff – consider the 8 Ps of career progression mentioned previously.
Company culture
Is the culture creating barriers for women that don't need to be there and can be addressed? Unfortunately, a lot of the time men don’t see any problems and believe there are no barriers for women. This is why it’s important to be open minded and look beyond what you know or what has been done a certain way for so long.
Listen to your employee’s feedback, when it is not addressed this in turn makes staff feel even less valued. Does your company follow through with investigating things that have been reported? Is there sexism in your culture at work? Making sure that this is addressed not only in behaviours but also in policies and the decision-making process in terms of career progression again encourages women to stay in their roles.
Company Structure
This especially relates to companies that have set hierarchies which therefore means that individuals often don't have access or exposure to the more senior leaders in the company.
When it comes to structure, there are three main areas:
1. The effectiveness of role models and those who could inspire and encourage upcoming leaders doesn't exist.
2. Less opportunity for networking and really getting to know all the staff and the ideas and opinions that they could bring to the table - which in turn impacts on successful succession planning because talent is being wasted and unseen.
3. The structure of a company only serves to reinforce the traditional ways that it has been working. So it could be missing out on new opportunities for growth and potentially falling behind the competition who are focusing on forward thinking structures, procedures, and ways of working.
Over to you
There’s no one solution to the issue at hand, in fact it is a dual responsibility. Women need to be more visible, own their expertise and really raise their own profile to get recognised and rewarded at work. But to do this, companies need to address the fundamental barriers in the way of women, including sexism, discrimination, boy’s clubs, and lack of contact with senior leaders through outdated hierarchies.
Working together is the only way to bring about long lasting and meaningful change.
**Gemma is a self-promotion expert and specialises in working with organisations to identify, develop and retain their female talent and encourage senior level progression to close the gender gap. This is through coaching, consultation, training sessions and workshops. She understands the importance of visibility when it comes to women’s career progression and helps ambitious women find their confidence to own and showcase their expertise. Host of the ‘No More Hiding: Self Promotion at Work’ podcast - click here to listen.
Message her directly to find out more or book a call here. Download your copy of her white paper ‘Visibility At Work: The Importance of Self Promotion for Women's Career Progression here’. **
NB - When we refer to the terms men/women we are including all non-binary, trans and any marginalised genders