Flexibility and Salary are Key to Retaining Talented
Professional Women
By
November 2008
Large companies lure and retain quality
employees by offering a wide range of flexible benefit options.
Working Mother
magazine showcases its Top 100 Companies for Working Mothers
yearly, with companies such as American Express setting a high
bar. Some of the nation’s largest companies offer a wide variety
of work/life options including on-site child care, paid
maternity/paternity leave, telecommuting, and phased-in re-entry
for new parents. Working
Mother
asked its readers:
“What do women want?” and characterized the responses as
“More!
A full 74 percent of our survey moms expressed a desire
for a better menu of flex options…The most crowd-pleasing
benefit of all was the ability to start and end workdays at
flexible times, valued by 90 percent of our moms.”
Like the rest of the nation, the Coulee
Region has a high percentage of working women. Nationally, over
60% of women with children under the age of six are employed.
Consequently, we set out to explore the perceptions of work/life
policy, work satisfaction, and salary satisfaction for local
professional women through an on-line survey and interviews. We
believed the results would be of use to employers and employees.
THE SURVEY:
An electronic survey was e-mailed to a
sample of Coulee Region employed women. 125 women completed the
survey, most of whom (65%) worked for employers with more than
50 employees. The
major employer types were non-profit organizations (32%),
education (33%) and health care (16%).
The vast majority of the women (77%) were salaried.
Of the respondents, 81% had children under 18 at home,
80% were married or living with a partner, and 21% had elder
care responsibilities.
In addition to the on-line survey, a
sub-sample of the respondents provided in-depth face-to-face
interviews.
THE BIG PICTURE: “What do women want?”
“More!”
Survey and interview results suggest that
although working women value flexibility, they also value
salaries and opportunities for career challenges.
When women in the survey
were asked about the primary factors affecting their job
satisfaction, “A work environment that fosters wok-life balance”
tied with “opportunities for creativity and challenges.”
Both factors ranked only slightly higher than
“flexibility” and “salary,” which scored almost even.
Specifics regarding these factors are highlighted below.
FLEXIBILITY AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE:
The
Coulee Region has a history of attending to work-life issues.
For instance, in the La Crosse Area
Chamber of Commerce 2000 study “Family Friendly
Policies,”
Our survey contains some good news on
employee satisfaction nearly decade after the publication of the
Chamber of Commerce study: A
majority of the professional women surveyed, 61% strongly agreed
or somewhat agreed with the statement, “The array of policies
available to help employees balance work and life commitments in
my workplace is adequate.” It
is also impressive that 78% of respondents believed that their
direct supervisor was knowledge about and supportive of
work-life policies.
At the same time, most women (58%) believed
that more supportive work-life policies should be implemented.
When women were asked what they believed prevented the
implementation of new initiatives to address the challenge of
work-life balance, 38% (the largest response) believed that the
major obstacle was the lack of a plan by the employer to replace
people requesting leaves from the workplace, a situation which
potentially leaves colleagues with additional work without
compensation. This
finding is not surprising given that the
THE SIZE OF THE ORGANIZATION?
Despite the fact
that the Coulee Region has relatively few large employers, the
survey yielded some consistent differences in the perceptions of
policy when comparing women who work for larger organizations
with those who work for smaller ones. The survey also suggested
that when it comes to providing flexibility, the areas large
employers could take a cue from its smaller employers.
Although women
employees of large organizations reported that their
organizations offered notable high-impact programs like Employee
Assistance programs, fitness training, and other work-life
benefits like child-care subsidies, women in smaller organizations reported higher levels of
flexibility regarding work-life arrangements.
This finding was borne out in the
interviews: women
in the smaller organizations were more satisfied with the
flexibility of their work environment.
One non-profit director put her finger on it when she
said, “The more personal you are, the more flexible you are.”
A higher percentage of respondents from smaller
organizations answered positively to questions about the
availability of benefits such as part-time professional
positions, flexible schedules, and leadership training for
women,
Though smaller organizations, especially
non-profits, are usually not able to offer high salaries, they
can compensate employees with flexibility and opportunities for
professional development.
Interviews with several area non-profit leaders provided
additional evidence on this point, suggesting that the creation
of these incentives was often a deliberate approach to putting
values into practice to create a work-life-friendly workplace.
Another director acknowledged that the corporate world
has more resources, like support for management through a phone
call to Human Resources and EAP programs, and small
organizations have “no guarantee” of pay increases.
But, she said, “there is more flexibility to act on your
values” in small organizations.
Leaders of those organizations, she said, “can go outside
the box.” She summed up
her own learning as a manager in both types of organizations by
saying, “Most employees will make the right decision for
themselves and their families.” In her view, “The best employee
is the one who says I’m going to give you everything I can
without compromising either position (work or family or
whatever’s important to them.)”
SALARY ISSUES:
Though flexibility can help offset concerns
regarding compensation, it is worth repeating that salary is a
major factor in women’s job satisfaction in the Coulee Region.
Nationally, women,
particularly mothers, lag behind men in earnings at all levels
of education.
Wisconsin women earn less than the national average, and
IMPLICATIONS:
The survey and the interviews suggested
that Coulee Region patterns reflect many of the national trends
in an economy with high rates of female labor force
participation and most women combining paid work with caregiving
roles. Smart employers
should and do pay attention to optimal ways to provide
flexibility to employees.
National research suggests that employee satisfaction and
retention for both male and female employees is higher when
employers provide a wide variety of work/life balance
opportunities. We
hope this research contributes to an on-going conversation among
La Crosse employers about what is possible in developing work
environments that foster productivity, balance and work
satisfaction, and what major gaps need to be addressed.
Most importantly, employers need to listen to their
employees and monitor national trends in order to stay
competitive and retain talented women.