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.