You Manage It! 1: Customer-Driven HR Women: Keeping the Supply Lines Open
Women leave the workforce at higher rates than men. In part, this may help explain why only about 2 percent of top CEO positions are held by females. But why do women quit? Further, do they later rejoin the labor force? Can they, after leaving? Let’s take a look at these issues.
First, there is little doubt that women are more likely than men to leave the labor force. For example, a recent survey focused on a nationally representative group of women who had a graduate, professional, or high-honors undergraduate degree. The survey included over 2,400 women. A major finding of the survey was that 24 percent of men had voluntarily left their job whereas nearly 40 percent of women had voluntarily left. These women invested in education that positioned them for successful careers, yet many of them chose to leave the workforce.
Why do women choose to leave the workforce? There is, of course, no single answer. Family and child-care issues certainly can “pull” women away from work. However, a surprising number of women report leaving their jobs due to boredom and frustration. That is, in order to feel challenged and to increase their chances for growth and opportunity, women feel that they have to leave their current employer.
The factors that “push” women to leave jobs would seem to be most directly manageable by organizations. Some organizations offer programs such as coaching and mentoring programs for women, family-friendly policies, and training targeted at women returning to the workforce in an attempt to retain and attract high-quality female workers.
Critical Thinking Questions
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5-11. Why is the departure of women an issue for organizations?
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5-12. When trying to reenter the workforce, women often find that they have to take a lower pay rate to “get back in the game.” Do you think this is fair? Why or why not?
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5-13. If a lower wage discourages the reentry of women, what, if anything, can be done about it?
Team Exercise
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5-14. “Pull” factors are issues or characteristics that draw a woman away from her job responsibilities. “Push” factors are characteristics that repel a woman from her current job responsibilities. Join team members in your class and identify reasons why women leave their jobs. Classify each as a pull or push factor and judge the extent to which each tends to affect women rather than men. (You can use the following rating scale to make these judgments.)
Experiential Exercise: Team
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5-15. Join team members and research what companies are doing to retain women employees. Classify these management initiatives as addressing either “push” or “pull” factors. Are there approaches that you think would be effective for retaining women but that you did not find being used by organizations? List and describe what you consider to be the best approaches. Be prepared to discuss expected costs and benefits and to justify your recommendations.
Experiential Exercise: Individual
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5-16. Design a job that you think would maximize the retention of women. What characteristics would the job have in terms of policies, benefits, and so on? Would any costs associated with these job characteristics be worth it for men as the job holders? Why or why not? Share the job characteristics with the rest of the class.