What makes some companies succeed very well with women employees? I'm not talking about only-women companies here although I really admire them. In my opinion, women employees primarily need the following infrastructure.
1. Management must proactively listen to women employees
Most women, especially from Asia, have a dual role to play at home and work with completely different set of privileges.
While at work the women are expected to be assertive, make witty comments, talk sports and business and perhaps join the boys' network they have a completely different role at home. They essentially are not the primary decision makers at home. How many women buy cars or decide on an apartment all by themselves? A womean at home is always consensus person. She does take very judicious decisions after consulting other stake holders. So, primarily women make decisions after getting every one's opinion but they do make that known as a group decision. You know what I mean?
The same behaviour is shown at wrk. The woman employee codes, tests, documents and suggests feature changes or product changes. However it is unusual for a woman employee to stand up and say 'Ahem! I did it!' and instead she will say 'Congrats team! We did it!' even though she has contributed 80% to it.
So, good management should have the infrastructure to check out the contributions of women employees. I hear the men saying 'why the hell should we ask?'. Yes, you need to ask - if not you will lose valuable women employees who do great work and instead you will be hiring male employees for twice the price!
2. Create learning opportunities for women to understand business and finance.
In the usual world, women tend to be right brained and usually we don't find women talking near the water cooler about certain stocks going down, the national budget implications, the car specifications or P&L details.
In order for women to gel with the 'boys' it is essential that they learn all the above aspects. And if management can create that learning infrastructure, they have a win-win situation!
We all know women are relationship oriented and are hard working and loyal to the company and are paid less (lets face it!).
Companies can do well to create women friendly infrastructure which is way beyond providing child care facilities and flexi time issues.
HR and Top Management - Time for us to be innovative and feel the pulse!
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/A_woman_in_Bangalore_can_compete_with_the_world__Obama-nid-58990.html
