There are a lot of assumptions out there about what women in Australia look for in an employer. Some of these of course, are educated guesses. For instance, flexible work offerings are cropping up regularly in a bid to attract female workers who might be raising young families or juggling other care responsibilities.
When we know that 95 percent of those leaving the workforce to manage such duties are women, these initiatives and policies make sense.
A large number of big employers similarly offer incentives like leadership training programs and pathways, in an effort to address the glaring gap of women at the top of their organisations, and to convey they’re working to improve the imbalance.
Other employers still, are working to close the gender pay gap once and for all by prioritising transparency of pay and regularly promoting and incentivising women in their ranks.
While all these measures are reassuring and prove a commitment from big employers to shift the dial for women at work, we also wonder how closely these initiatives actually align with women’s own objectives. Are employers focusing on the right motivations when it comes to attracting and retaining female talent? Do women prioritise different incentives at various career stages?
To dissect this subject further, we’ve teamed up with the Leadership Institute to survey Australian women on their expectations. What do they look for in a prospective employer? Higher salaries? Flexible work? Training? Mentoring? Corporate social responsibility efforts?
We’ll compile the results into a report which we then aim to share with Australian workplaces.
Ultimately, there’s a long way to go before we reach workplace gender parity. Women still face considerable setbacks and barriers from diminished pay and depleted superannuation to career break discrimination and sexual harassment. In fact, The World Economic Forum (WEF) sadly predicted that reaching parity would take up to five generations at the current pace.
We know that significant work needs to be done to ensure this process speeds up, and it’s good to see many employers attempting to pull things back on course. We just want to help their efforts.
You can complete the short survey here.