With millennials projected to account for 75% of the workforce by 2025 and women accounting for upwards of 50% of this total, your company's executives are likely increasingly focused on cracking the code of how to attract, advance, and retain next generation women leaders. As a result, QUEST launched a research project targeted at helping organizational leaders who aspire to create practices and a culture where millennial women advance.
The QUEST Special Report, “What Executives Need to Know about Millennial Women,” identifies five key themes that young, high potential women cited as important to what they wanted and needed from their work environments – things that serve to attract, motivate, and retain them in their organizations. Through company practices, stories, and the voices of millennial women and organizational leaders, in this webinar we'll highlight how companies are embracing the values that young female stars desire: "know me," "challenge me," "connect me," "inspire me," and "unleash me."
12. “Women primarily leave because of babies”1.
Talent leaders believe the main reason women 5-10 years out of
university leave organizations is due to motherhood or work-life
integration challenges.
Why do women 5-10 years out of university leave organizations?
"I would like a role
with more flexibility."
13. “Women primarily leave because of babies”1.
“She would have left anyways.”
“Women don’t opt
out of the
workforce; most
cannot afford to.
They leave
specific jobs for
others.”
McKinsey
“Women don’t opt
out of the
workforce; most
cannot afford to.
They leave
specific jobs for
others.”
McKinsey
When most women leave, they are leaving to go to your
competition. What is the cost to your organization of losing
high potential women to a competitor?
14. “Men & women leave for different reasons”2.
Men and women leave organizations for
similar reasons:
➢ Compensation & Rewards
➢ Learning & Development
➢ Fair Balance Between Work & Pay
➢ Meaningful and Interesting Work
15. “Millennial preferences will change with age”3.
Talent leaders believe that women age 22-29 leave organizations for
different reasons that women age 30-35.
➔ Being viewed as a whole person
➔ Developing new skills
➔ Organization has a sense of purpose
➔ Connecting to an interesting community at work
➔ Leading initiatives
In reality, the departure drivers for these two groups are closely aligned.
Several factors are of similar importance to women age 22-29 & 30-35:
16.
17. “Know Me” Spotlight
THEN NOW
FOCUS Pension Purpose
NEED Good Boss Great colleagues
HOURS 9-5 Whenever
WORKPLACE Office Wherever
TENURE Whole Career Whatever
19. Focus on challenging transitions
Target early career women
“Ask Don’t Assume”: Talk with your people, not about them
Solutions
Address challenges beyond family and flexibility
Propose women’s strategies as broader talent strategies
Immediate Next Steps for Success
Christie :Reality: Millennial women identified a higher paying job, lack of learning and development, and meaningful work as their primary departure drivers
To be clear, work-life integration still ranked very high (46% put it in the top five).
Thus, millennial women point to a relatively equal mix of several departure drivers.
Lauren- 16 weeks paid leave for men and women - parents, adopting or caregivers … gender neutral
Lauren
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Lauren -
The Case of HubSpot
With 85 percent of their workforce under the age of 34, HubSpot, an inbound marketing company, has cracked the code on how to attract and retain millennials. Part of the secret to HubSpot’s success is that leaders invest the time to understand employees as people, including their passions, interests, desires, and needs, both in and out of work.
Rather than designing rigid policies, leaders at HubSpot seek to understand what is going on in employees’ lives and what employees’ priorities are.
“At HubSpot the idea is to optimize work around your life, not the other way around,”
- Katie Burke, Vice President of Culture & Experience.
What does this look like in practice?
HubSpotters are more than a number to leadership: Executives have a ‘no-door’ policy (often sitting at ‘nomad’ tables within an open floor plan), making them accessible to people across the organization. In addition, they frequently have informal one-on-one lunches with employees to get to know them.
HubSpot views work as a thing you do, not a place you go: HubSpot’s widely viewed Culture Code (with over 2 million views) states that instead of hours being 9-5 and work location being constrained to the office, work can be done whenever and wherever. This allows individual employees (and their teams) to craft customized working schedules and environments in order to produce the best work and accommodate their other priorities while doing it.
HubSpotters are encouraged to customize time to ‘recharge’: When a HubSpotter “turns five,” they get full pay to take a four week sabbatical. They even receive a separate sabbatical check for US$5,000. There are no restrictions on the sabbatical. The idea is to do whatever would enable you to recharge for four weeks – work on your novel, take a family vacation, or pursue whatever passion you may have.
There is no ‘one size fits all’ career path; there are multiple ways to progress: In stark contrast to traditional ‘up or out’ corporate cultures, career paths at HubSpot are individualized depending on employee interests and goals. Executives push people out of their comfort zone and encourage employees to try out different teams and even switch what they are doing every six months. One millennial expressed how she highly values this approach: “Lateral movement is very much like in college when you just take another class because you haven’t been exposed to a topic.” She has had the opportunity to move laterally at HubSpot to work on everything from email marketing to page optimization to PR to eBook creation, all within a short period of time.
Individual risk taking and projects are encouraged: Focusing on the individual has its business benefits - one millennial new hire truly followed the HubSpot motto of “we give ourselves the autonomy to be awesome” and within months of being hired set the Guinness Record when she ran the world’s largest marketing webinar.
Communication and feedback are not limited to biannual or quarterly performance reviews: At HubSpot, communication and feedback are constant, real-time, and individualized through apps like 15five where employees share weekly wins, challenges, and activities.
When one of HubSpot’s Directors of People Operations was asked, “What else should we know about why your company is a progressive workplace and one of the best places and cultures for millennials to thrive?”, she replied:
“We’re always looking at what’s going on in the world. How do we keep up with what’s going on in our employees’ lives? How do we make it easier for them to be here?”
This focus on the employee as a person has truly set HubSpot apart and contributed to its growth: the company experienced a 49% growth in revenues in 2014. In the process, the company is growing millennial leaders and exceptional talent across genders and generations. By seeking to understand the person behind the work, HubSpot has differentiated itself as an employer of choice for the millennial generation.
Organizations spend countless hours trying to understand their clients - their needs and preferences, through everything from market analyses to stakeholder assessments to client feedback reviews. As the case of HubSpot illustrates, leaders would be well served by dedicating the same amount of time to understanding their most valuable asset: their people.
Lauren ---
Christie …..
-List partner companies and business schools
-Advisory Council members
-Live events in Boston, Hong Kong, New York, London
-If you are a talent leader who is committed to advancing early career women we would be happy to chat with you about how we can support your efforts