Flexibility & DEI: The Keys to Building and Retaining Today’s Talent
We talked a lot about talent at the Outsell Signature Event, co-produced with JEGI CLARITY— how to attract and keep it, and how to train, develop, and incentivize our teams. We also talked about culture and the return to office (or RTO as yet another acronym forms to augment WFH). Our life has become shorthand, driven by TikTok and 140 characters before it. But here we are, and taking care of our teams is anything but short-form exercise these days. As I was reflecting on our event and the wealth of information gained from our speakers during our time together, several things came to mind.
The new f-word is flexibility, like it or not. If we don’t have it in our repertoire, we are disadvantaged as employers. Get used to it. As with yoga, a limber mind and body matters, and corporate flexibility is the new norm.
I spoke with Jeanne Meister, Executive Director of Executive Networks (in prep for the event; she couldn’t join due to COVID), which does groundbreaking research in the HR and talent arena. We discussed research that shows 80% of today’s employees want meaningful flexibility. It matters so much to them that it’s worth 10% in compensation. Said another way: If I can’t get flexibility where I work, I will go someplace else to get it — even if it means 10% less in my comp. There’s a bounty now on flexibility, so much so that talent will consider less comp. In an era of inflation, that speaks volumes.
And earlier, in a women’s group hosted by Karyn Schoenbart, Board Member of IRI/NPD, we heard from guest speaker Alexis Krivkovich, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, who is the co-founding author of McKinsey’s “Women in the Workplace.” Her groundbreaking work on women, done in collaboration with Lean In, is the benchmark for companies around the globe. Studies suggest that C-suite diversity may take 100 years to reach parity. Krivkovich’s take: Measure what matters and put transparency and accountability into addressing parity. Dissect why parity is lacking and address it. Also, engineer and reward sponsorship, mentorship, and support, which are often given by women, but not rewarded formally.
As if to further support what I learned from the women’s group, I came across a recent Elle magazine article citing a 2021 McKinsey report that found “in 2020, a full quarter of US women considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their career” and a fall 2021 Gallup survey of 13,000 US employees showed the “top quality women sought in a job was ‘greater work-life balance and better personal well-being’.” That same article reports that there are 1.8 million fewer women in the labor force today than before the pandemic. Ugh.
All this took me back full circle to a comment by Christina Correira, Chief Human Resources Officer at Bloomberg Industry Group, who joined us in Virginia, at the Outsell Signature Event: Focus on potential versus pedigree. The pool of people is much better when we widen the aperture and think differently about who we can hire and train. It made me think, too, of Heather Terenzio, Director of Partnerships and Entrepreneurial Initiatives, who did groundbreaking work in her Colorado firm Techtonic. She revolutionized how she hired and trained software engineers, and today she remains on the forefront of this topic.
There’s more to be done, but we are armed with the knowledge of what we need to succeed: flexibility, potential versus pedigree, and accountability to do something about it. We need to get more diversity — especially women — in our workplace and in our industry. We will continue to monitor it in our Outsell Future Readiness Ranking, where gender diversity in the C-suite is one of 20 attributes being measured. It matters. To learn more about the ranking and how your organization stacks up, contact_us@outsellinc.com.