Is it missing a key component?
Deloitte announced a “bold” move in their strategy to shift the momentum regarding gender parity. They have decided to concentrate on men. “A lot of their leaders are still white men who need to be part of the conversation and advocate for women”.
So I decided to look at recent data from the Czech Republic to see if this “trend” could be applicable to the Czech context. First I looked for female presence in the workforce and found that you have a 57.2% participation of women in the workplace.
I also looked at potential cultural boundaries that impact the promotion of women in your market and this is what seems to be the overall thematic:
“The most serious discrimination of women takes place on the labor market. Women are discriminated against when looking for a job and if they have small children they tend to be the first to be laid off. But the biggest and most visible type of discrimination that women face in the Czech Republic is called pay discrimination as can be seen in the gender pay gap.”
Pay parity continues to be a painful issue in the US as well. However, other cultural stereotypes such as “women aren’t interested in leadership roles, women lack the confidence to go for top positions, and there aren’t enough qualified women out there” are even bigger roadblocks. (Huffington Post Male Attitudes of Women in Business 8/1/2017).
So the timing of the Deloitte project seems to be aligned with the hard reality here in the US, as well as in the Czech Republic. Social and cultural context continue to create “emotional” obstacles that keep this issue alive. A new “mind set” is needed.
But I wonder if the new trend is missing a key element? Emphasizing the financial loss of attrition. Would this approach make a difference? Could this attract the attention of the “white men” that Deloitte is trying to engage?
Take a look at this recent article. (Huffpost High Turnover Costs way More 2/11/2016) “Doing the math, that means that for an employee salaried at $60,000 will cost the company anywhere from $30,000 to $45,000 to hire and train a replacement. Other research show that the average costs could be even higher. In a study conducted by the Center for America Progress, the cost of losing an employee can cost anywhere from 16% of their salary for hourly, unsalaried employees, to 213% of the salary for a highly trained position! So if a high trained executive is making $120,000 a year, the true loss could be up to $255,600 to the company.”
Do these numbers sound reasonable to you? Should you do the math and see what your costs are? Should you use this metric (cost of attrition) as a way to move the conversation forward?
Elisabet Rodriguez Dennehy
President Rodriguez and Associates LLC