Talking Talent

Here’s someone who could be the perfect model for new millennium workers - Barbie.

You have to admire a woman who has expanded her career portfolio almost as much as her wardrobe!

Over the years, Barbie has undergone more than 500 professional career transitions. In what appear to be effortless moves, her official careers have included: fashion designer, flight attendant, rock star, astronaut, police officer, arctic explorer, gymnast, veterinarian, nurse, doctor, ballerina, dentist and aerobics instructor.

In fact, Barbie has starred in just about every conceivable profession including, most recently, as a new member of the Star Trek crew.

Barbie also appears to be financially independent. She owns her own sports car, Corvette, Mustang, moto rhome, speedboat, horses and houses. Let’s face it, this doll has a far more exciting life than most of us and has the work/life balance trapezium licked. She skis, surfs, rollerblades, rides horseback, plays volleyball, scuba dives, dances, ice skates, goes mountain biking and excels at gymnastics.

When Barbie is not networking with her working mates or working out, she goes to the movies, gives dinner parties, does the shopping, and even makes her own clothes, with her eponymous CD-ROM designer software.

Somehow Barbie made it all look so easy. Always meticulously well-dressed and accessorised, Dream House sparkling, solid relationship with Ken, Barbie never looks stressed from interviewing caterers, examining fifty fabric swatches, liaising with travel agents or researching landscaping techniques. And not a single annual planner, life coach or self help book in sight!

I’m with the bumper sticker: “I want to be like Barbie, that lucky bitch has everything.” 

I just hope Mattel continues to encourage Barbie to ‘transition’ her career.  How about politician Barbie with a contrite Ken and a best selling memoir?  Or Telemarketer Barbie with headset and cubicle?  The possibilities are endless - and that’s the whole point of life.

It would be impossible to talk about labour shortages and not comment on the appalling lack of women in many of the high technology professions.  For example, a quick scan of almost any IT department, IT conference or vendor environment from the trenches to the corner office confirms that women who embrace technology as a life long career remain a rare breed.

There is no doubt that the opportunities for women in technology have advanced in the past few decades as have education initiatives aimed at leveling the playing field and attracting women into the industry. However for every woman rising to prominence or embarking on a career in IT or undertaking an IT course at university, as my daughter is, there is another opting out.

The number of women in the industry continues to decline and the reasons women give for leaving are the same ones I heard two decades ago; they are the micro inequalities such as wage discrimination, the boys club and the lack of work/life balance.

Restricting women’s job opportunities costs the Asia Pacific region up to $47 billion each year.

This startling figure was revealed in a report by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, released last year, which also suggests that, as a nation’s female employment rate rises, so does its GDP.

With that in mind, Australia’s industries have a golden opportunity to increase our productivity by increasing the participation rate of women.

The “glass ceiling” (where women feel they have to work harder than male colleagues to achieve success) and the “old boys club” (with its informal male networking) contributes to the perceived or real exclusion of women from many high performance job opportunities.

So, what can we do to turn the tide?

I’m a strong advocate of providing women with the skills to succeed in a male-dominated working environment.  Some of those skills are:

1. Negotiation. Women employees across Australia’s economy earn just 83 cents for every dollar their male counterpart earns, so clearly, women can benefit from enhanced skills to enable them to negotiate salary packages and working conditions.
2. Self-promotion. Women often take the modest approach where they believe they will be rewarded for good work without self-promotion. Instead, they need to learn to not just “stand there” but “stand out”.
3. Work/life balance. The fast pace of life has become frantic for many women. We need to provide skills and training to help women gain and maintain work/life balance.

Is all this effort designed to get women into the workforce just for the sake of getting women into the workforce?

As the UN study shows, women are extremely valuable contributors to economic growth. As we confront rapidly changing patterns of paid work opportunities and work time arrangements, it is often those companies and industries perceived to care about the “people” aspect of business - such as work/life issues - that attract and retain the best talent.

With the economy facing capacity constraints and the population ageing, it doesn’t make sense to have skilled people driving taxis.

Fifty-year-olds are still perceived as being past their used-by-date in the workforce.  At the same time, the latest census data reveals that 11 per cent of Australia’s population is between 55 and 64.  It is these people that the ICT industry needs to do more to attract, retain and retrain.

Research analyst firm, Mercer, says that workers aged 55 and older, particularly women, appear to be the answer to the ongoing skills and labour shortage – not generation Y – and Australian employers must consequently shift their focus from young to old to maintain productivity.

Research findings reveal that by the year 2012 the amount of workers in the labour force aged 55+ will increase by 14 per cent whilst the amount of workers aged 25-54 will increase by only 5 per cent.

Furthermore, the amount of women aged 45+ will increase by 12 per cent whilst the number of men in the same age group will increase by only 6 per cent

Mercer’s Tim Jenkins says that there’s a sense of urgency for employers.  By 2012 demand for skills is expected to increase 18 per cent in the construction industry; 13 per cent in the accommodation, café and restaurant industry; and 12 per cent in the wholesale industry, but with no guarantee that demand will be met with supply.

“In four short years there will be close to a quarter of a million more workers aged 55+ in the Australian labour force and assumptions about what an employer should expect from an employee, and vice versa, have to change.

“Australian employers have to re-define what the average daily and weekly job looks like and how it is remunerated in order to hold onto older workers, maintain productivity and keep downward pressure on wages that, according to our research, are forecast to rise at an average annual rate of 4.2% between now and 2012.

This seismic demographic shift threatens the sustainability of many Australian businesses.

So why does a recent survey by career management firm, Linkme.com.au, tell us that almost three-quarters of Australians believe that finding new employment – across all industries - after 50 is almost impossible.

People are telling me that they feel ‘on the scrapheap’ once they hit 45, and yet these are the very people who have a lifetime of skills and experience to harness.

One woman I spoke to said she was advised to change her resume to say ‘more than 10 years’ experience’ instead of ‘more than 20′ and to remove the dates from her degrees – all to reduce the perception that ‘older’ means ‘out-of-date’.

In industries where work is increasingly based on knowledge-creation, the focus needs to be on the workplace as a key arena for encouraging ‘lifelong learning’ as part of work.

Retaining and retraining older workers will save recruiting costs, maintain institutional memory and technical knowledge and give a higher return on investment in training.

However, it’s not just the responsibility of employers.

Employees need to recognise that they work in a fast-paced industry where training is paramount.  Continuing employment or re-entering the workforce may require a commitment to retrain and some attitudinal shifts too.

The most important factor in a mature person’s employment prospects is: are they adaptable?  Those most at risk of redundancy and underemployment have had fewest opportunities to acquire new skills and develop a positive attitude to learning.

Australia’s economic growth – and our industry’s prosperity - is partly dependent on mature-age workers remaining in the workforce for as long as possible, so it’s time to discard negative perceptions of baby boomers and support them in their working lives as much as Gen-X and Yers.

A new Australian study has found that women are more suited to senior executive and management roles.

Researchers at Peter Berry Consultancy surveyed more than 1,800 Australian male and female executives and managers, using the Hogan Assessment System to rate the leaders in eight profile areas known to contribute to successful business leadership: strategic drive; risk taking; people skills; emotional stability; hot buttons; innovation; control and command; and bottom line dollars.

According to the report, Female leadership in Australia: What does it look like and how does it differ from their male counterparts?, in both groups of leaders, females scored highest in five key areas, while males scored higher in two areas and scores were even in one.

The key findings include:

• Female executives scored higher than males for being ambitious, bold, mischievous, colourful and imaginative;
• Males scored higher for commerce. “For men, money rules. Males measured success in financial terms. Females are driven by motivations other than money,” the report says;
• Female executives also scored higher in the area of people skills for their sociability, interpersonal sensitivity and affiliation, but lower for being reserved;
• Females come up in top when it comes to building emotional connections, trust and loyalty with others, the report says, making them a better choice than male executives for organisations that want people to feel valued; and
• Males are out in front when it comes to control and command.

The report adds: “If you are looking for hard nosed, ‘take no prisoners’ performance, then males have the stronger profile… Males have scored higher on ‘control and command’ and ‘bottom line dollars’. Because they dominate executive positions, these two factors will set the tone of the culture for the whole of the organisation.”

So, what do you think?

Men may still lead most of our professional industries in Australia, but it is women who hold the key to their collective future.

A report issued last year by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific concludes that restricting women’s job opportunities costs the region up to $47 billion each year.

The same report suggests that as a nation’s female employment rate rises, so does its GDP.

At the same time, the fast pace of life is taking its toll on women across the economy. While one in six Australian women reported feeling rushed in 1974, by 1997, seven out of eight women felt like life had become more frantic. Women are not returning from maternity leave or resigning because they are unable to combine work and family demands.

The cost to industry is high. NRMA estimates that it costs $48,000 to replace a manager, $29,000 to replace senior specialists and $12,000 to replace other staff.

So, how we support women at every stage of their careers?

When push comes to shove, women just aren’t as ambitious as men.

Right?

Wrong.

Generation F, a report released by Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) and Hay Group, reveals that women are just as likely as men to want promotions, pay rises and careers. 

The findings reveal that myths, assumptions and biases continue to prevent Generation F - all women in the Australian labour force aged between 16 and 65 years- from fully participating in rewarding careers and contributing to our nation’s economic growth.

“Like their male counterparts, the majority of Generation F, whether single, married, with or without children, aspire to a role involving either more or equal responsibility over the next few years,” the report found after analysing data from an online survey and focus groups held in 2006.

A similar study in the US presented the same results, revealing that female and male executives aspire to occupy the most senior role in an organisation in almost identical numbers (55 per cent of women and 57 per cent of men).

The EOWA report found that women who do leave a difficult workplace are more likely to find it convenient to say they lack ambition or simply want to focus on the family.  This perpetuates age-old stereotypes that contribute to the difficult working environment in the first place.  And of course, it lets organisations off the hook.

Business is not delivering for a large percentage of our workforce.  We need to embrace flexible work environments and recognise that our female workforce is skilled, but ready to move on quickly if an employer fails to satisfy their needs.