Women in Workplace Report 2023 – Recommendations – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #911

Women in Workplace Report 2023 – Recommendations – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #911

Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #911 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans  aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here.

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Women in the Workplace is the largest study on the state of women in corporate America. Many of their findings resonate very well with most other countries while some are specific to the US only. In the previous blogpost, I presented extract of data and the four myths that this report tried to debunk. In the present post, I shall present the recommendations from the report with comments on their applicability in Pakistan.

 The report recommends that companies should focus on five core areas.

Recommendation #1 – Track Outcomes to Improve Women’s Experience and Progression

Companies should take steps for women’s progress and equality and not stop just at that; they must track outcomes also to monitor and ensure progress. The metrics for women’s hiring, promotions, attrition, participation in career development programs, performance ratings, employee satisfaction, and inclusion should be tracked, and appropriate steps taken and/or redesigned to keep moving forward.

Awareness is a critical tool for driving change. When employees can see opportunities and challenges, they are more committed to become part of the process. Sharing internal goals and metrics about DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion can result in greater understanding and implementation.

Recommendation #2 – Support and Reward Managers as Key Drivers of Organizational 

These being new areas, the managers should be trained, not just once, but on an ongoing basis to add, refine, and enhance their skills. Examples of core concepts, concrete actions, practices that managers can add to their work routines should be provided. Companies should adopt  varied and repeated approach to training, coaching, and upskilling managers to continue building awareness and capabilities for becoming effective.

Recommendation #3 – Take Steps to Put an End to Microaggressions

To raise employee awareness and set the right tone, it’s crucial that senior leaders communicate that microaggressions and disrespectful behavior of any kind are not welcome. Companies can help with this by developing a code of conduct that articulates what supportive and respectful behavior looks like—as well as what’s unacceptable and uncivil behavior. 

Since most people do not fully understand how microaggressions work, so they end up saying and doing things that are hurtful. The employees do not often recognize microaggressions, and don’t know what to say or do to be helpful. It is therefore extremely important that the companies ask employees to participate in specific trainings so that they can recognize, understand, respond to, and help stop microaggressions.

Cultivating a culture where employees feel safe to surface microaggressions and disrespectful behavior against them is of utmost necessity. Though these conversations may be difficult, but they lead to valuable learning and growth. Senior leaders can play an important role in modeling that it is safe to surface and discuss undesirable behaviors.

Recommendation #4 – Invest in Tracking and Optimizing Flexibility

Most employers now offer opportunities to work flexibly and remotely, and a large number has maintained or increased flexible work options. The big anomaly is that while 42% employees consider flexible work options among the top three drivers of their company’s success, only 10% HR leaders share the same opinion. There is a clear misalignment here which indicates that the companies have not truly internalized the concept of flexible work. 

Clear norms and expectations about flexible work should be established. As part of this process, companies should find the right balance between organizational guidelines and the freedom of managers to find what works best for their teams.

As organizations roll out new practices and programs to support flexibility, they should carefully track what is working and what is not and should adjust accordingly. A spirit of working with employees for finding the right mix is crucial to productivity and engagement. 

Even more importantly, employees who choose flexible work must not face disadvantage or penalty in any form. This needs putting systems in place to ensure employees are evaluated fairly, such as redesigning performance reviews to focus on results, rather than when and where the work gets done. 

Recommendation #5 – Fix the Broken Rung for Women

For the US, there is emphasis on this with the focus on women of color. 

Fixing the broken rung has not been achieved during the last nine years of women in workplace reporting, though it is a tangible and achievable goal. To uncover inequities in the promotion process, companies need to track who is put up for and who receives promotions, by race and gender combined. 

Leaders should put measures in place to ensure that evaluation criteria are applied fairly, and bias does not creep into decision making. Just before performance review time, reminders should be sent to evaluators for protecting against biases and be fair in evaluation. The reviewers of performance reviews should critically look into patterns suggestive of bias against individuals or groups. If bias indicators are seen, the first reviewers should be asked to explain their rationale for their review.

Many companies invest in career development programs at various levels of organization, but presently, less than half of companies track the outcomes of career development programs by gender and race combined. It is high time to start intersectional analysis and focus on outcomes versus input. 

Where Does Pakistan Stand?

All of the issues and challenges exist in Pakistan, and all above recommendations also apply in Pakistan.

We do have a problem though. In one statement, we are sliding down, declining; the downfall is in all segments, business, society, morality, ethics, and religion. We have done away with most substantive things and have fallen for quick fixes and shortcuts. The environment of our workplaces is more toxic than ever. Though the number of women in the workplace has grown manifold, the workplace culture has deteriorated to the extent of being unsafe for them. 

There are definite reasons for this decay. We have systematically killed voices of sanity, logic, and reason, and promoted jugglers, acrobats, conmen, and men of certain types and appearances whose job it is to waylay people, and entangle them into frauds, and make-believe worlds. The line between truth and lies has blurred completely, and the trust has evaporated from the entire society; all those whom people trusted in the last so many years, ultimately showed their real face.

Women in workplace are marginalized, exploited, and abused. Senior managers and leaders are directly involved in this heinous activity. There is no relief at any level, because the entire professional, legal, and business systems are complicit in exploitation. Most stories are never told due to fear of further exploitation, loss of face and reputation, and lifelong risk of banishment. 

In Pakistan, our primary challenge is DEI. As a society, we don’t subscribe to any of these ideas. Our diversity, equity, inclusivity is highly selective and restricted to those we like. This is against the very spirit of DEI. In a very long work life, I have seen things going from good to bad, and from bad to worse. 

Despite all the gloom, we must keep talking about good things, betterment, and improvement. We must light the candle of our share.

Concluded.

Reference:

https://McKinsey.com

https://leanin.org