Archive for Business Research

Executive Coaching: Why Bother? Why Now?

COVID-19 is spiking, Oregon’s Governor Brown just declared a two-week freeze, and businesses are scrambling to determine what the 2021 landscape will look like. Some predict the virus’s spread will worsen and further shutdowns will be necessary, while others anticipate a return to quasi-normality following the introduction of a vaccine. In any case, uncertainty is the name of the game.

As a leader, you need to be prepared for not just the present, not just what’s around the corner, but what lies beyond the foreseeable future. Instead of lamenting potential revenue losses during these fragile times, begin to think of this pause as an opportunity to deepen your and your team’s knowledge, skills, and vision so your company is resilient enough to withstand and even triumph during times of crisis.

To give your organization the best chance of surviving—and thriving—you need to focus on your own growth, sanding down the rough edges while equipping yourself with a toolkit for success.

Co-Active Coaching

Executive coaching can take you there … but not just any type of executive coaching. Capiche leans on co-active coaching techniques like those taught at the Co-Active Training Institute, which emphasize clarity of communication, conversation, awareness-raising, and concrete actions.

A co-active leadership coach partners with you to reveal your strengths and push you toward greatness. Together, you will identify problem areas and strategies for addressing those weaknesses. Be prepared to be inspired—and held accountable.

Are You Ready?

Before you dive in, ask yourself, Are You Ready to Be Coached? Don’t fool yourself—the co-active coaching process is hard work. But that hard work yields exceptional results.

Growth can be painful. It may require you to examine aspects of yourself you’d rather leave hidden. Exposing those vulnerabilities, however, can divest them of their power over you and enable you to rise above them.

Co-active coaching is a creative, experimental process. You need to enter it with an open, willing mind to fully benefit from the experience.

You also need to let go of perfectionism—waiting for the perfect moment to start, the perfect moment to pursue a new idea, the perfect moment to resolve issues that have been festering underneath the surface. The perfect moment is NOW.

What Do You Get Out of Co-Active Coaching?

Honing your emotional intelligence (EI), strengthening your willpower muscle, developing true grit, deepening your humility, heightening your sense of responsibility—all of these occur as part of the co-active coaching process and ultimately result in your becoming the finest leader you possibly can be.

Perhaps the best-known executive coach in the world, Marshall Goldsmith has conducted extensive research on what drives leadership success. As discussed in this Capiche blog post, the level of employee engagement is not the responsibility of the employees but rather their managers. It is when leaders accept that responsibility that their team begins to mirror that behavior back. You need to model the type of person you would like your team members to be.

Is it worth the effort? If you care about your company, your team, and yourself, then the answer is an emphatic “Yes!”

In this Forbes article, business thinker and author Erika Andersen outlines the following benefits of executive coaching:

  1. It helps you see yourself more clearly.
  2. It helps you see others more clearly.
  3. It teaches you new ways to respond.
  4. It illuminates how to leverage your existing strengths.
  5. It enables you to build more productive relationships.
  6. It gives you the tools to achieve what you want.

It’s Time

So you’re convinced. You realize it’s time to stop procrastinating and to commit to co-active coaching. How do you find the right fit for your personality, needs, and goals? Read this blog post for starters. Then contact Chris Cook at chris@capiche.us or 541.601.0114 to schedule a complimentary phone or video consultation so you can discover if she is the right co-active leadership coach for you.

It’s Time to Use Big Data! (Here Are 5 Mistakes to Avoid)

Far too few businesses are using big data to support their decision making. In January 2018, a senior analyst with Forbes revealed that business competitors are using data to come after your customers. The Harvard Business Review surveyed Fortune 1000 business executives and found the most common reasons for using big data were to decrease expenses, improve operational efficiency, make more informed decisions, and increase revenue. And 80% say their investments in big data are successful.

Basing business decisions on big data is great—except when it’s not. Basing high stakes decisions on poor-quality research is a recipe for financial disaster.

Here are some of the most common big data errors we see:

  1. Misleading statistics. You may remember the advertisements claiming 80% of all dentists recommend Colgate toothpaste, leading the consumer to believe 20% of the dentists recommended different brands. The truth, though, was that when the dentists were surveyed about the toothpastes they recommended, they were allowed to identify all of the brands of toothpaste they would recommend; other brands could have been equally as or more popular than Colgate.
  2. Failure to test the survey questions. It’s easy to create a set of survey questions and send them out through SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics. But if you haven’t pretested and piloted the questions, you can end up with questions that make sense to you—but not to the person taking your survey. Recently, we were asked to complete a survey about our spending on wine purchases made at wineries. Unfortunately, it was unclear whether our spending was to include—or exclude—wine purchased from the winery as part of a wine club membership. Had the survey been pilot-tested, this flaw would have been quickly identified and corrected before deployment.
  3. Biased interpretation of findings. It matters who does the analysis of survey responses to open-ended questions. This is especially true when a survey is conducted in-house because it is difficult for staff to separate themselves from the data. Unless your team has a staff member specifically trained in eliminating bias, it’s better to outsource your research.
  4. Lack of candor from survey participants. Your customers generally do not want to hurt your feelings. They are not going to tell you directly your annual customer appreciation event is a dud. This is especially the case where staffing is concerned—and even more so if the staff person administering the survey is also the source of dissatisfaction.
  5. Failure to collect data. Fewer than half of all businesses collect data at all. In retail businesses, many do not have any idea how many customers come through the door each day, which means the average sales per customer is also an unknown. You can get a ballpark idea using a people-counting electronic system. Sure, the UPS or FedEx carrier may walk through each day, as may staff, but that number will be fairly consistent and you will have a tangible way to measure growth in the number of customers coming through the door. And you’ll know which staff are doing the best job selling your product and which may need additional training—or a new line of work.

The Capiche team possesses more than 20 years of qualitative and quantitative research experience. We understand the importance of valid survey tools and test them thoroughly before deployment. Our most popular surveys have been used thousands of times. Your customers can respond honestly, and we can analyze the survey data without bias because we are a third party. Our only interest is helping you achieve greater success. And we can generally deploy a survey and have findings back to you in less than 45 days. Call us at 541.601.0114, email chris@capiche.us, or use our Contact form today to learn how we can help you leverage quality big data to grow your business now.

The Success Secret Every Company Knows but Few Achieve

Adobe understands it. And Google, Apple, Microsoft. Airbnb does, too. LinkedIn, KPMG, Accenture, the San Diego Zoo—they all get it. Zappos, certainly. And these companies are paragons of it, according to Entrepreneur.

Companies who know this success secret tend to have quadruple the average profit and double the average revenue—even while being a quarter smaller than other organizations Jacob Morgan analyzed in this article for the Harvard Business Review.

If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you’ve probably already guessed what this elusive alchemy is since we’ve written about it a lot before. That’s right—employee engagement.

But why is it so hard for companies to get right—even while pouring millions into trying to obtain it?

For starters, most companies are slapping a band-aid on a broken leg and calling it good. That’s not going to do it.

Many of the problems at organizations with poor engagement are systemic, and it takes a deep cultural shift to address the underlying causes of disengagement and build a more authentic, inspiring workplace.

For Morgan, this means creating an experiential organization with desirable cultural, technological, and physical environments.

Out of the 250+ organizations he studied, only 6% were intensely focused on all three—and they had the performance upswings to show it. He also found a correlation between investment in these areas and inclusion on “best of” lists. Further, these companies saw substantial gains in stock value.

On the flip side, a fifth of the companies analyzed scored very low on all three fronts, and employees ranked over 50% of the organizations poorly in one or more of these areas. This shows how far most companies have to go.

But where to begin? Andrew Sumitani of TINYpulse wrote The Ultimate Guide to Employee Engagement to help managers take those crucial steps toward organizational transformation.

Sumitani starts by sharing this TED talk on employee motivation by Behavioral Economist Dan Ariely:

He documents the significant financial advantages enjoyed by companies with higher employee engagement—including as much as 18% higher revenue per employee. Combine greater profits with the enormous savings yielded from employee retention and less absenteeism, and you start to understand why experiential companies are raking in the bucks.

Sumitani outlines two strategies for boosting engagement:

  1. Create recognition programs that honor contributions. Don’t hand out token achievement awards for simply reaching milestones like working a certain number of years. Most will move on before reaching that five-year anniversary if you don’t have an appealing workplace. Instead, acknowledge employees for substantive accomplishments, innovative ideas, and other extraordinary behavior. This recognition should be highly personalized and spontaneous rather than generic and perfunctory. Lastly, establish peer recognition programs that give employees opportunities to honor co-workers, whose accomplishments may otherwise go under the radar of high-flying managers.
  2. Survey, survey, survey. If you want to know what matters to your employees, ask them. Don’t burden them with bloated surveys every year or so. Rather, short and frequent is the way to go here. Bolster trust and open communication by transparently sharing the data. Then do something with those results. Formulate an action plan to show you are not only listening but genuinely committed to responding to concerns.

Capiche Can Help

Are you ready to propel your company to the next level of engagement, productivity, and profit? We can help you conduct the organizational analysis, collect the data and implement the strategies that can turn your organization into the next paragon of employee engagement. Email chris@capiche.us or call 541.601.0114 today.

Critical Factors for Keeping Top Talent

Pssst … it’s all about happiness!

Last week, I got to present “Critical Factors for Keeping Top Talent” at a SOREDI event. It was fun to share one of my favorite topics—the importance of happiness at work. With Oregon’s unemployment rate at 3.8% and the country’s at 4.3%, SOREDI was smart to focus on such a relevant topic!

The 2017 PwC CEO Survey found the top three CEO challenges in the United States are talent, technology and innovation. About talent, the report states, “Talent will help an organization distinguish itself from the competition. Organizations need people who can surmount big challenges and tackle complex issues. CEOs are looking for employees who are agile, curious, and can collaborate with others to achieve the greatest results. These skill sets are among the hardest to recruit.”

I believe in two simple truths:

  1. Your people are the #1 resource that will determine your success.
  2. Happy people perform better.

There are many factors that influence success, but it’s your people who give you an absolute advantage.

Happiness is the single greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy.Shawn Achor

Happiness is a worthwhile investment. Decades of compelling evidence shows that improving happiness in the workplace delivers significant increases in profit, productivity and innovation—not to mention substantial cost savings. Happier workers are healthier and more effective team members, and they provide superior customer service. Happier businesses attract top talent and are more likely to retain their best workers.

Why worry about happiness at work? You can count on:
  • 30% Higher productivity1
  • 54% Better staff retention2
  • 3x Higher creativity3

Social economist and researcher (and all-around good guy) Nic Marks uses a dynamic model to explain which factors create a happy workplace. The model takes into account people’s “experience of work” (how they feel), which is influenced by how they are “functioning at work” (what they do). This depends on the “organizational system” (where they work) and their “personal resources” (who they are). Using an assessment developed by Nic and his company Happiness Works, you can generate your own dynamic model for your workplace.

Dynamic Model

This dynamic model is from a Portland tech company Capiche worked with. Notice the colors ranging from orange to dark green. Like a stoplight, red to orange is a non-starter, and green is a go.

Measured within each of the four components of the dynamic model are:

  • Experience of work: Positive and negative feelings, engaging work, worthwhile work
  • Functioning at work: Self-expression, sense of control, sense of progress, work relationships
  • Organizational system: Job design, management system, work environment, social value
  • Personal resources: Vitality, happiness, confidence, work-life integration

People’s happiness at work is not fixed or static; instead, it is fluid and moving, interconnected and dynamic. I like the illustration of shared responsibility between the employee and employer.

People’s happiness at work is not fixed or static; instead, it is fluid and moving. Share on X

Finders, Keepers?

The factors you need to keep top talent directly correlate with the factors needed to recruit talent.

Happiness at work isn’t something that’s reserved for companies like Zappos and Google. There are plenty of smaller or lesser-known companies like these Southern Oregon ones that have it right: Coding Zeal, Darex, Bio Skin, and Dutch Bros.

If you are ready to step up to happiness, give me a holler via email or phone at 541.601.0114. Let’s see where you are now and make plans to increase your organization’s happiness—and recruitment, retention, innovation, customer service and profits!


References

  1. “Insight to impact leadership that gets results.” Hay Group.
  2. “Engaging hearts and minds: preparing for a changing world.” Hay Group.
  3. “Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving.” Isen, A.M., Daubman, K.A., and Nowicki, G.P. (1987). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(6), 1122.

Meet the Plurals: What’s So Special About Generation Z?

They were born texting, their itty fingers swiping across their cell phone screen while they listened to their iPod on earbuds as Blue’s Clues played on the television, Dad watched cat videos on the laptop and Mom slew Doom demons on the desktop.

It was the mid-nineties to early 2000s, and the iGeneration was born into this quasi-anachronistic mash-up scene. Tech-savvy from toddlerhood, these youngsters grew up wending their way around the Internet, “playing” with friends over social media and communicating via emoticons.

At more than a quarter (25.9%) of the US population and growing, Generation Z has already surpassed the percentage of Millennials (24.5%), who themselves outnumbered Baby Boomers (23.6%) by a million (77 to 76 million) in 2015.

These Post-Millennials are your next wave of employees, entrepreneurs, leaders and customers, and it’s time to meet them.

This generation is known for being resourceful, self-motivated and driven. Three-quarters (76%) aspire to turn their passions into careers, whereas only half of Gen Y had such hopes. Nearly as many (72%) wish to start their own businesses one day.

Growing up in a post-9/11 world and witnessing the Global Financial Crisis, they earned yet another moniker as the Homeland Generation for preferring the safety of home and feeling less secure in the world at large.

Gen Z has been reared by protective parents who emphasized tradition, academics and social-emotional learning (SEL). Perhaps because of living in a more uncertain world fraught with the possibility of terror, these kids are turning out to be more conservative than their Millennial predecessors.

They have no illusions about achieving the American Dream, but they do want to better the world, and 76% are worried about the future of the planet. More than a quarter of 16- to 19-year-olds volunteer, and three-fifths (60%) hope to secure jobs that make a difference in the world. Like Millennials, they seek a sense of purpose in their work.

Other epithets (e.g., Gen Tech, Net Gen and Gen Wii) emphasize the group’s tech fluency. Spending a minimum of three hours a day on the computer for activities unrelated to school, the curious Digital Natives value visual and video forms of communication (Instagram and YouTube over Facebook), bite-sized content (Reddit and Twitter), choice (more options with greater levels of customization) and connection (social media, live-streaming).

According to the 2014 study Generation Z Goes to College, the teens use such terms as “loyal,” “compassionate,” “thoughtful,” “open-minded,” “responsible” and “determined” to describe themselves.

These Gen-X offspring instantly spot inauthenticity and patronizing attempts by marketers to court them. If you do win their respect, however, Gen Zers are known for being brand-loyal, and they will evangelize on your behalf if they believe in your products and services.

The most diverse generation to date, the Plurals embrace multiculturalism. While they are more pessimistic than Millennials, this bleaker attitude may propel them to seek pragmatic solutions to crises such as global warming, economic inequality and terrorism. Greater consciousness of planetary problems could well lead to direct action.

Whatever the future holds, these enterprising and creative self-starters give us cause for hope.

See below for a fun and informative infographic on Generation Z courtesy of Marketo.

Generation Z: Marketing's Next Big Audience Infographic

Being Self-Employed: What’s Not to Love? Plus, This 1 Tip Will Boost Your Productivity—and Happiness

It’s the life many of us daydream about while languishing in a stagnant job where our talents go untapped and unappreciated: starting our own business.

And many act on that dream—nearly a third (30%) of the American workforce comprises the self-employed and their employees (approximately 15 million in 2014) according to this Pew Research Center article.

Working at home, earning 50% more, doing what we love, using our gifts, finding a sense of purpose, calling our own shots—sounds sweet, doesn’t it?

The reality, however, may not be so rosy. That’s not to say striking out on your own doesn’t have its rewards—a lot of those perks we just mentioned are borne out by statistics.

Work-Life Imbalance

There’s a flip side many fail to realize until they’re ensconced in their new venture: that work-life balance Americans already have trouble achieving? For most self-employed, work trounces life beginning on Day One.

If you’re thinking about becoming your own boss, be prepared to say goodbye to evenings, weekends, eight-hour workdays, sick leave, vacation time.…

The Overwork Epidemic

This Gallup report reveals 49% of the US self-employed put in at least 44 hours a week—10% more than their employee counterparts at the time. Worse, 26% of the self-employed workers Gallup surveyed reported working more than 60 hours a week. A later Gallup article calculates the average employee work week at 47 hours, with 25% reporting working more than 60 hours—nearly catching up to the self-employed.

American freelancers aren’t the only ones suffering from overwork. This 2016 Quarterly National Household Survey reports that Irish employees averaged 34.6 hours a week during the first quarter of 2016 as compared with 44 hours for the self-employed.

And that earlier statistic about the self-employed (specifically incorporated business owners) earning up to 50% more than their employee counterparts—it turns out 29% of that increase is due to their working more hours. Entrepreneurs may earn more on average, but that comes at the cost of time.

The Secret to Productivity

It doesn’t have to be that way, though—in fact, it shouldn’t. According to this Fast Company article, the secret to accomplishing more isn’t working more hours—it’s working fewer.

Our brains need regular breaks to recharge. When we neglect this fundamental requirement, productivity dips.

A recent Draugieum Group experiment showed those workers with the greatest productivity rates took a surprising number of breaks—for every 52 minutes of work, they took about 17 minutes off.

And we’re not talking about playing computer Solitaire or checking Facebook. The kind of breaks our brains need do not involve electronic devices—instead, try taking a brisk walk, reading a chapter in your latest book or enjoying a non–work-related chat with a colleague.

To many of us, that sounds like a lot of downtime, but our brains reward us by performing more efficiently during the time actually worked.

That magic trick applies whether you’re an employee, independent contractor, business owner, freelancer or entrepreneur.

Working fewer hours and getting more accomplished—now that sounds pretty sweet.

Need Help Taking More Breaks?

Here are some additional tips from Fast Company on how and why to take more breaks as well as what you may be doing wrong.

The workaholics among you probably need more hands-on assistance with reforming your work habits, and that’s where Chris Cook comes in. As a self-employed co-active coach, Chris can help you achieve your professional goals while maintaining a healthy life balance. Call her at 541.601.0114 or email chris@capiche.us to get started today.

Top 5 Reasons to Hire Women—and 5 Ways to Entice Them

When you’re sizing up a potential employer, what are some of the factors that go in your Pros column? For men and women alike, a lot of those priorities will look similar, but there are certain items women tend to value more highly than men according to Gallup’s Women in America: Work and Life Well-Lived.

What Motivates Women to Work?

For 84% of the 323,500 US women Gallup surveyed, the satisfaction of earning their own money provided a compelling reason for working. Three-quarters report that they work because they enjoy the work itself, and two-thirds are drawn to the relationships formed in the workplace.

What Makes a Workplace Attractive to Women?

Our last article outlined some of the organizational shortcomings causing women to leave the workplace, but what are some of the positive characteristics that draw female employees to a company?

  1. Good Match. Two-thirds (66%) of women—11% more than men—place the greatest emphasis on whether the position matches their strengths and talents. For most women, having a job that allows them to flourish and achieve their potential is more important than a boost in pay, which only 39% ranked “very important” when evaluating a potential job.
  2. Balance. For 60% of female respondents (vs. 48% of men), the ability to balance professional and personal responsibilities is the second most-important factor in considering a new job.
  3. Dependability. For both women (52%) and men (50%), workplace stability ranks relatively high.
  4. Standing. As many as 39% of female respondents (compared with 33% of men) ranked a company’s brand, or reputation, as “very important” when weighing whether to join the organization.
  5. Purpose. Ten percent more women (32% versus 22%) consider an organization’s cause “very important.” For female millennials, however, the opportunity to do meaningful work (38%) outranks reputation (34%). Purpose-driven work holds a higher appeal for this new generation of women, who have had the greatest access to education.

What Do Women Bring to the Table?

Political correctness aside, why should a company make efforts to recruit female employees? In what ways do women have the statistical edge over men?

  1. Engagement. Female employees have higher rates of engagement than men: 35% versus 29%. That 6% differential is echoed in management roles, with 41% of female leaders being engaged versus 35% of male leaders. As we’ve repeatedly stressed in past articles (Blue Ocean Leadership: 4 Steps to Boosting Employee Engagement, Millennial Mindset: What Gen Y Wants out of Work and Life, Naughty or Nice: Which Makes for a More Effective Leader? and The Top 4 Employee Needs to Fulfill for Greater Happiness and Productivity), research shows that higher employee engagement leads to yields in productivity and profits.
  2. Stronger Teams. Female managers are not only more engaged than their male counterparts, but their team members are more engaged, too. Whether it’s due to higher emotional intelligence, better relationship-building skills, a more intuitive approach or an emphasis on cooperation over competition, female leaders garner 6% more engagement from their employees.
  3. Satisfaction. According to Gallup’s Q12 employee engagement data, more women report that their companies are meeting their needs than men do. This is surprising given the failure of many organizations to offer a flexible workplace and accommodate women’s unique needs as we’ve discussed previously. Still, in 11 out of the 12 items on the Gallup Q12 engagement survey, female employees score higher, which is in line with the findings that female employees are more engaged in general.
  4. Potential. Female leaders often hone in on the strengths of their team members and are more likely to encourage the development of their employees’ potential. They tend to play a more nurturing role, coaching rather than dictating. Women generally practice more collaborative, democratic forms of leadership, whereas traditional patriarchal models follow a more authoritarian hierarchy.
  5. Bottom Line. Gallup notes, “Gender diversity strengthens a company’s financial performance.” While it is difficult to pinpoint the precise causes, organizations with more female employees and managers tend to fare better financially—perhaps from a combination of deeper engagement, increased productivity, stronger performance and greater workplace satisfaction.

How Can You Create a More Female-Friendly Workplace?

If you’d like to reap the rewards of gender diversity at your company, call me at 541.601.0114 or email to find out how Capiche can help improve your organizational culture; articulate your branding; and boost employee engagement, productivity, performance and profit.

Why Are Women Leaving the Workforce?

What’s different about the twenty-first century American woman? Why did the United States go from having one of the highest rates of female participation in the workforce to one of the lowest in a comparative study conducted in 2015?

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 60% of women 15 and older were employed in 2000. By 2015, that figure had dropped to 56.7%. While the difference seems small, it represents a trajectory toward fewer women in the workplace, and companies are losing out on the unique strengths women bring to the table.

As discussed in our last post, societal barriers no longer prevent women from pursuing careers, but that doesn’t automatically mean all of them want to. Increasingly, women are choosing a different path—particularly mothers of young children.

In its Women in America: Work and Life Well-Lived report, Gallup found that more than half (54%) of working mothers expressed a preference to stay at home, while a mere 40% indicated a desire to work outside home.

Women feel the pull of family more strongly than men. Seventy percent of working fathers express a preference to work outside the home (interestingly, the same percentage as working women without children)—10% lower than those who don’t have children. While men’s desire to work outside the home is lessened if they have children, 70% is still far higher than the 40% of working mothers who wish to do so.

It’s not so much that women want to opt out of work but rather out of the workplace, finding the culture less accommodating to their needs and broader work-life aspirations. So what can organizations do differently to draw in and support women?

Where Are Companies Failing Women?

  1. Work-at-home policies. While a third of the women surveyed indicated their employers were doing “very well” when it came to permitting them to work at home, another third said their employers were doing “very poorly.” Obviously, some jobs require a physical presence, but most office work can be conducted remotely these days. This is more of a cultural shift since the technology already exists to implement a more malleable work-at-home policy.
  2. Health insurance. Companies also scored relatively low when it came to providing adequate health insurance coverage—of special concern to women raising families. Sixteen percent reported their companies did “very poorly” in this area, and 12% said “somewhat poorly.”
  3. Wage gap. Most think women have achieved equality in the workplace, but as recently as 2015, women still suffered a 20-percent wage gap, making just “80 cents for every dollar earned by men” according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Lower wages paired with higher health insurance premiums and childcare costs make employment a greater challenge for mothers.
  4. Flexible schedules. For many women, pay is less important than flexible hours, whether it be working an earlier or later shift or simply being able to pop out during the afternoon to pick up their kids from school. As employers adapt to these growing demands, they will be able to attract more female candidates.
  5. Sick and vacation leave. Companies seem to be doing better in this regard, with 58% of women stating their employers provided adequate sick and vacation time. That response, however, did not indicate whether the women felt free to take said leave. Some companies may make it difficult or impossible for women to take advantage of leave policies due to scheduling demands and a high-pressure workplace culture.
  6. Opportunity for advancement. While 38% of women reported their employers are doing well in this area, 10% and 14% said their organizations were doing “very poorly” and “somewhat poorly.”

Both mothers and women without children ranked their employers similarly on all six of these factors, suggesting these organizational shortcomings affect all women equally.

How does your organization rank in these areas? Do you consider the workplace hostile or welcoming to women, particularly working mothers, and why? If you’re not sure, let Capiche help you assess the situation. Give Chris a call at 541.601.0114 or email her to explore options.

In our next post, we’ll delve into what motivates women to enter the workforce along with the benefits companies reap by employing women.

Women in the Workplace—How Far Have We Really Come?

These days, women are told they can have it all—career, family, personal growth. For many, this is true, but that’s not to say it’s an easy juggling act—particularly with the escalating demands of an increasingly competitive workplace. Forty years ago, women had to choose: either work or family, not both. A few decades before that, there wasn’t even a choice. The answer was a given: family.

Women’s roles in the workplace and home have changed radically in the last century. We tend to forget it was only 1920 when women gained the right to vote through the 19th Amendment. Gallup explores the topic of women in the workplace in a new 94-page report titled Women in America: Work and Life Well-Lived.

For this study, Gallup surveyed approximately 323,500 US women and has plans to issue a follow-up report on women worldwide in collaboration with the International Labour Organization in 2017.

With more than 73.5 million women working today and more millennial females holding higher education degrees than their male counterparts, women of the twenty-first century clearly have more options than their grandmothers did.

While women experienced a temporary burst of freedom when they were welcomed into the workforce during World War II, they were immediately ushered back into the kitchen as soon as soldiers began returning home and seeking work.

It was perhaps this cruel juxtaposition of empowerment followed by oppression that set the stage for the second-wave feminism that was to emerge in the early 1960s along with landmark works like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

Nearly half (47%) the US labor force comprised women by 1990. The previous decades’ movement toward greater equality and diversification had transformed the workplace, and women were beginning to crack the glass ceiling.

Surprisingly, this trend of more women in the workforce started reversing after it peaked in 1999. The United States went from having one of the highest rates of women workers to one of the lowest in comparison with eight other developed countries analyzed in a study conducted by Maximiliano Dvorkin and Hannah Shell.

Dvorkin and Shell also discovered a recent drop in workforce participation by women between 25 and 54. Those who remain seem less tied to work than their 1990s predecessors. Gallup found that almost half (48%) the women surveyed said they were on the job hunt, suggesting dissatisfaction with their current positions.

What accounts for this dramatic decline in female laborers and their growing discontentment?

For one large subset of women, a single factor makes all the difference in whether they decide to remain in—or leave—the workplace. That subset is mothers, and the influential factor—not surprisingly—is whether they have children under 18.

While 70% of women who do not have younger children at home express the desire to work outside the home, that number falls to 40% for employed women who have under-18 kids.

Even in this age of more progressive gender roles such as stay-at-home dads, Gallup shows that mothers still feel compelled to devote more time to nurturing their growing children. Trying to achieve balance between work and family is one of modern woman’s greatest challenges.

We will explore other potential causes for the twenty-first-century exodus of women from the workplace in our next post, followed by tips for employers on how to attract, engage and retain female employees. In the meantime, let us know what your greatest challenges are related to women in the workplace.

Millennial Mindset: What Gen Y Wants out of Work and Life

When it comes to work, do you value purpose over salary? Growth over comfort? Do you want your leaders to empower rather than instruct you? Are you more comfortable with casual check-in conversations than a formal annual performance evaluation? Do you prefer to focus on your strengths rather than your weaknesses? Does your life take precedence over your career?

Then you might be a Millennial—or at least you’re attuned to the same values identified as characteristic of Generation Y in a recent Gallup report titled “How Millennials Want to Work and Live.”

According to William Strauss and Neil Howe—the authors credited with coining the term “Millennials”—the generation born roughly between 1980 and 2000 is globally conscious and civic-minded. They care more about community than personal advancement. This concern for larger causes has also earned them the sobriquet Echo Boomers.

Generation Me author Jean Twenge and other critics question the altruistic traits Strauss and Howe associate with Millennials in Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, finding them instead to exhibit a greater sense of entitlement and narcissism.

Wherever you fall on the debate, there’s no denying Millennials are seeking something deeper from their work, and that is why employers that offer meaningful roles are more likely to secure the loyalty of job-hopping Gen Yers.

There’s no denying Millennials are seeking something deeper from their work. Share on X

Whereas past generations aimed to land a good-paying job where they could climb the corporate ladder over the course of their career, Millennials are likelier to switch jobs in search of more gratifying opportunities. The Gallup report reveals that 6 out of 10 Millennials express a willingness to change jobs, and as many as 21 percent have changed jobs within the past year—triple the number reported by other generations.

Generation Y job-hopping costs the US economy an estimated $30.5 billion. That fact combined with their lower workplace engagement—only 29% are engaged, Gallup says—make it imperative for organizations to find ways of appealing to Millennials.

Gallup Chairman and CEO Jim Clifton identifies six cultural shifts organizations can make to engage and retain Gen Yers:

  1. Prioritize purpose over pay. Fair compensation is important, but meaning matters more. Gen Yers would rather work at a job that pays less but makes them feel they are contributing to a good cause and helping the larger world. Unless your Millennial employees feel inspired by the mission of the organization, connected to the culture and creatively challenged by their responsibilities, they’re going to seek out more fulfilling jobs.
  2. Offer development opportunities. Millennials want to grow both personally and professionally. They’re less interested in perks like pool tables and espresso machines than in learning new skills and acquiring knowledge.
  3. Be a coach—not a boss. This shift from an autocratic leadership style to a collegial, empowering one benefits not only Millennials but all employees. People automatically become more engaged when leaders recognize and develop their strengths, making them feel more valued while helping them become better individuals.
  4. Converse rather than assess. Reared on social media, Generation Y takes a more casual approach to communication. They don’t want to wait a year to get feedback during a formal annual review—they desire ongoing discussions so they constantly know where they stand and how they can improve.
  5. Focus on strengths instead of weaknesses. Rather than dwelling on weaknesses, discover your employees’ strengths and cultivate those talents. Gallup notes, “weaknesses never develop into strengths, while strengths develop infinitely.” That’s not to say organizations should pretend the weaknesses don’t exist. A leader who understands their employees’ abilities and flaws can redefine individual roles to minimize weaknesses and maximize strengths across the collective whole.
  6. Create jobs they love. More than previous generations, Millennials identify their work with their lives. They want to know they are spending their hours wisely and doing fulfilling work at a company that appreciates them as human beings.

By understanding the work and life goals of Gen Yers, you can attract the brightest young stars to your organization—and keep them there. Unattached, connected, unconstrained, and idealistic, Millennials will flourish in a culture that treasures their strengths, gives them a sense of purpose and drives them to be their best selves.