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15 Things Leaders Can Do To Help Women Remain In The Workforce

The pandemic has taken a toll on many businesses, but it's also had a significant impact on professional women. While there is still a lot of debate surrounding women’s role in business, one would think that moving to a less centralized working situation would benefit them. However, the opposite seems to be happening as women are juggling both familial and work responsibilities. 

Business leaders, therefore, should be looking at ways to reinforce their dedication retaining qualified women. To help, 15 members of Forbes Business Council look at the ways that business leaders can stand up for women and avoid them being pushed out of the workforce.

1. Listen And Take Action

Rather than make assumptions about what the women on their teams need, business leaders can ask women what would be helpful, listen to their answers with the intent to quickly take action on what they've shared, and then create mechanisms for implementing these plans and receiving feedback on their efficacy. This framework will create effective systems and meaningful changes to support women. - Ali Hill, Sound Advice Women

2. Offer Flexibility And Understanding

Business leaders need to be flexible and understanding with working women, the majority of whom are taking over childcare, eldercare and education in their homes. Flexibility and understanding lead to changes like generous parental leave, remote work options, flexible scheduling and paid time off policies that take into account the increasingly unequal division of labor happening due to the pandemic. - Ryan Simonetti, Convene


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3. Understand Their Specific Needs

Being flexible with your team and understanding their specific needs during this time is imperative to maintain a stable and balanced workforce. In many cases, allowing for remote working environments has alleviated some of the challenges women are facing juggling work and family responsibilities. Ensuring that you are providing ample support will help all employees feel valued. - Hao Lam, Best in Class Education Center

4. Embrace The Work-From-Home Model

Embrace the work-from-home model if it suits the type of organization. The pandemic has shown people do not need to be in an office. By enabling more people to work from home, it allows women to better manage juggling parenting and fulfilling a job. Be open to having more flexible structures because when women are valued by society, everyone wins. - Annette Densham, The Audacious Agency

5. Lead By Example

Business leaders can lead by example. Leaders can advocate for and offer flexible work options. This could include meeting-free days or tangible support that address the reasons women are leaving the workforce in the first place. - Nicky Garcea, Cappfinity

6. Help Working Mothers Prioritize

Leaders can help ensure working mothers are prioritizing the things that matter most so their efforts don't get misplaced as needs change and company priorities shift. Perhaps one silver lining from all this is to illustrate that, while businesses in many countries have made progress to support working parents, there is still more to do. - Paula Wilbourne, Sibly

7. Help Them Overcome Promotion Bias

Help women overcome the biases around promotion. Everyone, men and women, should have equal chances but the processes of promotion tend to favor men. Favoring women is wrong, favoring equality is good and helping women get ready for promotion would help. Having more women in senior roles will help lower the number of women being pushed out in times of crisis. - Peter Bakker, Unhedged

8. Have More Women As Decision Makers

Business leaders should place more and more women in decision-making roles for a simple but tremendously important reason—many women have the ability to look at problems from an emotional and human side. Especially now, during the pandemic, customer acquisition has to involve a stronger "human factor" and be focused on the needs and emotions of the customers who spend more time online than ever before. - Bartosz Wawrzyszak, Custom Pizza Truck

9. Focus On Results

Now more than ever, women—especially minority women—are being hit with unreasonable expectations and ultimately being pushed out of the workforce. To combat this, we have to understand hours are not equal to harvest. It's less relevant to me how many hours someone works, or when they contribute those hours, as it is relevant to see how much they contribute to the team and our clients. - Sabrina Shafer, Transformation Continuum

10. Value Women's Unique Perspectives

Value the unique perspectives and abilities women bring to the table. Do whatever it takes to ensure they continue to contribute in the workplace because without them, the organization simply won't be as successful as it could be. The single best thing business leaders can do to help women combat being pushed out of the workforce is to ask them what it is going to take to keep them engaged. - Kim Troy, Civilis Consulting

11. Work With Diversity-Focused Organizations

Business leaders need to invest in making real changes in the way they hire and recruit candidates to remove bias. Women remain underrepresented in so many areas of the workforce, so providing the opportunity alone isn’t enough. Companies should work closely with diversity-oriented organizations to mentor and empower women to succeed—organizations like Women in Streaming Media and Rise in the vid tech industry. - Stefan Lederer, Bitmovin

12. Consider Diversity In Your Succession Plans

Companies need succession plans, and those plans need to consider diversity and inclusion. Diversity and inclusion need to be a topic on the agenda of the succession plan discussion. Consider and discuss options that are not so obvious in order to bring wider thinking into the business. This is not just concerning female consideration, but also includes ethnic minorities, skills and other functions. - Darren Smith, Making Business Matter

13. Focus On Female Empowerment

Our company is currently 70% women, which is probably due to the fact that our core customers are also women. Nevertheless, female empowerment plays a major role in our company. I believe that this topic should be taken up again and again in companies and that this should also be communicated to employees on a regular basis, especially in companies with fewer women. This can be done through workshops or lectures. - Alisa Jahnke, Purelei GmbH

14. Create Targeted Mentorship Programs

As leaders, we have the privilege to systematically address the inclusion and advancement of women in the workforce by creating targeted mentorship programs within and outside of our organizations. We can use data to create meaningful mentorship plans, KPIs and both educational and career development pathways. - Heather Moyer, HNM Systems

15. Offer More Opportunities For Earning Equity

Business leaders need to afford women more opportunities to earn equity stake in their respective businesses and industries. Doing so not only offers women more motivation to strive for excellence, but also an opportunity to have their already-proven hard work continue to work for them during those times when they need to take off in order to dedicate time to family. - Allen Thornton, Grant Source

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