A trio of management executives are hoping to "move the needle" in the professional services ranks by helping leaders inspire their workforce, especially women, to grow their careers.
Using data from a survey of more than 200 professionals done by the group's Chiral Project, they found that not only was work-life balance the No. 1 challenge — people are just burned out — but a majority didn't feel valued by their company leaders, and that spoke to the large employment turnover happening now. As the study notes, the "pandemic was a life altering event, so people are looking for change."
The Chiral Project was founded by Jennifer Bankston, Jill Huse and Heather McCullough. Its purpose is to help professional service firms — including those in financial services — understand where they may need to "accelerate strategies and implement new programs for change."
Sparked by a January paper by the National Women's Law Center that found women left the workforce at four times the rate of men, and more than 1 million lost their jobs during the pandemic, the women worked on this inaugural survey with ALM Intelligence, ALM Intelligence Pacesetter Research (which share the parent company of ThinkAdvisor) and Women in Funds.
Six areas in which the survey found organizational shortcomings and identifiable gaps between men and women were dynamic leadership, strategy, change management, entrepreneurship, wellness and communication. They plan to work with several firms using the data analytics from the survey and help companies make internal adjustments over a two-year period.
"We hope that through this that women will begin to assume greater roles in both leadership, but also in equity in terms of dollars," Bankston told ThinkAdvisor.
Data Surprises
Some survey findings stood out to Bankston and her colleagues, including that "the overwhelming majority of respondents do not feel valued or appreciated," and though work-life balance has always been an issue, workers now say there hasn't been a change in their organizations and "one-third are looking for new jobs," she said.
"[Also] overwhelmingly [respondents] are not happy with the existing leadership within their organizations and just completely feel burnt out now. Women also believe, more so than men, they were not being provided the training and resources that they needed. Finally, three times as many females than males reported their level of responsibility was [lagging] behind that of their peers."
