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Are flexible jobs and flexible work schedules really the key to retaining women in the workplace?
It's a tempting and appealing question because it implies a one-size fits all solution to the problem of women leaving their employers or even their careers; if only employers implemented more flexible schedules, perhaps women (and others) would be more inclined to stay in their jobs rather than look for new positions, or quit altogether.
Unfortunately, however, according to Fairygodboss data, things just aren't that simple. When we've asked over 10,000 women a question about what their employers could do to keep them onboard, women gave a variety of answers — and more job flexibility didn't make it into the top three answers (which included improving compensation, promoting more women into management and idiosyncratic write-in answers about making job- and company-specific improvements).
Don't get me wrong: I know many women who are looking for advice about how to get more flexibility at work. As the mother of young children, I also understand why job flexibility matters. Children and family-members get sick, child care options fall through and everything that can go wrong usually does go wrong at some point. Even before I became a mom, I valued flexibility. After all, who doesn't wish they could take that great gym class that makes it hard to get to your desk on time every Wednesday? I'm also hard pressed to think of someone who doesn't like having the option to finish a project at home instead of burning the midnight oil at their desk. Employees value the ability to adjust their hours or work remotely when they aren't feeling well, have to attend a funeral or when they have to take a long weekend to attend an out-of-town wedding.
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And other studies do support our intuition that flexibility is very important to many women (and men). In fact, when we previously surveyed women at Fairygodboss about the relative importance of job-selection factors (as opposed to job-retention factors), flexible hours was the second most important after job compensation.
So why would it be the case that after a woman actually gets her job, she values getting paid more and being promoted more than the flexibility of her hours? In part, this may be because job flexibility is far more prevalent than one might think. One study by Catalyst shows that over 80% of women work for employers who offer opportunities to work flexibly. Another study by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn concludes that while many employers offer flexibility programs, very few (~12%) of employees take advantage of them.
Another reason women may seem to value flexibility less once they are actually on the job is that the definition of flexibility is very broad. Work flexibility can mean compressed work weeks, remote working, the ability to shift work hours regularly or occasionally. According to 1 Million For Work Flexibility, a non-profit organization that advocates for greater work flexibility:
Work flexibility is an over-arching term for options in the workplace that give organizations and their staff the freedom to better decide when, where, and how work will get done. For example, flexible and alternative schedules, remote work options and even freelance contracts are all types of work flexibility. Work flexibility can be implemented in smaller ways (such as occasional telecommuting, or having an alternative schedule where you come in and leave an hour earlier to avoid traffic) or in bigger ways (such as telecommuting all of the time or having a completely flexible schedule).
When one term can mean so many different things, over-arching corporate policies can be difficult to write and manager discretion becomes paramount. This can work out beautifully since managers and teams are best positioned to understand each others' needs. However, it can also work out quite badly if managers are not in touch with what individual employees want and need, or simply don't believe in work flexibility.
We recently asked members of Fairygodboss how many of them worked for employers where there was a clear and consistent policy on flexible working. Relatively few (12%) said this existed. Over 60% said flexible work schedules were individually negotiated, while another 25% said it depended on one's role and department. Practices that are individually negotiated may come with stigma and be unevenly adopted by ambitious employees if a company does not fully embrace flexibility. In other words, culture comes into play. Flexible working policies on paper are only as real as the managers who are in charge of their implementation. In light of this, it may not be surprising that higher compensation and the tangibility of being promoted might matter a lot more when it comes to retaining women in the workplace.
