The Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2014 list has been released, revealing the organisations that have best demonstrated that gender equality is a key part of their business strategy.
Winners include Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, Diageo, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Royal Mail, published in partnership with Opportunity Now, the workplace gender campaign from Business in the Community.
The Times also released a Top 50 Employers for Women supplement which can be accessed here. Helena Morrissey, the chair of Opportunity Now – Business in the community’s campaign to increase women’s success at work states in the first article how her aim is to move this topic from being a diversity effort to being a much wider talent management issue. She also says ‘There is a big gap between companies official policies and women’s everyday experiences’.
The supplement highlights concerns such as ‘of the 21,500 women questioned, 18% say they have had promotion deliberately blocked or training opportunities denied’
‘Diversity is an outdated concept’ Liz Bingham managing partner for talent at Ernst & Young says instead of focusing on diversity, businesses should recognise, celebrate and embrace differences.
The Times top 50 Employers for women suggets that women have different requirements for work than men and this could be supported by various studies. According to this management study article women show more stability than men when it comes to their job but recent studies have shown that the number of unhappy and unsatisfied women is on a continuous increase. Unlike men, women prefer to explore multiples work areas and different jobs instead of going up vertically. They desire for widening their horizons and perspectives rather than going up on mere designations. Despite this strange characteristic of theirs, organisations these days are finding a lot of difficulties in retaining their women employees. Most women when decide to move, the most common reason is their family. They mostly engage their families while making a decision to move whereas the matter with the men is absolutely different.
Read the full article on what engages female employees here.
