Women in the Workplace:
Mentoring and Flexibility Are Keys to Advancement
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What environmental elements are currently emerging
as "the best of the best" to attract,
welcome, develop and retain women pursuing technical
track careers in large corporations?
The question was recently addressed by executives
of major companies on a panel at the 223rd national
meeting of the American Chemical Society in Orlando.
The panelists, chosen from Working Mother magazine's
2001 list of the 100 Best Companies for Working
Mothers, agreed that:
Women need active mentoring to realize
their strengths and potential to advance, as members
of working teams, creative individuals and professionals,
within the corporation.
Work schedules should be negotiable and
flexible, allowing for the individual needs of
professional women with husbands, partners, children
and aging parents whose needs are woven into the
fabric of their daily lives.
Policies must be in place to "level
the playing field" for women in the workplace,
with full support of top management.
"Mentoring of women by women is the contemporary
counterbalance to the old boy network," Sharon
Larkin, divisional vice-president of Human Resources
Programs and Business Integration at Abbott Laboratories
said. "Proactive and institutionalized mentoring
programs, designed to help women enter the company,
develop in the company and stay in the company
are not only right for women. They are smart business.
We believe that the mentoring programs at Abbott
are largely responsible for creating the environment
that leads women to stay and for our comparatively
low turnover rate."
Larkin said that according to the Committee on
Women in Science and Engineering of the National
Research Council, women scientists encounter subtle,
as well as overt, obstacles to advancement, a
lack of information about the corporate job market
for industry science careers, an absence of female
role models and mentors and exclusion
from informal networks. "These and other
barriers to success are exactly the kind of things
that a good mentoring relationship can address
and help a woman overcome," she said.
To emphasize her point, Larkin quoted the words
of Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst, an
organization monitoring issues facing women in
the workplace. "Mentors are more important
to career success than hard work, more important
than talent, more important than intelligence."
Agreeing that mentoring has a priority in career
development and retention strategies at BPAmerica
Production Corporation, Lisa Marrufo, manager
of Diversity and HR Compliance, cited flexibility
in the scheduling of work as "most important
to our women employees.
"The next generation of employees is smaller
and we foresee possible labor shortages in the
petrochemical industry in the next ten to fifteen
years," Marrufo said. "The next generation
of employees is seeking a more flexible workplace."
Citing efforts that her company is taking to
make work more flexible, Marrufo highlighted the
availability to women at BP of compressed work
schedules, flextime, reimbursement for dependent
care related to business travel, telecommuting
arrangements and technology such as teleconferencing
designed to reduce business travel.
"In a word, flexibility," Marrufo said.
Underscoring the importance of flexibility, Ron
Webb, manager of doctoral recruiting and university
relations at Proctor and Gamble, said that providing
the tools and resources to help women balance
career and family is key to creating the right
corporate culture in a company where 48 percent
of new management hires are women - and to the
success of the business as a business.
Flexible work arrangements and telecommuting
are a fully integrated part of life at Proctor
and Gamble, Webb noted. "For example,"
he said, "women may come in at 7 and leave
at 3 in order to be at home when they need to
be there for their families --- and it works just
fine, if we work together to make it work."
"Recruiting women by itself is not enough.
Recognizing women as they progress and retaining
them and their rich contributions to the company
are crucial. These are our operating principles
in relationship to women professionals at our
company -- recruit, recognize and retain."
Webb said.
"Flexibility is key at every point in implementing
these principles with real women who have very
a diverse lives."
In pre-symposium remarks, Mary Funke, the event
organizer and manager of JobSpectrum.org at the
American Chemical Society, noted that all of the
companies represented on the panel recruit and
retain women chemists through a variety of strategies
and programs, including those emphasizing mentoring
and flexibility. "However," she said,
"they have also been leveling the playing
field for women by making sure that, in the first
place, women know about available positions and
doing this, in part, by working with JobSpectrum."
JobSpectrum.org is a comprehensive online career
resource Web site for professionals in chemistry
and for recruiters. Recruiters place job ads quickly
and easily, chemistry professionals -- including
new graduates -- post resumes, and the system
automatically alerts recruiters to resumes meeting
their search criteria. "It is another way
we help women and men in chemistry to overcome
information barriers and to equalize opportunities
between the sexes."
What makes a company a "winner" for
women in 2002?
"Many things, including strong mentoring,
flexibility and a level field for placement and
advancement," Funke said. "But,"
she noted and the panelists agreed, "there
has to be an accountable executive in the company
whose job it is to make sure that words have feet
and, importantly, that top management is fully
supportive. Ideas may come from the bottom upward.
But implementation works from the top down in
corporations like these. And this has been key
to making these companies the 'winners' for women
that they are."
View each panelist's presentations:
Frankie Wood Black,
Philips Petroleum and Chair, ACS Women Chemists
Committee
Elsa Reichmanis,
Bell Labs Fellow and Director of the Materials
Research Department, Lucent Technologies
Ron Webb, Senior Manager
of Doctoral Recruiting, Procter & Gamble
Lisa Marrufo, Manager,
Diversity and HR Compliance Team, BP America Production
Company
Sharon D. Larkin,
Divisional Vice President, Human Resources, Abbott
Laboratories
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