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Building
a career – what helps women and what doesn’t
By Penny Abbott of Clutterbuck Associates
Research
by the global consultancy Accenture conducted in
29 countries among 3 400 executives, has revealed
some interesting information. Although the main
findings of the study as reported in the press were
around high levels of dissatisfaction with current
jobs, a more detailed look at the study reveals
what women thought had made a difference in their
careers.
The most common means of advancing themselves
included: |
- Further training and skills development –
which was nearly always rated as having actually
helped
- Taking on additional responsibilities –
which helped more often than not
- Asking for a raise, promotion or job change
– which helped about half the time
- Active networking –which helped most
of the time
- Taking part in a mentoring program –
which helped most of the time.
|
Despite much talk about
equal opportunities for women, 45% of respondents
said that their organisation did not have specific
targets for number of women in leadership roles.
15% said that the organisation did have targets,
while 40% were not aware of any targets. It also
seems that the perception is still rife that women
have to work harder and longer than men to gain
career advancement – 68% of women, as compared
to 55% of men, believed that they had got to their
current position due to hard work and long hours.
It seems that access to mentoring programs is not
as widespread as is often thought – only 21%
of women said that their organisation had a formal
mentoring program, but when such a program is available,
76% of women did participate in it. There is a generational
difference between use of mentoring - while 25%
of Baby-Boomers said they had a formal or informal
mentor, 32% of Generation X and 37% of Generation
Y do use mentoring of some sort.
Respondents reported that mentors helped them mostly
with advice and guidance, and about half of the
respondents had been helped with planning career
moves. The mentor acted as a sounding board for
somewhat less than half the respondents, and also
in some cases actively sponsored or supported the
mentee for promotion. This finding reflects the
predominance of North American respondents in the
study as the mentoring model used in North America
emphasises mainly sponsorship mentoring rather than
the developmental mentoring model used more often
in Europe and South Africa.
Accenture consultants, in discussing the results,
remarked that companies could help people build
their careers by creating a culture of mentoring
as well as by developing diverse teams that can
provide new experiences for team members. |
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Women in IT Newsletter is brought to you compliments of the
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© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
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