The whole package: women’s career progression in the context of work, home and family set-up– will come out from Dr Ines Wichert at IBM’s Smarter Workforce Institute (formerly Kenexa).

It presents new data from a survey of 3000 employees around which factors lead to both women’s/men’s career progression (and retention (though the main focus is on women)as well as how work and non-work factors affect work/life balance. The research shows that the factors that lead to job satisfaction and actual promotions for women are very different and this could present a dilemma for HR Departments. Organisations need to take this into account when planning initiatives to support women, to help them progress in their career as well as stay in the company. Often initiatives are aimed at encouraging talented women to stay, through support groups or introducing initiatives to improve their confidence, however companies are failing to take this a step further by setting up programmes that enable real progression and promotion opportunities.

Key findings

Almost one third of employees (sample size 3000) report that they wish to leave their job in the next 12 months. Satisfaction with career progression opportunities (34 percent) and work-life balance (17 percent, inability to meet career goals and devote attention to family/personal life) are the two biggest reasons people want to stay in their role. Interestingly, satisfaction with future career progression opportunities is a much more important driver of intentions to leave than past promotions. Women report lower satisfaction with career progression opportunities (52vs59 percent favourable) and also have a far higher likelihood of having no promotions over the last five years (42 percent for women vs 34 percent for men).

28 to 35 is the ‘golden age’ for career progression – after that the number of promotions and job satisfaction levels steadily decrease. Between 28-35 39 percent of women and 49 percent of men report two or more promotions in five years. By 43-54 this is significantly lower (18 percent and 25 percent), however this decline in promotions and satisfaction doesn’t encourage people to look elsewhere as intention to leave also declines with age.

The results from three independent IBM Smarter Workforce datasets, including this new research, show that the three most important factors that lead to women’s actual career progression and promotions are:

(a) Critical job assignments: high visibility roles that enable employees to showcase their capabilities. Our data finds that women report having significantly fewer critical job roles than their male counterparts (45 percent for women versus 54 percent for men).

(b) Politically-skilled networking: the ability to be ‘visible’ to senior decision makers. Women report that they engage in less politically-skilled networking than their male counterparts (58 percent for women versus 62 percent for men).

(c) Risk-embracing seeking of opportunities: women proactively searching for a new career opportunity and going ‘out of their comfort zone’ to advance their career.

The drivers of women’s satisfaction with career opportunity satisfaction are markedly different from those of actually gaining a promotion, though of course career satisfaction is also crucial if women are to stay in their role rather than look for new opportunities.

The top three drivers for women feeling satisfied with career progression opportunities at work are:  a). objective HR processes (27 percent); b) supervisor support (17 percent); c) career planning (14 percent). While satisfaction with career progression opportunities at work may only be moderately linked to actually gaining a promotion it nevertheless pays to invest in objective HR processes, equip supervisors with the skills to provide support for their people’s careers, and provide career planning opportunities through mentors or coaches. Having access to and making use of at least one flexible work arrangements leads to significantly increased scores against our work-life balance index than not using any at all (75 percent and 60 percent respectively).