Women's career and 21st century solutions

Women and work. Women rights. Women discrimination. These are some of the worldwide always actual topics.

Gender equality, salary differences based on gender discrimination, women and top management positions, modern slavery, domestic abuse, right to property, harassment are still issues affecting the women of the 21st century.

During the whole 19th century, women had no political rights though there had been some movement in other areas to advance the rights of women. By the early 19th century, acceptable occupations for working women were limited to factory labor or domestic work. Writing and teaching where the only professions where women were not excluded from. In some European countries,  until 1965 married women did not receive the right to work without their husband's permission. Later on, despite their increased presence in the work force, most women still had primary responsibility for housework and family care.

A crucial issue for many women was maternity leave, or time off from their jobs after giving birth. Although in most states, a full-time worker was entitled to time off and a  job when she returned, only a few states by the early 1990s required the leave to be paid.

Today many women are continuing to strive for their career and at the same time to build up a family. They don't only want a job, they want their merits to be recognised, to get management roles and to eliminate salary gaps based on gender discrimination. They want to be independent, to decide for their life and actions.  

Companies who are chasing valuable candidates have noticed how strong  this social trend has become and some of them came up with measures that are meant to encourage women to focus on their career by postponing their family life. 

Two of these companies are Apple and Facebook. Recently, the two international companies announced that they are or will pay the egg freezing for the employees who are interested in this procedure. This was presented to the public as a great benefit that is responding to the needs of the employees.

It seems to be the perfect solution for those who have to or want to postpone the childbirth.

However, I can't stop thinking at the actual message behind this program.

What are the employers encouraging? Is this going to be a relief for the employees or it will actually put more pressure on them?

In my opinion, the fine print text that comes with this program is: "A woman's career is not being compatible with motherhood. Therefore we help you to postpone the childbirth as much as possible and concentrate on work ".

How about paying for nannies, flexible working time or home office in the first 1 - 2 years after the baby's birth, longer parental vacation for the father and programs to encourage fathers to get more involved in their parental activities, creating or supporting a kindergarten near the company?

Arenˋt these types of measures the ones which truly encourage and support families and career?

In my opinion they are and they should be used and promoted as much as possible. These are also the measures who will help companies to gain the loyalty and commitment from the employees.

Although things are going in the right direction, it will still take lots of effort for our society to get to the point where women are not discriminated because they are young and want to have both career and family.

A change in the pulic mentality has to happen, politics needs to set the ground rules and the employers need to change their perspective on family vs. commitment to the company.

WORK LIFE imBALANCE

For some people their job is not just a source of income but a part of who they are and therefore they will go the extra mile to get the job done even if that means constantly doing overtime, working also at home or in weekends. In the end they are so caught in their work that they almost have no time for personal life. The stress and tiredness will inevitably lead to the phenomenon called burnout. Some of us learn the importance of work life balance only after they go through or are close to exhaustion.

After almost a year of working an average of 55 hours per week, skipping lunch breaks, being available also during weekends and covering the responsibilities of 3 jobs in 2 different locations I started questioning my life style. My body was also giving me all the hints I needed that things are not ok. I could not sleep well, I started feeling burns in my stomach, I was always tired and nervous. Why did I push myself to the limits? It was not for money, that's for sure.

It all happened with a promotion, a great chance I've been given and my wish to prove that I can do a good job. This motivated me so much that I did not think anymore about my personal life and health. Getting things done and being able to deal with such high volume of work gave me a sort of energy that was making me continue in that rhythm for a quite long period of time. One night, while going at home from work I waited in the subway station for about 30 minutes because I was not realizing that I need to take the subway to go home. I was so tired that my brain must have stopped. I was just standing there staring at the subways passing one after another. When I realized what had just happened, I decided that this can't go on like this.

It's ok to be devoted to your job and to want a career, however no rewards or money could ever pay back one’s health or personal life.

A trainer told me once that it's up to us how we use our time at work. If we need to eat at our desk and at the same time do something for work that's fine. I totally disagree with that.

The lunch break should be for two things only: lunch and break from work. Only like this we will refresh and be able to concentrate for the rest of the day. When it comes to overtime, unfortunately there are many companies where working long hours is already part of the corporate culture. The managers work until late and they expect all other employees to do the same. Some employees will even start feeling bad for leaving at the end of the normal working hours.

Doing overtime can show someone's commitment to the company if it's done occasionally, in special or emergency situations. However if someone is constantly doing overtime this can be a sign of bad time management, incompetency or overloading. Working until exhaustion might have good results on short term for the company but devastating effects on medium and long term for both the company and the employee. Employees who take care of their personal life, who work normal hours, rest enough and who keep themselves healthy will be far more productive and motivated than the ones who do the opposite.

No matter the cause of work life imbalance, there is always a solution. The first step is to admit that we have a problem.

Counter offers - never accept one

As tempting and flattering as it might be, accepting a counter offer is always a bad idea.

Usually a counter offer means more money and never the solution for the problems that make some quit. People decide to leave their companies for many reasons. No opportunity for development, poor management, no opportunity to promote, no one to learn from are just some of the reasons for which people decide to leave their jobs.

When we decide to quit and go to another company we are looking for all arguments that support our decision. Simultaneously we will try and find all the advantages offered by the future work place and there is for sure more to that than money. After all this process that basically makes us see ourselves  already in the new position it comes the counter offer that offers us more money in order to stay in the current role. This is the moment when doubt might appear especially if we have been in the company for a long period of time.

Doubting is dangerous. In my opinion, the best thing to do is to take the time, think it through and when we make a decision stick with it. That is the best decision we can possibly make. We should speak with whom we have to speak, read what we need to read, ask what we don't know, never assume things and when we are ready, decide on what to do. We don't need to be worried that we have made the wrong decision.

If we took your time to think it over than that is the right decision for us. No matter what happens next we will be ready to face it because we know that we have chosen that way. There is no way to foresee the future or to go back in the past. Therefore there is no point in thinking what it would have happened if we would have made a different decision.

I strongly believe that we should only use the past in order to learn. Once we have learned our lessons we should leave the past behind and focus on what we are living right now. Decisiveness is a characteristic appreciated by everyone because it’s easy to work with people who do what they say they will. These are the persons one can trust.

If we say we quit and then we change our mind, regardless the reason, we will become an employee that can't be trusted. What is even worse is that after a few months we will realize that money couldn't solve our problems that we’ve had in the company. Inevitably the search will start again.

On the other hand we should think why do managers make counter offers?  Because they have no one in this moment to replace us with. They are just buying some time until they will find the right person to replace us with. If we accept we will be the person that wanted to leave and that they can't trust anymore. We can say goodbye to promotion possibilities or assignments of interesting projects. All studies on this subject show that 80-90% of the people who accept a counter offer leave the company in the next year.

Hesitation is dangerous in any situation and especially when it comes to changing jobs. The best thing one can do is to take the necessary time to make what the right decision appears to be and to stick with it. That will be for sure the best decision that can be made.

Let’s talk about money

Asking for a raise is never easy and every one of us hopes that this will happen without us asking specifically for it. In reality, there are many situations in which we have to go and ask for the raise that we want.

The most difficult part for most of us is to express our arguments in a coherent way that will convince our manager. However, bringing the right arguments at the wrong moment will definitely not get us more money at the end of every month. 

Timing – the right moment

To know when it's the right moment we should always consider the internal rules. Is the company giving raises once a year, or after performance appraisals, or after a certain experience accumulated in the company? Knowing what the practices in our company are, we will also know how to choose your moment. If the company is offering raises only once a year, in January, it wouldn't make too much sense to go to your manager with this issue in May, for example. The best time to speak about this is 3-4 months before the moment when the increases are made or before the evaluation period so that the manager will have time to take some actions.

Besides the time of the year, it is also important to choose the right day and moment of the day. It would not be too wise to bring up this subject in an extremely busy day or when you know that our boss has many things on his mind. We need to set a meeting with our boss especially for this purpose. The last thing we want is to discuss with him spontaneously or in a meeting that is completely about something else.

Reasons – arguments reinforced with results

When it comes to arguments, we should take our time and do some homework. Arguments like, I know my colleague is earning more, my expenses have increased or it's been a year since the last increase won't be of much success. Objective arguments are the ones who will give you what you want. More responsibilities, revenue brought to the company, more knowledge for the company, improvement of some systems in the company, extraordinary performance that impacted the results if the company, successful projects are just some examples of arguments that will be taken into consideration by the management.

Plan – always have one

Knowing what we want and what we will do in case of a negative answer is also part of the preparation of our case.  Therefore, we should not go into the discussion without having in mind a reasonable amount of money we want as an increase. Obtaining information on what the market pays will help a lot. In case that we have a negative response, it might be a good idea to ask the manager what do we need to do in order get that raise and when would that be possible. This way we will know how to set our expectations.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Following my previous article, someone asked me "Where do you see yourself in five years?” This reminded me of my first interviews as a candidate when other recruiters have asked me exactly the same thing. It was one of the questions I hated the most and I have always tried to do my best in giving answers as general as possible.

Later I understood that the intention behind it was to see if I had a career plan and how the job I was applying for would fit in my plan.

Whoever started asking this question didn't realize that mentioning an exact time frame forces candidates either to give answers out of the blue or general answers that were well prepared prior to the interview. Not everybody has a 5 years plan but that doesn't mean that they don’t have a plan at all.

How can this phrase be avoided and still find out what one’s career plans are? There are many other questions that can be asked around this topic. I believe that questions like "What is the next step in your career?" or "How do you see yourself evolving professionally?" are much more efficient. This way the other person has the comfort of not having to think at an exact time frame.
There are lots of people saying that this question makes no sense, that it’s a stupid question to ask and it forces people to say what they think the recruiters want to hear.

However, most interviewers ask this question one way or another. If you find yourself in the situation of answering the famous “Where do you see yourself in five years?” always have in mind that the real question is “What is the next step in your career and how the job you are applying for will help you get there?”. The answer will then be easier. What we should always have in mind is that we must emphasize how the job that we are interviewing for is integrating in our career plan. This is also a good opportunity to ask back the recruiter or the manager about the career potential in the company. It’s always a good idea to show your interest in developing your career in the company.  

How do we know when it’s time for the next step?

How do we decide when it’s time to leave a company? How do we know when it’s the right moment? When things are not going the way we wanted it’s quite easy. We are unhappy, so we know that something must be done.

But what if everything is fine?

For how long should one stay in a company where everything is alright? Until things get bad? Until retirement?

During our employment with a company we go through certain stages that are more or less the same from everyone:

-  The intensive learning period when we get used with the requirements of the job, learn to work in a different environment, maybe learn new technologies, new software, new industries and so on.

-  The period when we apply what we have learned and we perform at our highest potential.

- The stage in which we don't learn new things and we are not confronted with too many new situations.

The length of these stages is different depending on the each individual, company and  position. However, staying for too long in the second stage is dangerous because there is a point starting which time works against us.

This is a period when we are mostly applying what we have learned. It is comfortable, maybe overall everything looks fine but this can mean also that our career is going down.

But why should we keep on learning? Why should we always try to improve ourselves when we could do the one job that we are good at? Why do we have to step out of our comfort zone and find a new challenge?

Because everything is changing: the society, the way business is made, the technology used, everything. Companies die, new companies are created. Jobs disappear, new jobs are in demand. Our environment has a certain dynamic and in order not only to have a job but to improve our chances for a career, we should adapt and be ready to face the changes.

For career oriented people knowing when to make the next step is essential, especially because we don't want to be job hoppers either.

Coming back to the initial question, in order to know when is the right time to move on, we need a plan. Even if we don't know yet where exactly we want to be in the next 10 years, having a 3-4 years plan will definitely help.

Let's say that we are in a new position. We should already think what we would want as next job. Then think what of this current job will help you to get the next one. What we need to learn, what successes we need to have, maybe even for how long we need to stay in this current position. After having all that cleared, we need to focus all our energy in doing the best in the role we are at the present moment.

It will then be obvious for us when it's time to move on, even if everything is fine.

This is where the well-known "Where do you see yourself in five years?" question comes from. The employers want to know whether we want a career or just a job.