Plenty has been said and published about glass ceiling barrier. Leaders, managers, and equal rights activists have all come up with different suggestions and theories to break the glass ceiling and close the pay gap. Even after so many discussions, social forums, public meetings, and seminars dedicated to work towards ending the inequality so persistent in workplaces; we have yet to root out the evil. Contributor Prakriti Garg, Editor – Top Assignment Experts.
Talent and capability doesn’t choose colour, race, gender, or ethnicity; it is there just because it is and the level of hardship one is willing to go and develop. Lack of diversity and opportunities for minorities to pay gap between male and female employees; these are still burning issues in today’s working class world.
Champions of workplace diversity would place emphasis on hiring people with different backgrounds to make the workplace a healthy and vibrant environment for the workers. There is a clear need to develop company’s workforce by the management through courses and programs created in order to impart in them a desired set of skills, internal hiring is one way to go for developing and promoting minorities to a senior level and in effect, creating a bigger and diverse pool for selection when it comes to hiring for top level management. Accenture and L’oreal rate really high on this scale.
We haven’t evolved as a society so much to put an act in place that allows women a day off for period pain like a few countries have. Most women have to balance their work along with the responsibilities at home. So much has been written about the lack of opportunities women have compared to men and the hardships they face. Providing greater flexibility in hours and work timings will help extract the best work from employees. In an article published in the April edition of Forbes, it is argued that the framework related to work timings was set long before women entered the picture. If we allow greater flexibility to employees for work hours, it will surely get the very best from employees more so from women. Companies like TFTH provide flexible hours to men and women to give them a free hand over how they organize their work and fulfill their potential.
Glass ceiling barriers are created mostly because it is a man’s world and men choose to select a female top management executive only if is she is a non-threatening one and plays to the rules. More women find the problem of unequal wages an issue than men do. In a 2016 study, it showed that the percentage of women increased drastically from the number entering in entry-level workforce and leading up to top level executives. Search through any board level meeting, and you will see the ratio of women to men grossly inappropriate. The millennial have increasing ambition, and women have an incensed entrepreneurial spirit nowadays. We are slowly seeing the numbers rising, but it is still a long way ahead when we will see an equal ratio of talented women and men working together.
As per Glassdoor, companies like Colgate, and Medtronic are known for their diversity in workers. Workplaces which gain a reputation for their diversity inclusion are generally preferred over other companies and receive a greater pool of talent to choose from than other companies. Such companies are also inclusive and provide great growing opportunities to its employees. A company that looks for talent and develops them irrespective of the gender, color, and race will be able to promote someone who better understands the company and has been working for years than someone from the outside who is not so much aware of the company’s operations at each level of management.
