What are the conclusions of the global study on the situation of women at work conducted by Deloitte?
Half of women experience microaggressions at work, but less than one in four report such situations to their employer. 40% of respondents who want to change jobs cite burnout as the reason. Such information is provided by the latest report from a global survey prepared by the consulting company Deloitte. More and more women are actively looking for a job and want to change it in the next two years.
The Women @ Work 2022: A Global Outlook survey was conducted by Deloitte on a group of 5,000 women from 10 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, South Africa).
According to the authors, it showed the worrying long-term effects of the pandemic – rates of stress and experiences of harassment or microaggression remain high. Moreover, widespread burnout and a lack of flexible working continue to hamper progress in supporting working women.
53% of women declare that their stress levels have increased compared to last year, and almost half experience burnout. In addition, almost half of the women surveyed rated their mental health as bad or very bad, and a third of the respondents were absent from work due to such problems. At the same time, for many these issues are still embarrassing and only 43% are willing to talk about it freely in the workplace.
The number of women looking for a new job has increased compared to last year, with one in ten admitting that they are actively looking for a job. 40% of them pointed to burnout as the main reason for wanting to change jobs. More than half of women plan to change jobs in the next two years: the most among middle management and rank-and-file employees, of whom less than a quarter plan to stay in their current workplace for more than two years. Only 10% of women surveyed do not plan to change jobs for more than five years.
„The percentage of women who admit to increased levels of stress and a sense of burnout is very worrying. Many employers clearly do not cope with this problem. Our study shows that burnout is the main reason why women are looking for a new job. It should be noted that in order for this situation to improve, it is important to take actions that go beyond the established schemes, which should include general wellbeing of employed women, effective flexibility of solutions and an organizational culture based on respect and counteracting exclusion – says Joanna Świerzyńska, talent partner, Deloitte.
From the study that cases of behavior discriminating against women happen more and more often. Over the past year, as many as half of women have experienced microaggressions at work, and 14% – harassment. In turn, 59 percent of employees encountered actions that excluded them from everyday work. The vast majority of women, as many as 93 percent, are still afraid that informing about such events will have a negative impact on the development of their professional careers, which results in the fact that only 23 percent of such behaviors have been reported to the employer.
According to the organizers of the study, the scale of these problems deepens with the belonging of women to ethnic minorities or the LGBT+ environment. Representatives of the former group are more likely to experience burnout than women belonging to the main ethnic group in the studied country. They are also much less likely to report cases of exclusion in informal contacts (15% vs 10%) and condescending treatment (9% vs 2%). On the other hand, women from the LGBT+ community are more likely (by 10%) to admit that they have experienced condescending treatment or that their opinions have been questioned by their superiors, as well as that they have been addressed in an unprofessional or rude way (by 7%).
– In a situation where women are afraid for their further professional development and work does not bring them satisfaction, leadership based on compassion and co-responsibility for the health of employees is required. Burnout or deficiencies in mental well-being are not imaginary problems and their addressing is one of the priorities of a modern, future-oriented business strategy. Creating comfortable conditions also brings benefits for employers themselves: as research shows, women employed in companies that are leaders in the field of gender equality are not currently looking for a new job, and only 9% plan to change their place of employment in the near future. In addition, 90 percent rate their level of motivation as high or very high,” says Iva Georgiev, Partner, Chair of the Supervisory Board of Deloitte Central Europe, Leader and Founder of the SheXO Club, Deloitte.
Projekt otrzymał dofinansowanie z Norwegii poprzez Fundusze Norweskie 2014-2021, w ramach programu „Dialog społeczny – godna praca”.