Making the workplace work for women pros

Many highly qualified women take a detour from their career paths because of personal responsibilities. But when they want to resume their jobs, they might find themselves stalled.

Developing workplace policies and practices that help them get back on track is the focus of Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps.”

To attract talent, she says, companies must work harder to retain women professionals. Diversity increases a business’ competitive edge. Women earn more than half of all professional and graduate degrees.

Combine this with a tightening high-echelon labor market brought on by the retirement of baby boomers and the brain drain of departing foreign workers, and a talent void is opening, Hewlett says.

Yet finding opportunities for talented “off-ramped” women who want to return to work can be difficult.

Part treatise, part call to action, “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps” urges companies to reverse the “female brain drain.”

Hewlett drives her arguments with data gathered by her Hidden Brain Drain Task Force of “leading-edge” companies and other sources, compelling accounts of high-achieving women executives who took time out for family issues, and case studies from firms successfully managing the issue.

What Hewlett calls the male-competitive model fails to work for many women professionals. It is characterized by cumulative careers and a continuous, linear employment history. It emphasizes full-time employment and face time at the office and expects the steepest gradient of a career to occur during one’s 30s. And it assumes that most professionals are motivated primarily by money.

“While this career model suited the needs of [former General Electric Co. chief] Jack Welch and his peers, it’s exceedingly problematic for women,” Hewlett writes. A minority may try to fit the male competitive model, but many won’t or can’t.

Family demands are one reason many women might have nonlinear careers as they take time off, cut their hours or telecommute.

What’s more, the decade in which career demands are rising is precisely when child-rearing demands peak. Hewlett notes that women also tend to be less driven by money than by other factors such as working with “high-quality colleagues” or “deriving meaning and purpose” from work.

Women seeking a return to their careers are often sidelined by a business model that views resume gaps with skepticism. The average leave is a mere 2.2 years, Hewlett says. Many female executives, however, struggle to get back on track after the short break. (It’s worth noting that men who do the same might encounter the same result.)

The problem becomes even more urgent as the rise of “extreme jobs” with tight deadlines, long hours, extensive travel and instant communication forces more women to take offramps.

The solution, Hewlett says, is for companies to provide onramps and flexible work arrangements and reduce the stigma associated with them.

Equally important are “arc-of-career flexibility” policies that let women ramp up or down, she says.

At Merrill Lynch & Co., we offer flexible work options, such as telecommuting, compressed workweeks and job sharing.

We are trying to address some of the more challenging issues posed by the extreme jobs that are common in financial services.

We have a new day-care center in New York, which provides full-time and backup child care.

Most of my female law school colleagues who had children did so in the 1980s and 1990s, well before any discussion of the possibility of offramp and onramp career paths.

The choice most of us faced was either to stay home with our children and forsake or derail our careers or to continue working while relinquishing the chance to be a significant part of our children’s lives on weekdays.

The offramp, onramp career model, although challenging for businesses in which extreme jobs and intense client demands are the norm, opens up a world of opportunity for talented professionals.

My recent experience in recruiting female graduates from business and law schools leads me to believe that companies that surmount the challenge of implementation will easily attract and retain the best and brightest women professionals.

The author makes a persuasive case for a competitive model that takes into account the pressing needs of female employees.

Women are often the “canaries in the coal mine,” Hewlett says, for judging the effectiveness of management policies and practices. Doing what works for female professionals is good for everyone.

This review was reprinted from the Financial Times of London. Rosemary Berkery is executive vice president and general counsel of Merrill Lynch & Co.