Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets. Sylvia Ann Hewlett
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employee in China says, “My company has provided me with the platform to do things I really want to do,” a message echoed by a senior manager at a multinational corporation in Brazil, who considers her company to be “like a university—you can learn so much here.”
These factors mirror, in part, our earlier findings about what motivates top performers in the United States. As described in Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down, a large majority of both men and women point to the challenge and stimulation of the work.16 Compensation, recognition, status, “meaning and purpose,” and flex options were also important drivers. Interestingly, money, though important, wasn't a dominating factor. Less than half (40 percent) of the respondents in our U.S. survey rated high levels of compensation as the main reason they loved their jobs.
Among female top talent in the United States, monetary rewards were trumped by four other factors. In focus groups, high-performing women repeatedly talked about the importance of respect and recognition—from bosses and companies—and the satisfaction they derived from working with a group of great colleagues.
Among women in emerging markets, compensation and job security are major motivators—no surprise in economies that have been marked by political, economic, and social volatility. But these women, too, like to feel good about their employers and to reaffirm that their efforts at work are part of a greater purpose, whether it's lifting up their country or finding opportunities that help their compatriots move forward. Booz's Leila Hoteit recalls, “One of my first projects was working on a huge cultural district being built here, with a multibillion-dollar budget and input from the Guggenheim and Louvre museums. One of the tasks we undertook on the project was to benchmark world-class museums and cities, such as Bilbao, that had been transformed by such cultural projects. So we went around the world benchmarking museums. The sense of satisfaction you get is different here.”
THE LESSON FOR GLOBAL COMPANIES
The rich reservoir of loyalty and commitment among educated women in the BRIC countries and the UAE, however, cannot be taken for granted. Rather, the data need to be considered within the context of their high levels of ambition and aspiration. To fully realize the enormous potential of female talent in these countries, employers need to go the extra mile.
What can organizations do to keep these women stimulated, motivated, and committed? “I'm interested in having a very challenging position. That's something I'm always looking for,” says Natasha, a senior executive in Russia. (Some names and affiliations have been changed. When only first names are used, they are pseudonyms.) Parvati, an Indian management consultant for an international company, is unambiguous about what she seeks from her work and employer: “I want the ability to solve interesting problems that are constantly different in scope and scale, problems that don't have a clearcut solution, so you have the intellectual freedom to figure things out.” In short, employers must provide women with access to a meaningful range of opportunities to grow, develop, and advance.
The value proposition offered by educated women in emerging markets to employers is, in a word, compelling. In return for intellectually challenging work, good colleagues, respect and recognition, and competitive compensation—the mainstays highly qualified Western women want to underpin their careers—ambitious BRIC and UAE women respond with uncommon levels of hard work, loyalty, and commitment.
But there's a significant caveat intrinsic to this optimistic portrayal of women in emerging markets: as noted earlier, BRIC and UAE women are neither clones of their Western counterparts nor Western wannabes. To fully realize the potential of this rich reservoir of female talent, multinational employers must provide ways to break down barriers raised by culture and tradition.
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Pitfalls and Trip Wires
When Subha Barry was the head of global diversity for Merrill Lynch, she noticed a curious phenomenon among career women in India. “You'd have women with the highest of qualifications, the most incredible talents, and yet, while in appearance and intellect and abilities at work they can hold their own with the best of Western women, you would find them doing surprising things, like saying, ‘I had a baby. I need to stop working and go home.’” Barry adds, I'm not talking one or two. I'm talking droves.”
Child care itself wasn't the primary issue. Although one of the most common career killers for women in the United States and Western Europe, it is a less serious problem for their counterparts in emerging markets. Instead, says Barry, who is herself Indian, it was being used as an excuse that masked the symptoms of a much more pernicious issue: family and social pressures pile on to women when they marry and ratchet up after they have children, and become almost crushing as their parents and in-laws age.
These family-rooted “pulls,” together with cultural and social “pushes,” can sabotage a woman's career aspirations, derailing her ambition and causing her to languish in a dead-end job or leave the workforce entirely. Subtle but intense, these pressures are so deeply and broadly woven into each culture's everyday fabric as to be almost invisible to an outsider. Yet unless multinational corporations understand these forces, they will never recognize the real reasons behind a high-performing woman's decision to drop out—or be able to craft solutions to keep her.
THE FORCE OF FAMILY
Anjali Hazarika, head of talent management and administration for Oil India, tells a common story: “I took a sabbatical for two years when I was earning my doctorate and having a baby. But after the two years were over, I had to go [back to work] and leave my son behind. We didn't have flextime. That's when my mother came to stay with me. I had gone through the guilt feelings most women have when they leave their young at home, completely dependent on domestic help. I was fortunate to have my mother, who said, ‘I'm there for you. You go out and do what you want to do.’ Because of her, I could go out and work.” Hazarika continues, “And when my time came, I reciprocated.” Hazarika's mother lived with her daughter's family for the last ten years of her life. Hazarika says, “I was happy I could do a little of what she did for me. Parent care—it's a part of Indian culture.”
Working mothers in BRIC and the UAE are able to think big and aim high because they have multiple shoulders to lean on. Between grandparents, extended family, inexpensive and readily available domestic help, and an increasingly wide range of day care options, professional women in emerging markets are typically able to construct a support system without much difficulty.
Grandparents play a vital role in enabling working mothers to sustain a career, being involved in their grandchildren's care to a much greater extent than most grandparents in the United States and Western Europe. Many come from cultures where it was common to have children early; now that their children are having children of their own, they are still relatively young and in good health. Additionally, in many of these countries, the official retirement age remains lower than in the developed world, and expectations of retired life are very different. “My parents, in the Chinese tradition, are very willing to help,” said a Chinese management consultant. “They don't want to relax and travel like parents in the Western world.” Our research supports this, showing that more than 40 percent of women professionals working full time in Brazil and Russia—and a whopping 82 percent in China and 69 percent in India—have child care help from their parents or in-laws.
There are also fewer grandchildren to care for. Contrary to the prevalent view that all women in emerging markets have children, and lots of them, our data revealed that a significant proportion of educated women in emerging economies do not have children. Access to education and birth control—the same benefits that have lowered birthrates in the developed world—enables women in emerging markets to delay or decline motherhood. Among college-educated women aged twenty-one to sixty-four in our survey, more than half in Brazil, Russia, and India and almost half in the UAE did not have children.
Our earlier research in the United States showed maternal guilt to be a critical pull factor for women in high-pressure, demanding jobs, one that could override the gratification of and commitment to such work. Career women in emerging markets are no less immune to the maternal