Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets. Sylvia Ann Hewlett
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region: “In the past, people lived in extended families in a Freej—like a compound. Individuals in those families played different roles, so an aunt could take care of a young child, even if it wasn't her own daughter or son, and a cousin could take care of an elderly person. In terms of shared resources, this was very possible.” Similar support networks, held together by duty and propinquity, were typical throughout the BRICs, too. Today, though, because of urbanization and the need to relocate for job opportunities, families are scattering to different cities and even different countries. The falling birthrate among educated women has left their adult children, now modern career women, with few siblings to share the responsibility. Although China's “one child” policy, launched in 1979, may give a grandchild four grandparents, it burdens the lone adult daughter with the care of her own parents and those of her in-laws. The circle of care has shrunk significantly throughout emerging economies, often leaving one woman standing alone in the spotlight.
“My brother has a family, and I'm responsible for our parents. I have always taken care of my parents,” says Karine Kocharyan, a Russian division controller for a multinational engineering corporation. “My responsibility is every day, every evening. I'm responsible, 100 percent, and I value this connection. That's our way of life.”
Kocharyan's mother lives with her. Again, this is typical of many women in emerging markets: our data reveal that more than half of career women in China and India have an elderly parent or in-law living with them. In the UAE and Brazil, the figure is nearly one in three, and in Russia, it's one of four. Our survey respondents accompany the elders to medical appointments, cook meals for them, and arrange transportation.
The alternatives that exist for child care, such as a nanny or day care, are rarely available for elder care. There are some glimmers of change; old age homes for the affluent are beginning to crop up in India and China.2 Still, most of the time, options for delegating or outsourcing elder care don't exist, are socially unacceptable, or both. Although more than half of our respondents in Brazil, India, and China would consider using hired help for their parents or in-laws, placing them in a full-time care facility—the choice of more than half of adult children in the United States—is anathema in emerging markets.
When daughters aren't physically providing for their parents and in-laws, they're supporting them financially. More than half of women in China, India, Russia, and the UAE give monetary assistance; in Brazil, the figure is 33 percent. Financial aid from adult children is vital in countries where government benefits for the elderly are weak or nonexistent. In Russia, for example, pensions average a paltry 2,000–4,000 rubles (less than $100) a month—less than 10 percent of the per capita income in 2009.3 India entirely lacks a social security system that ensures income for the elderly, so informal family support is often their primary recourse. Our data show that the amount of money adult daughters contribute is significant: 18–23 percent of their annual income.
For women in emerging markets, elder care, far more than child care, has a significant potential to limit their professional ambitions or stall a high-flying career. Consider the question of mobility. “If a great job opportunity comes up that involves moving to a different city, even if the husband and wife agree from a career point of view, the question is what happens to the parents,” notes Murali Kuppuswamy, senior human resources manager, drilling and production, GE Oil & Gas. “Child care is much easier. You can hire nannies.”
Furthermore, women tend to off-ramp for child care at the time when their career trajectory has just taken off and has time to recover. In contrast, elder care responsibilities often hit at the peak of their profession, striking a blow to their career just as they are reaching the top.
The elder care burden on society in general and women in particular is a ticking time bomb. Although elders today represent a net benefit to the career woman in BRIC and the UAE, it is clear from the demographic projections that the situation is poised to shift dramatically in the near future. As a result of better health care and increased life expectancies, demographic projections for BRIC and the UAE point to a huge leap in the percentage of the population over sixty. Even in India's relatively youthful population, individuals over sixty are expected to constitute 20 percent of the population by 2050.4 China's demographic outlook is even more dire: thanks to the double whammy of the one-child policy and rising longevity, by 2035 there will be two Chinese elders for every child, a social train wreck that no one knows how to prevent.5
Many high-achieving women in our study acknowledge these concerns, citing their own situations with parents and in-laws who are still healthy and active but whose care will become a top consideration in the near future. Few look forward to negotiating the balance between their careers and their elder care obligations. A female accounting professional in Beijing sums it up by saying, “It is a very heavy role.”
EXTREME JOBS
It's 4:30 in the afternoon, and Claudia still has three teleconferences to go before she can head home for the day. As a Dubai-based executive for a multinational company whose headquarters are located nine time zones away, Claudia doesn't just feel that she works a 24/7 schedule—she is running a marathon that never ends.
She gets to the office at 6:45 in the morning and usually puts in a twelve-hour day at her desk. “I wish I could leave earlier, but New York [where the home office is] is starting their day when it's almost evening for us. All the telecons start in the evening here. Sometimes I get meeting invitations for 11 p.m.”
Claudia would like to exercise after work, but instead she usually rushes home—she counts herself lucky to have only a thirty-minute commute—to spend time with her two children, having dinner with them, helping with their homework and putting them to bed. “Then I do a second round of e-mail between 9 and 11.” During rush periods, she stays up even later.
Weekends don't offer much of a break. The Middle East takes its weekend on Friday and Saturday, so when Claudia fields the end-of-the-week crunch calls from New York, “it kills the weekend.”
In our 2007 study, Seduction and Risk: The Emergence of Extreme Jobs, we identified a new challenge for top talent.6 “Extreme jobs,” as we dubbed this development, are characterized by extended workweeks, an always-on culture at work, and intense performance pressure. Our latest data adds to this scenario in the case of emerging markets.
In BRIC and the UAE, long workweeks are not limited to high-wage earners but are routine among college-educated employees. And although extreme jobs are the norm among highly qualified and ambitious women worldwide, the average workweek for employees of multinational corporations in developing economies is especially onerous. In Russia and China, the average workweek for multinational employees is well over sixty hours; in India and the UAE, it is more than fifty hours. “I think about seventy hours a week isn't uncommon,” reports one Hong Kong-based manager for a consulting company.
No particular sector or industry stands out in our data as more extreme than others, and neither seasoned executives nor junior professionals are immune to these demands. “In India, people look at you if you leave early,” observed a young finance professional. “It was only because people knew I was going to school that it was okay for me to leave at 5:30. You never do that unless it's only once a week or for a doctor's appointment.”
Furthermore, the demands of work have intensified over the past few years: one-quarter or more of the women in our sample report working some eight to eighteen hours more per week than three years ago, a staggering one to two extra workdays.
The same factors identified in our original study—the global span of operations, modern communication technology, compensation structures, and leaner and meaner organizations that are increasingly demanding of an employee's time—are also driving the extended hours in emerging markets. But the fact that the sun never sets on a multinational company's operations has an inordinate impact on its offices in far-flung geographies. Professional women in BRIC and the UAE routinely suffer from teleconference schedules that favor U.S. and European time zones. We heard numerous examples of conference calls being scheduled during the middle of their night, on local public holidays, or on weekends (especially if weekends