Women Feeling the Pressure From Unsustainable Workplace Cultures

Building a Sustainable Work Culture Is Vital for Growth and Retention While Roadblocks Remain in the Eyes of Many Employees, According to New Survey From Clockwise

A sustainable work culture produces several major benefits for businesses, but challenges facing female and junior-level employees threaten to hamper profits and employee retention. This is according to a new survey report released today by time orchestration platform Clockwise.

When developing the report, “The Real ROI of a Sustainable Work Culture,” Clockwise analyzed 1,000 full-time knowledge workers in the U.S. to learn more about how culture impacts employee wellbeing and the overall health of a business. According to the data, there is a concerning disparity in the perceptions of different employees depending on their gender and role within the organization.

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The Gender Gap

Female employees were more than twice as likely as men to say that their work culture was very unsustainable (9% of women, compared to only 4% of men). Overall, more than 1 in 5 women (21%) believe that their work culture is unsustainable. Additionally, nearly a quarter of women without children (24%), who tend to be younger and earlier in their careers, felt this way – more than any others.

Working mothers, who have been forced to juggle their careers with seemingly unending childcare disruptions over the past two years of the pandemic, have also been notably challenged. Despite these issues, they were clear about what it would take to improve the sustainability of their workplaces. Half (50%) said that better benefits or compensation should be a top priority, followed by more opportunities for growth (31%), better communication from management (29%) and more flexibility in when or where they work (27%).

The Leadership Gap

There is also a major perception gap between senior leaders and the rest of the organization. A mere 5% of senior leaders feel that their workplace culture is unsustainable, compared to more than 1 in 5 individual contributors (22%), 19% of junior managers and 11% of middle managers. This indicates that many companies may be slow to improve as out-of-touch executives remain unaware of what the majority of their workforce is experiencing.

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The ROI of a Sustainable Culture

Leaders have good reason to prioritize closing these gaps, as the data shows that an unsustainable workplace culture could have severe consequences when it comes to business performance:

• A large majority of workers (70%) felt that their workplace culture impacted their company’s ability to grow, indicating that these issues could have a direct impact on profits.
• 71% of respondents who say that their workplace is sustainable feel that this positive culture improves their levels of engagement.
• Employees that reported working within unsustainable cultures were more than nine times as likely to say they don’t see themselves at the same company in the next 12 months, a potentially major impact to retention as organizations continue to feel the repercussions of The Great Resignation.
• More than half (64%) believe that their workplace culture impacts their company’s ability to innovate.

“We firmly believe that the future of work is sustainable. Unfortunately, our data proves that this sustainability is far too unevenly distributed,” said Anna Dearmon Kornick, Head of Community at Clockwise. “Actively investing in building a strong, inclusive and empathetic culture is now an absolute business imperative. In order to stay competitive in today’s tight talent market, business leaders and managers need to champion work/life balance while accounting for each team member’s individual time and flexible working preferences. Otherwise, they risk getting left behind.”

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