More than two million women exited the workforce during the pandemic. Now, employers are working hard not only to make up for that loss, but also ensure that they don't lose any
Global recruitment marketing agency HireClix may have the answer. The company is made up predominantly of women — 61% of its overall workforce, 50%
"We don't think of women as a monolith — they don't all need the same things," says Kara Yarnot, VP at HireClix. "I think my team, where there are eight of us and seven are women. To be successful means something different for every single one of my direct reports, so we have very specific and intense training for all of our managers to help them understand how to manage people differently and meet them where they are."
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In the latest phase of the pandemic, companies have been struggling to keep women engaged. In 2021, 71% of women intended to stay with their employer, according to the Harvard Business Review. That number dropped to 63% in 2022. The same went for
"You actually need to sit down and talk to the women that you would want to make sure are staying with the organization and make those changes — that's what is really important," she says. "You have to show them that you are willing to promote women and that you're willing to give them the opportunities and publicize what you're doing."
Yarnot spoke with EBN to share her thoughts and insights on what it really means to successfully retain women in today's workforce, and what employers should take away from HireClix's own strategies.
As a female VP overlooking a predominantly female workforce, how do you keep retention so high?
We try to offer a full overall benefits package, not just salary. For example, none of us pay a cent for healthcare premiums, whether that's health, dental or vision. People don't believe me when I tell them that, but it's an amazing perk as someone who was once self-employed and had to pay all of my own health care costs before coming here. We have a great retirement match program and unlimited PTO — and that is not name-only, we really do encourage that; I personally took four and a half weeks of vacation last year. We have fully paid maternity and paternity leave for 12 weeks, as well as very flexible schedules. We've incorporated hybrid work. We really look at what it takes for the individual to be successful here and what helps individuals be successful — which in the end helps women be more successful.
What do you mean when you say that helping the individual inherently helps women?
So much of what we try to do sometimes in the DEI space accidentally ends up separating people. But we're trying to think of everybody as individuals, and if we're able to meet people where they are as individuals, it helps people as a whole. For example, even by empowering the men at HireClix, the women in their lives are going to be better empowered, and it helps them in their workplace. That's one of the reasons we provide paid paternity leave, as well. Because it helps the women in their lives, which ultimately helps all women across the workplace in general, which enables them as a whole. And it just continues to have those effects across the entire workplace, not just HireClix.
You've managed to achieve equal representation across the entire company. Has that contributed to your high retention rates?
It helps a lot. When you break down our leadership team it's six people — three men and three women. If you look at the three of us women at the senior leader level, we've all come to the company from different career paths. One has spent pretty much her entire career in the recruitment advertising space, I come from the entrepreneur space, and another grew up at this organization. So it shows that women can come to leadership from a variety of different angles, and still be leaders here at HireClix.
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In your own experience navigating the workforce, what has been one of your biggest obstacles and how does it translate into what you see today?
My experience has been that women are over mentored and under sponsored. So we're always like, "Oh, let's give women a mentor. Let's coach her on this." Very early in my career I was given a horrible label that still lives with me to this day — I was called "abrasive." And here I am about to turn 50, and this still hangs over my head. I was given "coaching" on how to be less harsh and how to present myself, all while there were guys alongside me delivering the same message. Do you think they were called any of those words? Of course not. But I was mentored to be softer. I was never sponsored to be tapped on the shoulder for opportunities. Throughout my career I would see men getting promoted over me for things I was more qualified for, but while I had mentors, they had the sponsors — they had the men who were giving them this special assignment, or giving them a stretched promotion that maybe they weren't ready for. So when I have had the opportunities in my career to sponsor people, I've done so, and said, "I think you should give her that stretch assignment," or, "I think you should give her that promotion and that opportunity."
If you could speak to the employers who are trying to keep their retention rates as high as yours, what would you say?
You will have to sit down with the women in your organization, those that are your top performers, those that you see as having the opportunities and find out what it is that's keeping them there. What are they looking for in the next move? What's missing for them? And don't just put the development plans in place, but put those succession plans in place — where are we moving them, are we assigning them those sponsors? Who are the people that are going to help them move forward?
Then, act on it. Measure what's happening. For example, set the goal that 60% of your managers will be women by 2025, and publicize that and show the progress that you're making. People in disadvantaged groups just want to see that you have goals and you're moving towards them. You might not be there yet, but they want to see that you're making progress and you're putting steps in place. If you're doing it quietly and hiding behind closed doors, because you're afraid that you're not making progress, that's worse than putting the goal out there and saying you're working towards it.
