Global consulting firm Mercer, which is focused on health, wealth and career, has released its 2016 report on the state of women in the workplace around the world. To say it’s not a pretty picture would be an understatement.
Women are 118 years away from closing the gender gap, according to the new research published by Mercer in its When Women Thrive report.
That figure comes from the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Global Gender Gap report, and Mercer’s most recent research supports it.
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In its report, Mercer calls for action now. It’s about fairness – and also about money.
“Educated women who are not in the workforce represent a potential GDP increase of about $12 trillion,” Mercer calculates.
It turns out that more women in the workforce is good for business.
“To break through the inertia and accelerate progress, organizations need actual behavioral change on the individual level – beginning with leaders and progressing peer by peer to create real momentum for change,” the report states. “Women and men need targeted programmatic changes built on robust proof of what is helping and what is hurting the advancement of women intheir own organizations.”
When Women Thrive was established by the Women@Mercer business resource group, which was founded more than 10 years ago. Today, the group has 50 local chapters across Mercer that advise and empower efforts to recruit and empower women at Mercer.
As Mercer leaders see it, the effort benefits Mercer clients and helps boost Mercer’s own organizational performance.
Key findings of the 2016 report are:
• Women make up only 35 percent of the average company’s workforce at the professional level and above.
• Female representation declines as career level rises. Globally, women make up 33 percent of managers, 26 percent of senior managers, and only 20 percent of executives.
• There is an increased focus on hiring and promoting women into executive ranks, seemingly driven by regulation and heightened media attention.
• Current female hiring, promotion, and retention are insufficient to create gender equality over the next decade.
• Improvements in hiring at the highest levels of the organization are not extending to lower levels.
• The progress made over our 2014 data does not appear to be the result of systemic improvements in good practices that will support long-term success. Instead, it seems to result from ad hoc actions, such as increased hiring at the top.
For the 2016 report, Mercer received 647 survey submissions from 583 organizations around the world.
Thirty-one percent of the responses came from products and manufacturing industries; 24 percent from services and 11 percent from information and technology sector. Finance and banking also provided 11 percent of the responses, energy, 8 percent and 15 percent from all other industries.
Read the report.
