Author Archive
More People are Getting Raises in 2011—Are You?
Posted by: | CommentsAs reported by Kimberly Weisul in BNET, salaries are on the increase, back up to the levels before the great recession, according to a WorldatWork study.
There are some reasons for reserved optimism. (Weisul bills herself as an optimist. And it’s tough to be a small business writer and an optimist at the same time these days. . .) Here are some key points on the 2011 salaries and raises:
• Salary budgets increased by 2.8% this year. They’re projected to rise by 2.9% in 2012.
• Most employees are getting raises. In 2011, 88% of employees got a raise to their base pay. Compare that with 80% in 2009.
• We’re moving past salary freezes with just 3% of employers say they’re planning across-the-board salary freezes this year, compared to 43% in 2009.
All of that is good news, at least within the context of the sluggish economy. So, just how much more are high performers getting? The “highest performers” have received a 4% raise in 2011. The “middle performers” got 2.7%, and the “low performers” got 0.7%. (I’m not clear on whether these raises have all taken effect or if some are projected throughout the rest of the year.)
Why Women Execs are Twice as Likely to Leave Their Jobs
Posted by: | CommentsRecently I blogged about research indicating that women executives are more than twice as likely to leave their jobs as men.
As reported in U.S. News, the researchers determined that 7.2% of women executives in the survey left their jobs, compared to 3.8% of men. This consisted of both voluntary and involuntary
departures. Read the entire article here.
The researchers suggested that women in mid-level management may not be getting the opportunities and support that they need to advance. They also concluded that gender discrimination wasn’t at work “at an obvious level.”
Based on my research writing Sun Tzu for Women: The Art of War for Winning in Business, I think there’s more to the story when it comes to women choosing to leave executive positions. Women have been starting businesses at twice the rate of men in recent years, even in a down economy. This demonstrates that we aren’t as risk averse as is often mistakenly believed.
How Important is Independence?
Women voluntary leave executive positions for a lot of reasons, from personal to professional. But one of the big ones is something to which many of us can relate: the quest for independence. In my research (and personal experience), this is the reason most women leave corporate careers to start their own businesses—or even to join other, often smaller, more hands-on teams.
Can You Be Successful In Your Business’s Culture?
Posted by: | CommentsAre you having a difficult time excelling in your business’s corporate culture? Are you in an environment where you can succeed? Whether you work for a Fortune 500, small business, or a start-up, the question remains the same.
This question is about much more than fitting in. I’m not talking about getting along with others and doing what you need to do get your job done. I’m talking about allowing your unique success attributes to come through.
If you find that you’re struggling to be fulfilled and to be valued, appreciated and substantiated, maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s them.
I gave a presentation yesterday to the Executive Women’s Roundtable in Northern Virginia titled, “Using The Art of War to Find Your Competitive Advantage.” The focus was on how women can understand and leverage their uniquely feminine attributes for optimal success, and how to avoid trying to lead, follow or manage like “a man.”
After the presentation a woman approached a great question. What you do when you’re in a culture that doesn’t value your feminine attributes, such as collaboration, team building, sensitivity to the needs/objections of others…the list goes on and on?”
Inc Magazine’s 10 Tips on How to Research Your Competition
Posted by: | CommentsInc. Magazine recently ran a piece titled, “10 Tips on How to Research Your Competition.” If Tweets, Likes and LinkedIn Shares are any indication, this piece by Darren Dahl, has generated quite an online buzz.
Must be a compelling topic…
The interest and importance of researching your competition is a no-brainer. Obviously it’s important, no matter what industry you’re in, what you’re selling or who you’re selling to. You have to know what your competitors are doing.
But more importantly you have to know what the competition will do.
Sun Tzu had a GREAT deal to say about knowing what the competitor, or enemy, will do. He said a lot about reading the signs so you can launch the most effective campaign. There was no substitute for intelligence for Sun Tzu.
The same is true for you.
The question of how best to know your enemy is so near and dear to me that I was interviewed for and quoted in the Inc. article. I hope that by reading it you’ll gain some new insights into a very old question.
Women Executives More than Twice as Likely to Leave Jobs
Posted by: | CommentsFemale executives are more than twice as likely to leave their jobs as men. This includes both voluntarily and involuntarily departures. Yesterday I was interviewed by a reporter writing for CareerBuilder on negotiating for women in business, and the data from a study by John Becker-Blease of Oregon State University, and his colleagues from Loyola Marymount University and Trinity College, came to mind. They analyzed data from Standard & Poor’s 1500 firms to reach their conclusions. The researchers determined if departures were voluntary or involuntary based on evaluating public news accounts of each executive.
They determined that 7.2% of women executives in the survey left their jobs, compared to 3.8% of men. Based on their analysis, voluntary rates were 4.3% for women and 2.8% for men, and involuntary rates were 2.9% for women and 0.9% for men.
As reported in U.S. News, Becker-Blease said, “We really had to dig deep to tease out any systematic patterns behind these departures. . . We did find that women were slightly more likely to leave smaller firms, and firms with more male-dominated boards, but this was a small effect size.”
Is the Male-Female Wage Gap a Myth? You Decide….
Posted by: | CommentsStirred. That’s the best word I can use to describe how I feel after seeing the very recent findings from the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) about the gender wage gap. I’m even more . . . stirred . . . by IWF’s Carrie Lukas’ Op-Ed, “There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap” in the Wall Street Journal.
Boy, is she going to get some hate mail!
Carrie and her group draw some unexpected conclusions. They say the sorts of things women aren’t supposed to say about the wage gap. They go so far as to challenge the wage gap altogether. I watched Lukas on Fox News yesterday. There she said that the oft quoted statistic of women earning .77 on the dollar when compared to men isn’t comparing apples to proverbial apples.
Why? Because this doesn’t compare people working the same jobs, at the same hours, with the same education. Instead, it compares full time working women to full time working men, and men and women often have different jobs. She even said that women tend to spend less time on the job than men do. (Not all women, of course. We know who we are.)
Thanks for the Women on Business Welcome!
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s my pleasure to join the writing team of Women on Business. This is a great community of writers who share excellent and practical business tips. Many writers also raise important questions for women in business.
With my posts, I’ll be sharing some best practices advice for marketing, public relations, communications, copywriting and even general business strategy. I’ll also write about business strategy based on the classic The Art of War, based on my new book, Sun Tzu for Women: The Art of War for Winning in Business. For centuries men have used The Art of War to wage wars and business. Women, however, by contrast, and generally speaking, haven’t been major proponents of Sun Tzu’s classic.
That’s too bad, because I believe firmly there’s a lot in The Art of War that women can use to propel their careers and think differently about their businesses—without adopting masculine or militaristic characteristics. I’ll blog about how. I’ll also include relevant and timely research and news that impacts women in business and will frequently tie that back into Sun Tzu’s strategy.
So is Sun Tzu for women? Stick around, read on, and you be the judge. . .
