Every which way you look at it, career progression for women stalls in the “middle years.” In our coaching programs and workshops, we have always asked participants to reflect on their values because we know that when their is a misalignment of values between an employee and either their manager or workplace – the culture – they often lose confidence, become disengaged, or leave.  They are certainly not promoters of their business if the culture doesn’t work for them. In this report by Bain, the most highly rated detractor for women was “My company does not have a good culture, and its values don’t resonate with me.” Flip to promoters, and it was exactly the opposite “My company has a great culture, and its values resonate with me.”

It also means that every manager counts: if you’re in middle management, you’ve generally got a lot of managing going on, little flexibility and given the statistics of women represented in leadership, you’ll be in an organisation with few female role models in leadership, so workplaces need to invest in training their managers to support this talented cohort of female employees to navigate the terrain.

The business world has a choice: invest in supporting your talented female management through the “middle years” or wear the cost: turnover in Australia is estimated to cost business some $20billion annually.

You can access the full article by Bain & Co here: ‘Creating a positive cycle’.