definitely happy being with GE,” says Heather Wang, vice-president of human resources of GE Global Growth & Operations, even though her job requires a crushing travel schedule. In one recent month, she circumnavigated the globe, spending two days at GE headquarters in Connecticut, flying back to her office in Brussels, visiting France, Germany, and London, and then heading off to Poland, Dubai, and China, where her husband and young daughter live. Despite the constant jet lag, she wouldn't have it any other way. “I feel inspired by helping people become successful. That's more important to me than my personal life.”
The rich reservoir of ambition among educated women in the BRIC countries and the UAE represents a huge opportunity for employers, particularly because it is reinforced by an extraordinary degree of commitment and loyalty that these women bring to work.
Top talent in emerging markets has a reputation for being notoriously mercurial and hard to hold on to. A Towers Perrin survey found a mere 21 percent of global workers to be engaged in their work.12 Turnover rates are high, with one-fifth of companies in developing countries reporting that they have to replace half their staff annually.13 In Russia, recent university graduates with fluency in a couple of languages and a few years' experience at a multinational corporation “are constantly being pitched by headhunters, so people jump every few months for a minor raise in salary,” reports Alexandra Shaforost, a management consultant advising foreign companies in Russia. India's business process outsourcing industry is particularly infamous for its churn. Before the financial crisis, software engineers employed by Wipro, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and other Bangalore outsourcers were switching jobs as often as three times a year to boost their pay and scale up the management ladder, according to a recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek.14 Although turnover rates froze during the recession, robust first-quarter 2010 results sent the industry's revolving door spinning furiously, with Wipro losing 17 percent of its employees, Infosys 19 percent, and HCL Technologies 22 percent in the January–March period.15
By contrast, our data on highly qualified women in the BRIC countries and the UAE counters the image of capricious job-hoppers, always on the lookout for a higher salary and willing to exploit the paucity of qualified talent to get it. Our analysis—which delves into actual intentions and career goals—reveals a surprisingly strong sense of commitment among women toward their employers. Nearly 90 percent express loyalty to their current employer, with 49 percent declaring a desire to continue working at their current company for three years or longer.
Furthermore, more than 80 percent of our respondents in Brazil, Russia, India, and the UAE report loving their work, and a similarly high percentage in Russia, India, and the UAE are “willing to go the extra mile” for their companies. Well-qualified BRIC and UAE women express a deep connection with and passion for their jobs, citing intellectual stimulation, a sense of personal growth, and the quality of colleagues as key motivators. A female professional services employee in China says, “My company has provided me with the platform to do things I really want to do,” a message echoed by a senior manager at a multinational corporation in Brazil, who considers her company to be “like a university—you can learn so much here.”
These factors mirror, in part, our earlier findings about what motivates top performers in the United States. As described in Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down, a large majority of both men and women point to the challenge and stimulation of the work.16 Compensation, recognition, status, “meaning and purpose,” and flex options were also important drivers. Interestingly, money, though important, wasn't a dominating factor. Less than half (40 percent) of the respondents in our U.S. survey rated high levels of compensation as the main reason they loved their jobs.
Among female top talent in the United States, monetary rewards were trumped by four other factors. In focus groups, high-performing women repeatedly talked about the importance of respect and recognition—from bosses and companies—and the satisfaction they derived from working with a group of great colleagues.
Among women in emerging markets, compensation and job security are major motivators—no surprise in economies that have been marked by political, economic, and social volatility. But these women, too, like to feel good about their employers and to reaffirm that their efforts at work are part of a greater purpose, whether it's lifting up their country or finding opportunities that help their compatriots move forward. Booz's Leila Hoteit recalls, “One of my first projects was working on a huge cultural district being built here, with a multibillion-dollar budget and input from the Guggenheim and Louvre museums. One of the tasks we undertook on the project was to benchmark world-class museums and cities, such as Bilbao, that had been transformed by such cultural projects. So we went around the world benchmarking museums. The sense of satisfaction you get is different here.”
THE LESSON FOR GLOBAL COMPANIES
The rich reservoir of loyalty and commitment among educated women in the BRIC countries and the UAE, however, cannot be taken for granted. Rather, the data need to be considered within the context of their high levels of ambition and aspiration. To fully realize the enormous potential of female talent in these countries, employers need to go the extra mile.
What can organizations do to keep these women stimulated, motivated, and committed? “I'm interested in having a very challenging position. That's something I'm always looking for,” says Natasha, a senior executive in Russia. (Some names and affiliations have been changed. When only first names are used, they are pseudonyms.) Parvati, an Indian management consultant for an international company, is unambiguous about what she seeks from her work and employer: “I want the ability to solve interesting problems that are constantly different in scope and scale, problems that don't have a clearcut solution, so you have the intellectual freedom to figure things out.” In short, employers must provide women with access to a meaningful range of opportunities to grow, develop, and advance.
The value proposition offered by educated women in emerging markets to employers is, in a word, compelling. In return for intellectually challenging work, good colleagues, respect and recognition, and competitive compensation—the mainstays highly qualified Western women want to underpin their careers—ambitious BRIC and UAE women respond with uncommon levels of hard work, loyalty, and commitment.
But there's a significant caveat intrinsic to this optimistic portrayal of women in emerging markets: as noted earlier, BRIC and UAE women are neither clones of their Western counterparts nor Western wannabes. To fully realize the potential of this rich reservoir of female talent, multinational employers must provide ways to break down barriers raised by culture and tradition.
2
Pitfalls and Trip Wires
When Subha Barry was the head of global diversity for Merrill Lynch, she noticed a curious phenomenon among career women in India. “You'd have women with the highest of qualifications, the most incredible talents, and yet, while in appearance and intellect and abilities at work they can hold their own with the best of Western women, you would find them doing surprising things, like saying, ‘I had a baby. I need to stop working and go home.’” Barry adds, I'm not talking one or two. I'm talking droves.”
Child care itself wasn't the primary issue. Although one of the most common career killers for women in the United States and Western Europe, it is a less serious problem for their counterparts in emerging markets. Instead, says Barry, who is herself Indian, it was being used as an excuse that masked the symptoms of a much more pernicious issue: family and social pressures pile on to women when they marry and ratchet up after they have children, and become almost crushing as their parents and in-laws age.
These family-rooted “pulls,” together with cultural and social “pushes,” can sabotage a woman's career aspirations, derailing
