Hospitals looking to improve gender diversity in their senior ranks may need to change their communication style to retain female talent, reports Chicago Tribune.
Boston Consulting Group studied and compared professional satisfaction of men and women within its own workforce. BCG gathered its results from an annual employee survey completed by more than 200 employees.
Below are three findings.
1. Women placed more value on professional mentors. As a group, females ranked long-term relationships with mentors 20 percent higher than their male associates. Men who had mentors had an average 6 percent higher salary than men who didn't. But women who had mentors had an average 27 percent higher salary than women who didn't, according to the study.
2. Male leadership style. Female survey respondents in leadership roles indicated they felt pressured to adopt a stereotypically male, highly assertive communication style that was not effective for them. Women leaders often have different communication strengths that produce better results than if they adopted typically male behavior. Female employees' strengths should be recognized and encouraged to improve job satisfaction for senior female leaders, according to the study's authors.
3. Women respond to company culture more often than men. The survey found 44 percent of women would leave a company if they didn't like the culture, but only 3 percent would leave a company with their ideal culture. Among men, 46 percent would leave if they didn't like work culture and 23 percent would leave even if they did like the culture.