3 Ways to Leverage Tech to Empower Women at Work
Discover how companies can leverage their workplace benefits technology to support female employees.
In today’s economy, many of your workplace participants may be feeling a pinch in their pocketbooks—especially women. Yet workplace benefits (and the technology powering them) provide three keys to help maximize impact and better support the female workforce, says Kate Winget, managing director, head of corporate & participant engagement and experience for Morgan Stanley at Work.
Today’s inflationary environment and volatile markets, coupled with back-to-school and -office season, are likely putting strain on many of your participant’s wallets—and women in particular. The combination of additional commuting and childcare expenses with rising prices makes autumn a great time to refocus on progress toward gender equality in the workplace—an especially important topic today.
Organizations are still in recovery mode from losing roughly 2.4 million women workers (vs. 1.8 million men) between February 2020 to February 2021, 1 and it’s vital to hire, retain, and engage women at work. In fact, performance for companies and the wider economy may depend on it: Distributing women across all levels of an organization correlates with higher average returns on company stock prices, according to Morgan Stanley Research, as well as lower return-on-equity volatility—making gender-diverse companies more resilient.2
One surefire way to better engage and address women’s needs at work is through your benefits offering—and the technology that supports it. Let’s look at three key focus areas where you can maximize your impact.
Move Toward Equality in Equity
Compensation is a persistent stumbling block on the road to gender equality and a key piece of the puzzle regarding supporting female employees. Our research shows that equity plans can amplify pre-existing compensation disparities if not handled with care. For example, vesting schedules and leave of absence policies disproportionately impact women, who are more likely to take leave for caregiving.
We often see that it makes a big difference when companies work with their providers to leverage their equity platform to run data analyses on who is engaging with equity programs, and how. Segment your data by job level, tenure, award amount—but most importantly, gender. The results may be eye-opening.
Pair your equity data and HR data to track how your company is promoting and supporting women’s career progression. Then, you can adjust equity plan design and the user experience accordingly—for example, to make equity shares available sooner, or pause rather than losing vesting time when an employee takes leave. Also consider more inclusive incentive programs such as employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs): Organizations with broad-based equity compensation programs tend to have less turnover and higher retention, including among women.4
Focus On Women’s Financial Wellness
Similarly, your overall workplace benefits suite can help address many of the societal issues driving persistent gender inequity in the workforce—thereby making your company a better place for women to build their careers. Benefits like financial counseling, a personalized employee experience, and financial wellness can help women tackle their unique challenges.
Flexible work arrangements, extended parental leave, childcare and eldercare subsidies, or backup care options can help move the needle on gender equality in your organization—and beyond. We have found only 45% of companies track financial wellness participation by gender, so that’s an important place to start. Measure how female participants engage with and feel about your workplace benefits so you can identify areas where they may want or need greater support.
Additionally, your benefits providers may have a centralized financial wellness platform ready to go out of the box that can help you streamline and direct your participant experience toward more holistic offerings that support women’s financial needs.
Reinvigorate Equal Retirement Participation
Retirement is another key area for supporting female employees: The Transamerica Center for Retirement found that women’s median retirement savings are equivalent to just one-third of men’s.6 Your 401(k) plan is essential to help improve women’s retirement outcomes—in fact, it may be their primary resource for saving for the future.
Again, start with your current platforms and segmented data to see how your female employees are faring. Are they enrolled? Taking advantage of a company match? How often are they interacting with their accounts?
Technological add-ons and features like auto-enrollment, auto-escalation, and catch-up contributions can also help increase participation rates and improve savings over time. Go the extra mile by providing access to a 401(k) plan advisor or Financial Advisor through your retirement platform to help women build a solid foundation for the future.
Multifaced Financial Empowerment
If your employee benefits are not a central part of your strategy to attract, retain, and support female employees, they should be: Over four out of five of female employees (81%) think employers should do more to help them get through specific financial troubles, and 93% of employers agree.7
Women want their employers to come alongside them on their financial journey, and it will take a multifaceted approach to keep up. Focus on expanding and promoting strategic benefits that can help women where they need it most, starting with equity solutions, financial wellness, and retirement—a solid base from which a more diverse and engaged workforce can grow.
Are you using workplace benefits technology to support women at work? Let us know how it helps engage female employees on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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