70% Indian Women Employees Will Quit If Not Provided With ‘Flexible’ Working Conditions (Linkedin Survey)

LinkedIn released its latest consumer research report which highlighted the challenges faced by working women, based on 2,266 respondents in India.

Shying Away From Requesting Flexibility

The study found that women hesitate to ask for greater flexibility and re-entering the workforce due to employers’ unwillingness towards flexible working and career breaks.

India’s working women are quitting or considering quitting their jobs in 2022 due to suffering pay cuts, bias, and exclusion for wanting flexible work.

Major impact of the pandemic has been increasing the willingness of women to work more flexibly, which is 8 in 10 (83 per cent).

72 per cent of working women reject job roles that don’t allow them to work flexibly.

70 per cent have already quit or are considering it because they weren’t offered the right flexible policies.

Benefits Of Flexible Work

2 in 5 women extolled the virtues of flexible working, saying that it improves their work-life balance (43 per cent) and helps them progress their careers (43 per cent).

1 in 3 said it improves their mental health (34 per cent) and increases their likelihood of staying in their current jobs (33 per cent).

However, in India employers have a strong bias against flexible work.

Punished For Requests

88 per cent working women said that they had to take a pay cut in exchange for flexibility

2 in 5 (37 per cent) had their request denied, and 1 in 4 (27 per cent) struggled to convince their bosses to accept their request.

As a result, they hold back from voicing their needs due to fear of exclusion from promotions, overtime work, pay cuts and unfavorable treatment by superiors.

This guilt and stigma around flexible policies keeps 1 in every 3 working women from telling their clients (34 per cent), colleagues (35 per cent), and friends (33 per cent) that they work flexibly.

Utilising Career Breaks

Working women in the country are coming up with ways to juggle personal commitments and career progress within rigid schedules.

4 in every 5 (78 per cent) are taking career breaks to improve their well-being, plan career changes, and boost their confidence at work.

9 in 10 are using their time off to learn new hard and soft skills.

They are using career breaks to upskill themselves and boost their employability in today’s tight job market.

Long Standing Stigma

However, not all female professionals have benefited from this. 

About 4 in every 5 (77 per cent) who took a break say that it actually set them back due to the stigma surrounding career breaks among recruiters and employers.

As a result, they face considerable difficulty in explaining their career break to recruiters.

Omission From Interviews/CVs 

So they either exclude career breaks from their CVs (42 per cent) or lie about their breaks to potential recruiters when being interviewed (35 per cent).

80 per cent wish for ways that would help them represent their career breaks more positively to hiring managers.