Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success - Hardcover

Hewlett, Sylvia Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1422101029 ISBN 13: 9781422101025

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 2007

Synopsis

With talent shortages looming over the next decade, what can companies do to attract and retain the large number of professional women who are forced off the career highway?

By documenting the successful efforts of a group of cutting-edge global companies to retain talented women and reintegrate them if they’ve already left, Off-Ramps and On-Ramps answers this critical question. Working closely with companies such as Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner, General Electric and others, author Sylvia Ann Hewlett identifies what works and why. Based on firsthand experience with these companies, along with extensive data that provides the most comprehensive and nuanced portrait of women's career paths, this book documents the actions forward-thinking companies must take to reverse the female brain drain and ensure their access to talent over the long term.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

How to Keep Your Talent On Track

Legions of professional womenstep off the career fast track at least once to raise children, care for their elderly parents, or manage other family demands. But when they’re ready to step back on track—just a short time later—they hit a wall On-ramps are few and far between, and the financial penalties for “time out” are punishing. Result? Many women are lost on reentry, and companies miss the chance to leverage this talent pool.

With talent shortages looming over the next decade, companies must reverse this female brain drain if they hope to beat rivals. But how can companies attract and retain professional women?Off-Ramps and On-Rampsanswers this critical question by documenting the successful efforts of the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force—a group of thirty-four leading edge global companies including General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Lehman Brothers, and Time Warner. Spearheaded by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, over the past three years the task force has developed and driven eighteen best-practice models for companies seeking to recruit, retain and reattach talented women. In this book, you’ll find strategies for:

Providing arc-of-career flexibility that enables women to “ramp down” and then “ramp up” without losing traction?

Combating the stigma that all too often undermines alternative work arrangements

Helping women claim and sustain ambition

Off-Ramps and On-Rampsis based on first hand experience with gold-standard companies and is grounded in extensive new data that provides the most comprehensive and nuanced picture of women’s career paths to date. A vital resource, this book smashes a “male competitive model” that has too long insisted on smooth, cumulative lockstep careers as a prerequisite for success— to the detriment of ambitious women and talent hungry companies everywhere.

About the Author:

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the founding President of the Center for Work-Life Policy. She is also the Director of the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. She is the author of five critically acclaimed nonfiction books including Creating a Life, named by BusinessWeek as one of the ten best books of 2002.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1422101029
• ISBN 13: 9781422101025
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 299