Key Research

Workplaces are adopting more supportive practices.

Why are we not seeing more positive outcomes for women?

Our study draws on the psychological theories to examine the processes under which formal (e.g., mentoring programs, women’s networks, and flexible working arrangements) and informal (e.g., role autonomy, psychological safety, supervisory support, organisational culture) supporting practices enhance women accountants’ wellbeing and organisational outcomes.

Key Findings

1. Practices Supporting Women

EFFICACY PRACTICES SUPPORTING WOMEN

    • Flexible Working Arrangements emerged the most often cited practices that support women.
      Flexible working arrangements are the most highly adopted practice from our survey and most utilized by women, followed by taking carer’s leave; in our study carers leave leads to more trust in the organization and resilience.
    • It is important that working flexibly is not seen as a “women’s arrangement”
      It greatly helps women balance their family and work life, it helps them even more if these arrangements are just seen as normal business practice and are utilized to the same extent of their male peers.
    • Flexible working arrangements lead to more trust, wellbeing and engagement, but it also leads to more burnout
      A potential difficulty women face is when separating their work from their home
      lives and also to do with potential work overload.
    • Coaching and mentoring are also seen as valuable investments by women.
      Coaching is seen as being particularly helpful at the moment of career transitioning or change, such as returning from maternity leave. Availability of coaching leads to lower turnover intentions.
    • Importance of mentoring in their workplace
      Mentoring is more about having that support available to them when they are facing challenges at work. It also leads to more wellbeing and lower turnover intentions
Graph showing percentage of women CPA and partners in Australia

Fig.1 Percentage of women CPA
and partners in Australia

FORMAL VS INFORMAL PRACTICES SUPPORTING WOMEN

  • Formal practices are important and they help women, particularly their sense of feeling like the have the resources needed to make an impact in their work role.
  • Informal practices come out as being particularly effective in psychologically supporting women.Informal practices can include AUTONOMY that women felt that they had in their workplace, the PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY that the workplace provided, SUPPORTIVE LEADERSHIP and CULTURE.
    These can often be overlooked practices but our survey shows that they are very important supports for resilience and well- being in the workplace.

FORMAL VS INFORMAL PRACTICES SUPPORTING WOMEN

  • Formal practices are important and they help women, particularly their sense of feeling like the have the resources needed to make an impact in their work role.
  • Informal practices come out as being particularly effective in psychologically supporting women.Informal practices can include AUTONOMY that women felt that they had in their workplace, the PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY that the workplace provided, SUPPORTIVE LEADERSHIP and CULTURE.
    These can often be overlooked practices but our survey shows that they are very important supports for resilience and well- being in the workplace.

2. Big 4 vs Non-Big 4*

  • Big 4 were significantly more proactive in implementing FORMAL supporting practices (Figure 2) such as carers leave and the availability of flexible working arrangements.
  • Big 4 were significantly less proactive in having INFORMAL supporting practices such as their workers having high degrees of autonomy in the work that they do.
  • Women in Big 4 also show lower team-based PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY which is the shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking and team members feel accepted and respected, but also low supervisory LEADERSHIP SUPPORT and a poor supportive culture.
    This is important because in the study we see that while FORMAL practices can have some positive psychological impact, the INFORMAL supporting practices have a much greater positive psychological impact and wellbeing outcomes.
  • Non-Big 4 firms exhibit higher WELLBEING and RESILIENCE than Big 4
  • Impact and interpersonal trust at work are also much higher and in terms of OUTCOMES, work engagement is also significantly higher for women employed in non-big 4 firms.
  • BURNOUT levels, however, are about the same across Big 4 and non-Big 4 workplaces.
  • TURNOVER intentions are significantly higher in non-Big 4 firms, despite higher health outcomes.

* Big 4 indicates the following professional service firms: Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC.

Fig.2 Adoption of formal and informal practices in Big 4 and non-Big 4

Fig.3 Wellbeing and resilience in Big 4 and non-Big 4

3. Problematics and Obstacle

OBSTACLES WOMEN FACE AT WORK

  • Lack of women in leadership roles.
  • Lack of modelling of women working successfully WITH work-life-balance in organisations.
    Younger women need to see role models who show them that it is possible to continue to succeed with a family.
  • Lack of BOUNDARIES between their work and personal life.
    This can often make applying of more senior roles undesirable.
    Some more senior women had learnt really TOUGH LESSONS, particularly in relation to stress and burnout, and for not having enforced their own boundaries between work and homelife.
  • Women in some Big 4 are feeling that they are constantly COMPETING with other women and with male peers for their next promotion and that time off compromises those opportunities
  • Women at the top feel ISOLATED.
    They may be either the only woman on a board or one of only a few, they need to work very hard at monitoring and moderating their behaviours in these roles. It takes them a long time to feel that they can bring their ‘TRUE SELF’ to the table.

MAIN PROBLEMATICS ABOUT PRACTICES SUPPORTING WOMEN

  • Quotas: love-hate relationship
    Acknowledgement that they are needed particularly initially.
    Many women cringe at the thought that quotas could diminish the value placed on their promotions.
  • Senior roles and responsibilities of people in that team: stereotypical gender roles.
    Examples: the HR person is female, the Comms person is female, the risk person in female. But the people who are actually making the decisions are male.
  • Women are not just wanting a seat at the table, they are wanting to have an equal voice when it comes to decision-making.
  • Leadership courses that are orientated towards women may be considered ‘gendering practices’ – while potential helpful, they reinforce the idea that women ‘lack of the ‘right’ leadership skills’.

4. What can organisation do?

  • Culture change is key.
    A more authentic approach to work-life balance.
    The culture of many accounting firms was described to
    us and being completely inconsistent with the ‘worklife balance’ narrative that those same firms like to spruik. Many workplace cultures demand long hours and have a very competitive working environment.
    Many mid to late career women told us that it was these cultural reasons why they had to leave their prior workplaces, as the culture was incompatible with their personal needs.
    Many of the young women saw this as a culture that they could tolerate before motherhood but they could not see how they could possibly balance motherhood and career in this type of working environment.
  • While managers publicly support work life balance, most do not model it themselves, and this seems to be essential in order to create an authentic culture that is consistent with that narrative the organisation likes to spruik.
  • “Huge risk to personal brand” to disclose mental health challenges -> burn out acceptance by the accounting firms
    Investing in creating a psychologically safe environment is essential to retaining women who face mental health challenges and not having unsustainable workloads will help enormously in preventing mental health challenges and burnout in the first place.
  • Workplaces can also actively create more part-time leadership positions
    Dispel the myth that women who work part-time are not ambitious or not serious about their work and cannot be successful.
Culture Change is Key

Fig.4 Culture as a driver for change

5. COVID19 pandemic and practices supporting women?

  • The demands of work are very high.
    In addition to this many women have lost resources
    that usually help them balance their home and work life such as lost childcare, access to family for help and even domestic help such as cleaners. In many households there is an unequal distribution for domestic arrangements that women have with their partners.
  • Changes in the perception of supporting practices.
    The pandemic is likely to significantly help reduce the stigma of working from home or working flexible hours. The pandemic is also likely to lead to more men choosing to utilise flexible working arrangements. However, there is still a very long way to go in making flexible working arrangements a more accessible option for women and in embedding this practice firmly into the workplace culture.

Methodology

  • Surveyed over 200 women who were certified accountants
    Snapshot of the supports their workplaces provide, their utilisation of these supports and how these impact psychological and wellbeing outcomes
  • Interviewed 31 women accountants
    Inquiry about their experiences and how
    their workplaces impact their wellbeing, what obstacles prevent them in achieving in the workplace and what changes are needed to move forward in order to see more equality and advancement of women in professional service firms.

Other ongoing projects

Work in progress: Female Accountants Well-being and the role of Organisational Voice, Emotional Labour and the interplay with Management Control Systems

PARTICIPANTS NEEDED:

Researchers from Monash Business School would like to invite female accountants to participate in their exploratory research. This would involve participating in a confidential survey taking around 25 minutes and will provide valuable information about the health of Australian female accountants and the extent to which they feel that they have the opportunity to assert voice in their organisation. We are also interested in capturing the nature and extent of emotional labour attributable to female accountants in their jobs. Each participant will go in the draw to win one of 125, $40 ColesMyer vouchers.