Gender Gap

Fast facts

How do men and women differ in their career goals?

Look at this week’s fast facts about Swedish students (source: Swedish Student Survey 2012).

Students are asked to choose 3 career goals from a list of nine. Here are the biggest differences between the sexes:
• To be secure or stable in my job: selected by 47% of women versus 33% of men (14% difference).
• To have work/life balance: selected by 53% of women versus 39% of men (14% difference)
• To be a technical or functional expert: selected by 10% of women versus 23% of men (13% difference)

*Headline taken from John Gray’s Book: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

• Universum released the results of its UK student survey, based on over 13,000 respondents – the banks are back, but Apple and Google continue to dominate.
• BP holds strong despite last year’s negative publicity around the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Nokia that has lost significant market share has also lost important employer appeal.
• Job security was the fifth career goal in 2008, third in 2009 and 2010, and is now the second career goal in 2011.
• Research is available on UK students’ preferences of employers and career expectations – contact us!

Based on 41,532 employer evaluations, reflecting the opinions of more than 13,000 students, Universum released the UK 2011 Ideal Employer rankings.

Employers from the banking sector are back in students’ good books as they climbed the rankings. Yet employers with innovative and exciting products continue to be the favourite employers for engineering, IT and business students: Apple (1st business, 2nd engineering/IT) and Google (2nd business, 1st for engineering/IT). Read the rest of this entry »

As a fun follow-up to yesterday’s post, I mentioned that the meaning or understanding of an employer offering can change depending on the culture or country you’re in, right?

Well, we saw that for the British a positive work environment was one of the most important criteria of work/life balance (27%). Now for the French, however, the meaning of work-life balance is somewhat different.

Close to 40 per cent of 26,800 French job-seekers say that work/life balance means mostly having enough leisure time for their private life, while respect for leisure time was important to only 13 per cent in the UK – a striking difference.

Another interesting dissimilarity between the two nationalities is with regard to both financial and job security. Eighteen per cent of French versus 26 per cent of British students thought financial security was an important component, as 10 per cent of  French versus 24 per cent of British students thought job security was imperative. It seems that the French are less concerned about money and losing jobs.  

Yet what do they have in common? Similar to students in the UK, the French also feel that a good office atmosphere (35%) and interesting and challenging work (26%) help contribute to finding a harmonious balance – something which both parties seem to agree upon.  So far, so good…we might have found the common denominators for both countries.

The meaning of work/life balance in France

• It’s mostly about generating a positive work environment and giving employees the means to live – a secure and steady income.

People would naturally assume that work/life balance would mean working less and having more spare time with family and friends. Or would it mean something else?

UK students define the meaning of work/life balance, based on the answers of 13,000 students. The good news for employers is that it doesn’t mean working less.

Surprisingly for UK career-seekers, work/life balance mostly means the following: a positive work atmosphere (27%), financial stability (26%), job security (24%), interesting and challenging work (23%), flexible working hours (22%), etc.

In fact, only a minority of students think that work/life balance should be: consideration for private interests when requesting leave (6%), leisure activities with colleagues (6%), adequate recovery time following peak work periods (5%), compliance with standard working hours (5%) . 

In short, if you’re an employer keen on implementing a work/life balance programme in the UK, you’ll just have to work on 1) creating a positive vibe, 2) remunerating people fairly, 3) offering them secure employment,  4) giving them interesting and challenging work as well as 5) flexible working hours – doesn’t sound hard now, does it?

Be careful though, work/life balance could take on a different meaning depending on the culture and country you work in. Therefore, don’t be to bold and claim you offer something, until you have confirmed how the labour market understands the employer offering.

The meaning of work/life balance