For a long time, women have struggled to find their rightful place in the corporate world. From managing expectations to juggling work-life balance, women have done it all to make it to 46% of the global workforce. The invisible barrier, which is the glass ceiling, prevented women from reaching the top for a substantial part of the century. Now that women are reaching the top, research has shown that they are often deceived into leadership roles when the ship is sinking, or when the organization is in crisis. Thus, finding themselves in another conundrum, termed the 'Glass Cliff' by Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam.
The Glass Cliff effect comes with significant downsides including:
- Stress added to an already stressful leadership role
- Frequent burnouts due to a declining situation and associated risks
- Increased chance of failure as a result of decline and risk
- Derailed careers because who would want to hire a failure
Getting into a risky situation gives some leaders the opportunity to prove themselves. However, this makes it ten times more challenging and stressful for women and people belonging to races and ethnicities that are underrepresented in leadership roles.
Women Empowered Talent Marketplace: The Answer To Glass Cliff!
Since a lot of companies struggle to match women leaders to appropriate leadership roles, an internal talent marketplace can be a potential way to address the glass cliff effect. It can help eradicate gender and racial discrimination by giving women and underrepresented employees access to growth opportunities and leadership roles in an organization. HR Managers can use the talent marketplace to help women upskill and reskill themselves to match short-term or long-term leadership roles.
Freelance platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork have digitally enabled the visibility of talent, making it easier for business owners to find qualified resources from around the world. The same concept applies to the Talent Marketplace. A talent marketplace goes above and beyond to find the right resource for the job, within the organization, irrespective of gender, race, religion, or color.
Here’s how a talent marketplace provides a great opportunity to overcome the glass cliff effect in the workplace:
Empower Women Leaders
The talent-driven marketplace empowers women to take charge of their careers and choose jobs and projects that help them accelerate and grow. With artificial intelligence and skill-based placement, the talent marketplace addresses both glass ceilings and glass cliffs. It enables women to make decisions based on their preferences. Similar to their male counterparts, Talent Marketplace allows them to showcase their successful track record and achievements, allowing them to build their profiles. Women leaders can also see potential risks and challenges associated with a position to make informed decisions about their careers.
Nourish Underrepresented Talent
The go-to talent marketplace is taking meaningful strides in developing and nourishing talent. Instead of bias or manual talent hunting, emerging tech provides a systemic approach to understanding each employee's career aspirations and providing them with opportunities to connect with potential roles. The talent marketplace offers equal opportunities for women and underrepresented talent to record their growth, accomplishments, and career aspirations and find opportunities to succeed. It allows them to choose roles, improve and upskill their portfolio, build connections, and pick geographical locations to work from.
Tackle Disengagement and Burnout
The struggle is real for women. In the corporate world, women and marginalized people are more likely to experience discrimination, harassment, underappreciation, stress, and strenuous work conditions. And it often leads to low employee engagement, increased turnover, and burnout. By enabling the redeployment, development, and relocation of talent more seamlessly, talent marketplaces help reduce employee disengagement, attrition, and burnout. When women feel stuck in their jobs, due to the glass cliff or other factors, they have an internal tool to find new roles and get reassigned. It's because there are so many opportunities available in the talent marketplace. Rather than being forced into pressing roles and setting themselves up for imminent failure, women can get the freedom to choose and take control of their careers.
Final Words…
The talent marketplace provides a thoughtful ecosystem that benefits men and women alike. Skill-based matching of resources and jobs can create better growth opportunities for everyone as well as engender a holistic sense of gender equality. This approach utilizes equal representation and competence-based hiring in order to de-bias the recruitment and promotion process for women and underrepresented people.
With talent marketplaces, women can select the jobs they want based on their career goals and preferences. In contrast to following a set path and giving in to pressure, it allows them the freedom to find work that aligns with their career aspirations. In addition, talent marketplaces ensure that job positions are filled transparently, preventing women from falling into the trap of risky leadership roles.
If you’re on a Glass Cliff then you should register for the Women of Color in STEM 2023 Virtual Summit, "From the Glass Ceiling To The Glass Cliff: Breaking Barriers and Achieving Leadership Goals."
You can access it here: https://women-of-color-in-stem-2023.heysummit.com/
