Are women crazy about their job or does the job drive them crazy?

On 8 March, Women at Business and Lenovys gave women a voice to understand their point of view on the world of work, with a focus on the topic of quality of life, human potential and professional development.

The survey – carried out on a sample of 400 working women – shows that women have clear ideas about priorities, but struggle to manage a way of working that has completely erased the boundaries between private life and working life, generating negative repercussions on the state of mental and physical well-being of most women, so much so that even on weekends they struggle to recharge.

The question of reconciling private and professional life has moved to a different level, that is, to the person in his/ her totality and uniqueness who realizes himself/ herself personally and professionally by overcoming the conflict.

The research examined various aspects of women’s professional lives, including work methods, human potential, professional development, well-being, and quality of life, with a focus on remote work, which has become a prominent feature in recent years.

Luciano Attolico, Ceo of Lenovys, emphasizes that “the survey results show that, despite the available technologies, persisting in using outdated and inadequate organizational models and work methods for the times we are living in does not allow women and companies to fully express their potential.” That’s why we need to develop Lean Lifestyle Companies, which are capable of growing, innovating, and improving their results while also enhancing the quality of life for their employees.”

56% of women start the day with clear ideas about the most important activities to carry out before the evening, but the way they work during the day hinders the achievement of the set objectives.
In fact, 45% are unable to work at high concentration and are unable to regularly dedicate themselves to the most important activities.
And even the time dedicated to the most important activities for private life is not enough for 61% of women.

• 7 out of 10 managers are unable to regularly carve out moments of high concentration during workdays
• Managers (6 out of 10) and freelancers (7 out of 10) are more dissatisfied than other categories with the time dedicated to the most important activities

Communication in the company is a sore point for 74% who complain of lack of clarity and slowness in the exchange of information between departments aimed at achieving objectives. And 61% of respondents say they have difficulty understanding what is happening, what the performance is, the main problems and who is doing what to solve them.

Email and meeting management is also bad: 78% admit that meetings are not very useful and productive, while email and instant messaging systems are managed ineffectively for 7 out of 10 women.

• 70% of women complain that managers and colleagues do not help them grow and improve through precise and regular feedback and feedback on how they are working.
• 59% think the company does not do enough for skills development.

Concreteness, determination and flexibility in achieving objectives are not the yardstick, rather time spent in the office is counted: only 29% of women declare that they work in companies where they are judged based on results and not on the number of hours worked.

As companies grow, the lack of attention to flexibility and results orientation increases, in favor of a positive evaluation of intense and prolonged work in the day until late (74% of large companies).

Only 24% of the women interviewed can rest enough to start the day well from a physical and mental point of view. And once you get into activities, tension, irritability, arguments, arguments are a constant for 7 out of 10 women. So much so that in the evening it is difficult to fall asleep peacefully and only 11% manage not to feel tired or sleepy.
And in their free time, work continues to weigh on the mental state of women: 57% say they don’t unplug.

Sport and physical activity help women regain physical and mental well-being, but only 25% manage to do so regularly every week. And what do companies do? Little, very little: only 18% of companies, according to the respondents, pay attention to the mental state of their employees, their sense of frustration, stress or overfatigue. Even less, 10%, incentivize physical fitness and offer benefits/opportunities to take care of your body.

• In companies where remote work is not used, 96% do not encourage physical fitness

59% of the women interviewed said they had worked from home in the last 2 months. 51% did this for a maximum of 1 working day. 15% more than 5 days a week.

• Those who work multiple days remotely can dedicate time to physical fitness (44% of those who say they work more than 5 days from home);
• Those who work several days a week from home can work with greater concentration, without interruptions, a problem that instead complains about 48% of women who work on average only one day a week from home;
• Women who work mainly remotely in 92% of cases complain of little attention by the company to the state of mental and physical well-being;
• 2 days at home: this is the ideal way to obtain a good work-life balance.

The way of working was already critical from the start, but the pandemic worsened the situation, with an often-unconscious loss of control of time. Poorly designed and managed meetings, inefficient use of emails, poor communication between company functions, lack of alignment routines and information sharing lead women to accumulate stress and productivity losses.

Companies must and can undertake specific development paths so as not to leave improvisation with such impactful changes in the ways of working and doing business, and in individual and social performance and well-being”.