HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-technology

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The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology HBR Research Report Chapter 10: Cutting-Edge Corporate Initiatives Rethinking the People Model A massive female brain drain is not a foregone conclusion; with targeted interventions, SET companies can stem their losses. What’s more, these companies are unusually well positioned to retool their people development model and make needed interventions. Why? Because many of the same competencies they’ve mastered in product development can be transferred to people development. To succeed in SET sectors, companies like Johnson & Johnson, Cisco, Intel, and GE have all learned to wrestle with particularly challenging product cycles. Moving a new drug, a new engine, or a new chip from discovery through development and ultimately to market is often a long, grueling, and extremely expensive process. The costs for pharmaceutical companies are particularly high: Losing a promising drug at the 11th hour can be extremely costly.54 There are many parallels between product development and people development. Incubating talent takes many years and involves hefty expenditure. Even though newly minted electrical engineers or microbiologists bring with them valuable skill sets, a company still needs to invest heavily in these highly qualified individuals to realize their full potential. If an employee quits at the 11th hour—in this case, between the ages of 35 and 40—there are likely to be hundreds of thousands of dollars of sunk costs. Company Initiatives SET companies are beginning to respond to the talent shortage by applying lessons learned on the product side of their businesses. Here are some of the areas where companies have developed interesting new initiatives: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Expanding recruitment: Pfizer’s Student Mentoring Program looks to stem losses among SET female graduate students. Google is striving to “widen the filters” to attract top-notch individuals who may not have technical credentials. Targeting line and technical roles: Alcoa’s WOVEN and Manufacturing Manager Development Program encourage women to stay in line positions. Intel’s Technical Leadership Pipelines Program for Women helps to keep female engineers on the technical track and positions them to advance to higher levels. Cisco’s Global Telepresence Coaching program permits more effective mentoring of key female talent. Tackling the fight-or-flight moment: Johnson & Johnson’s Crossing the Finish Line helps to promote female multicultural employees to senior management. Microsoft’s Mentoring Rings gives junior women a better shot at crossing the great divide. At IBM, female flight is combated through its Flexible Leave of Absence program. And BT’s flexible work program, Freedom to Work, is helping to keep female engineers on track. Creating on-ramps: GE in India has developed Restart, an on-ramping program designed to attract highly qualified SET women who have taken time out. J&J’s ReConnections attempts to ensure a seamless return to work by off-ramped women, while MIT’s Midcareer Acceleration professional development program is specifically designed to reintroduce offramped SET talent. Fighting isolation: Cisco’s ETIP/ETAP program is creating a game-changer at the top by hiring a significant number of senior women at the VP level and above and providing support for successful assimilation. Leveraging Athena traits: IBM’s Corporate Service Corps harnesses the altruistic attributes of women in SET by sending teams of employees to work in charitable organizations across the globe. 59
The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology HBR Research Report Now let’s take a closer look at these 14 innovative programs. Expanding Recruitment Pfizer: Yale Student Mentoring Program sponsored by the Women’s Leadership Network In 2004, the Women’s Leadership Network (WLN) at Pfizer’s Groton/New London laboratories had the honor of hosting the American Women in Science Conference. This annual event brings together female graduate students and senior female scientists from both the academic and private sectors. A top concern at the 2004 conference was the lack of mentoring programs for students interested in the private sector. In response to the concerns of these graduate students, the Pfizer WLN launched the Yale Student Mentoring Program in 2005. Initially the motivation behind the program was purely altruistic—it was designed as a service for female graduate students. However, Pfizer began to realize that generating new interest in the private sector in high-caliber female graduate students would expand its own talent pool. Our focus group research found many SET women in the later stages of graduate study who felt alienated and stymied in academe—they talked about brutal work pressures and the seeming impossibility of women getting ahead (see, for example, Miranda’s story in Chapter 8). As Lydia Pan, a PhD who was one of the architects of the student mentoring program at Pfizer and a Yale alumna herself, stated, “There was always only one type of role model when I was a graduate student, and that was an academic role model. A private sector role model was nonexistent, so it was much more difficult to explore career tracks outside of academia. From the feedback that I’ve gotten from the students, this is still true. Although the women at Yale do have an excellent internal network, there’s still only one career model. Female graduate students simply don’t have access to scientists in the private sector that they can identify with and look up to.” The yearlong Yale Student Mentoring Program asks mentors and protégées to commit to meeting for a couple of hours per month. These meetings can be as informal as getting a bite to eat or taking a tour of a Pfizer lab. Mentors have introduced protégées to their professional networks and organized get-togethers with other Pfizer colleagues. These meetings are often the beginning of robust personal relationships between mentor and protégée. In addition, mentors have introduced protégées to colleagues working at other pharmaceutical companies, further broadening the protégée’s perspective on the industry. By introducing students to the possibility of a career in the private sector, Pan says, this program raises awareness in ways that simply did not exist when she was in school: “Most of my contemporaries were…discouraged from looking at industry….It was considered a betrayal of your training to go into industry. Today, even if [female graduate students] are not actively discouraged from pursuing nonacademic career paths, many doctoral and postdoctoral students lack an appreciation of other career options for which their rigorous scientific training is a great asset.” Joann Eisenhart, head of human resources for Pfizer’s Global Research and Development division, agrees: “When I was completing my PhD in chemistry many years ago, it was difficult to get a sense of what it was really like to work in industry. As students, we had academic role models in the professors we worked with every day, but industry contacts were much more limited.” With the WLN Yale Student Mentoring Program, Pfizer is beginning to open students’ eyes to a more expansive set of possibilities. Google: Widening the Filters Google’s recruiting methods are the stuff of legend—unorthodox surveys, atypical interview questions, and applicants who hail from a host of disciplines. Newly minted Stanford or Harvard grads with a degree in anthropology or musicology know that they have as good a shot at landing a coveted job at this highly regarded technology firm as someone with a computer science degree—provided they have a stellar track record. That’s because Google hires “super bright young 60
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HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-technology

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