Move over men, women are set to rule

Updated on: Tuesday, September 07, 2010

By 2020, one in every three workers will be a woman and they will increasingly be in control of the workplace, a study has revealed.

"This will change company culture in an in-depth manner due to the difference in female management styles," says the study on 'Working in a globalised space' conducted by Ericsson Malaysia.

"Women will move rapidly up the chain of command and their emotional-intelligence skills may become ever more essential," states the study.

As women manage their jobs more cautiously than men and focus on long term effects, they are consensus builders, conciliators and collaborators, it says.

"Women will employ a different leadership style. It will be heavily engaged and motivational," said Sebastian Barros, head of multimedia and consulting system integration, Ericsson Malaysia.

"The workplace-research group Catalyst studied 353 Fortune 500 companies and found that those with the maximum number of women in senior management had a higher return on equities -- by more than a third," he said.

The report on the study also says that flexible career paths and nomadic working environments will be the primary elements of the future workplace.

It states that future workers will be able to work from anywhere spending less time in a physical location and more time being on the move.

"The office environment will be more interactive -- walls could become screens showing diaries, documents or video conferences. You won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer. Instead, users will open documents and surf the
Web using nothing more than their brain waves," it says.

Barros said that due to ageing populations in many developed countries, skilled worker shortage in several industries is expected, and a generational divide will create a disparity in work styles between younger and older workers.

"An ageing workforce may either want to retire, to continue working a shortened workweek or in flexible hours, or to work remotely. At the same time, a younger workforce with higher expectations for a work-life balance will be launching
their careers," he said.

Companies, he said, would also move from outsourcing their work to crowdsourcing, the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by one person and outsourcing them to a group of people, who could be freelancers or contractors.

"The 2020 enterprise will take a job once performed by a full-time employee and send it out to a sometimes large group of people. These people will form a network, take the job and perform various parts of it in collaboration with others," he said.

Move over men, women are set to rule

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