Monday, March 15, 2010

Goal at Deutsche Telekom: More Women as Managers

Europe's largest telecommunications company, Deutsche Telekom plans to raise the number of women in senior and middle management to 30 percent by the end of 2015 and more than double the number of women who are managers within the next 5 years. The company's chief executive said " Having a greater number of women at the top will quite simply enable us to operate better." To take immediate action, the company plans to recruit more female college graduates and require that at least 30 percent of executive development openings be held by women. To lessen the stress of working mothers, the company wants to widen parental-leave programs and create more flexible hours for managers.

4 comments:

Kevin Nishimoto said...

This may be caused by actions by women's movements in Europe, who are trying to have a more distinct role for women in business and politics and have pushed for more women in the workforce. As well as better equality.

Unknown said...

I don’t know if I missed it in the article or not, but does this mean that they will put more women as managers at the expense of the men who are currently managers? Or will they just be creating entirely new management positions? Also, the article says that the average hourly wages for women in Germany are 23.2 percent lower than for men. So I wonder if one of the company’s main motives of raising the number of female managers is to cut back on wage expenses.

craisdegy said...
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craisdegy said...

Ideas such as this for equality have a good purpose but it is important to think at what expense? I'm partially skeptical because it seems like such a high goal for such a short amount of time. This goal leads to a possibility of sacrificing the quality of their employment for equality. They could end up hiring less qualified women workers to accomplish the goal. It is just valuable to keep in mind.