If you sit in a corporate office dreaming of life on the outside, you’re not alone.
Perhaps you imagine your revamped home office, your ability to work when and where you want, and to keep your best ideas for yourself rather than hand them over to your employer. You may have shared conversations with friends outlining your great big business ambitions – your plans to escape the corporate life, to become your own boss and personal future creator.
But starting your own business is a huge risk. One that will leave most women unable to pay themselves for years or, worse, with a mountain of debt they have to work off with a return to the corporate world. It requires copious amounts of energy, passion and an aptitude to acquire skills you may not have.
So given the relative security and safety of a job with a large employer, why is it that the desire to leave the corporate world is so strong?
At a UTS forum on diversity last week, Yolanda Vega, CEO of Australian Women Chamber of Commerce & Industry, cited research that found women were leaving the corporate world to start their own businesses for three reasons: to be their own boss, to achieve balance and flexibility, and to escape the corporate environment. She says that with high levels of education and the global village at their fingertips through technology, women are leaving corporates “because they can”.
I put the question to Suzy Jacobs – a corporate escapee herself – whose expanding She Business women’s business club will open its 14th office next week, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Her group continues to expand its suite of programs for women at different business stages.
She believes women are leaving the corporate environment because it promotes a culture that’s not conducive to how women prefer to work. Large workplaces are still not structured to allow healthy work/life balance for duel working parents and women do not always feel they have the flexibility and autonomy they crave, nor the ability to impact the community. Meanwhile, old-school values still prevail in the office.
“Back in the ’80s we all charged into the corporate culture and we were satisfied to walk into a male hierarchy and structure. We’ve evolved since then. We don’t want to do that anymore,” she said. Jacobs cited the example of meeting a female lawyer last week who was working in a team of people who discussed their golf handicaps regularly and enjoyed holding meetings at the pub. The lawyer wanted out.
“With technology, there are good options outside the corporate world which could replicate some things that are occurring in the corporate world and give women an income,” added Jacobs.
Jacobs notes that it’s not easy doing your own thing, and finds that women often come to She Business because they’re in business pain. “They may have hit a wall. It’s a noisy world out there. They’re often doing the things they’re great at and ignoring the things they’re not so great at.”
And the skills you need to be successful with your own business are very different to those required for thriving and surviving the corporate world. It’s a hard slog: Jacobs says the best, most solid businesses are usually built over seven to 10 years.
“The learning never stops,” said Jacobs. “If you think you can just create an idea, take the leap and do it, you’ll find yourself two or three years down the track wondering what you’re going to do next.”
It’s tough, but women are doing it. As recent research from the Australian Women Chamber of Commerce & Industry found, half of all current businesses started since 2007 were launched by women. They’re not always escaping the corporate culture to do so, but there’s certainly a good proportion who hunt for new opportunities outside the cubicle farm – even if it means forgoing a wage to do so.
And women will continue to escape the corporate world unless some serious structural and cultural changes are made.
Some large businesses are evolving – Microsoft’s culture of “activity-based working” is a great example – while others continue to operate in an environment more akin to the industrial era than the lifestyle, values and culture we live outside of the office.