Werk's Female-Focused Mission To Redefine The Modern Work Week

It's long been an issue for women whereby stringent work hours cuts off a path to leadership because of extenuating life circumstances. Co- Founders and CEOs Annie Dean and Anna Auerbach of new job platform Werk talked to SWAAY about the necessity of their business for females looking for flexible job hours.

Women, whether they're mothers or not, are seeking a way to diversify the work-week model that's been in place for centuries, set up by men. Looking for flexi hours in order to facilitate side hustles, house maintenance or any other activity they may have a proclivity for, women often times leave the job market before they are ready to, just because they find the company culture and long hours counterproductive. Dean, herself, had struggled to find her place in a big law firm after becoming pregnant at 27, and Auerbach migrated from McKinsey to a non-profit after she saw that only 5 percent of leadership positions were held by women. The pair recognized the need for something different in the workplace, something that would allow for a dual life, and thus, Werk was born. Wit the goal of united flex-minded employees with companies of the same ilk, Werk allows women access to this flexible jobs universe and an insight into how the work week might look in the future.

Unlike traditional job boards, Werk is the only marketplace that exclusively features real, career-building opportunities all with pre-negotiated flexibility. Using our Flexiverse, Werkforce members can filter their job search by six types of flexibility so they know upfront if the position is compatible with their lives. Not only does our platform reduce a major pain point during the job search, but it also normalizes the conversation around flexibility and eliminates the bias many job seekers, especially women, often feel during the interview and hiring process.

Why flexibility? After looking at every piece of data on women in the workplace, we determined that flexibility is the easiest, most cost effective way to retain women, advance them to positions of leadership over time, and ultimately close the leadership gap.

Contrary to popular belief, the majority of women who leave the corporate workforce actually want to stay—of the 30% of women who drop out, 70% say they would have kept working if they had access to flexibility.

Workplace structures were created a long time ago, before women were part of the equation. In today's global economy, it no longer makes sense for employees to work at in a single location for static hours. Though men are certainly impacted by the lack of access to flexibility (and we welcome them on Werk), it disproportionately disadvantages women—especially mothers and caregivers. Women make up 47 percent of people entering the corporate workforce (and 59 percent of college-educated people entering the overall workforce), yet only 5 percent of CEOs are women. Massive attrition among women is happening before they're advancing to senior and executive-level positions. For years, the narrative has remained largely the same: women should be more ambitious, work harder, advocate more, learn better negotiation skills, find a mentor, and so on. Other arguments suggest that male-dominated offices simply aren't ready to embrace and promote female leaders. While providing mentorship programs and working to combat gender bias are worthy initiatives, they alone cannot close the leadership gap.

Werk is needed in today's world because flexibility is a key part of closing the leadership gap. Without it, millions of talented women will continue failing for a completely arbitrary—and totally fixable—reason.

Annie Dean, Co-Founder and CEO of Werk

Our annual Werkforce membership costs $48. Werkforce members get unlimited access to our platform and can apply to as many jobs as they want, all of which have pre-negotiated flexibility. Unlike LinkedIn and recruiting services, Werk is the only place where flexibility is included right within the job description. We also have a number of exciting features and enhancements in the pipeline that we think our members are going to love.

Werk is a two-sided marketplace. We work with companies who pay $499 for a 90-post listing, and with job seekers who pay $48 for an annual membership. Earlier this year, we closed $1 million in funding from five VC firms, and we plan to raise another round before the end of the year.

Although our marketing is geared predominantly towards women, we welcome both male and female job seekers with about four to six years' experience. While many of our members are parents or caregivers, as they often feel the greatest need for flexibility, our Werkforce is extremely diverse.

The world has divided itself into “freelance" and “traditional full-time." But the reality is that freelance doesn't work for everyone, and traditional full-time doesn't work for everyone. They are two ends of the spectrum, and both models tend to disadvantage our demographic. So we created a new kind of work, that falls right in the middle of the two. Flexibility is a regular job with modifications that increase compatibility between the needs of the employee and the objective of the employee. While we understand that gigs and project-based jobs work for many women, we have chosen to focus on career-building opportunities in order to advance and retain a diverse workforce.

I'll bet everyone reading this article has a different idea about what flexibility means. So we standardized it. The Flexiverse is our proprietary framework of flexibility—we offer six types of flexibility that range from things you'll recognize right away like “remote" to totally new concepts like “microagility" (an environment that allows you to make micro adjustments to your schedule on an ad hoc basis, no questions asked). Every job description has at least one element of the Flexiverse, and users can use the Flexiverse to search for jobs.

We like to say that we provide the results of a recruiter for the price of a job board. Our Werkforce is made up of some of the nation's most talented and credentialed men and women, all of whom are serious about advancing in their careers. An employer won't find the same level of service and quality on any other job board.

Employees with flexibility are happier, more productive, and less likely to leave. Perhaps unsurprisingly, companies with meaningful numbers of women in leadership improve by every metric, and gender diverse organizations are 15 percent more likely to outperform their peers. Women-led companies tend to have better working conditions and fewer layoffs. And studies estimate that closing the corporate gender gap could boost the U.S. economy by a $2.1 trillion.

To prioritize the needs of female employees is to prioritize the needs of an entire organization—and the world.

Anna Auerbach, Co-Founder and CEO of Werk

We're drawn to forward-thinking companies and workplaces that already have or are in the process of embracing a culture of flexibility, like Buffer and Samsung NEXT. We also look for companies with huge growth potential that would benefit from a more diverse, flexible workforce. And when we come across companies that haven't yet embraced flexibility, we like to educate them on our mission and how it could help and enhance their business objectives over time.