Want engaged women employees? Ask what sport they played instead of where they went to school.
A new report from Gallup-Purdue Research Index found that, among 400 women execs from five countries, 42% of former student-athletes who work full-time for an employer are engaged in their jobs versus 39% of non-student athletes. Women who played college sports were more likely to be engaged in their jobs (48%) than men who played (38%).
In addition, a 2014 report from EY (formerly Ernst & Young) found that more than half (52%) of the 400 women surveyed played a sport at the university level, compared to 39% of women at other management levels.
“If your employees are engaged, they are much more productive, they’re much more effective, they’re much more loyal, and it drops right to the bottom line,” says Beth Brooke-Marciniak, global vice chair, public policy at EY, who was one of the first Title IX basketball scholarship recipients at Purdue University. Her firm and the International Women’s Forum (IWF) launched the EY Women Athletes Business Network to help successful women athletes transition into business. Here are six important lessons women athletes learn.
Conflict Resolution
“When you have 20 different women with personalities, conflict is going to happen,” says Women’s Sports Foundation President Angela Hucles, who is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time World Cup bronze medalist for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. Hucles says her sports career taught her to manage bold, driven personalities under pressure—after all, you can’t play your best as a team when you’re holding a grudge. That holds true for the office, too. Her time playing soccer taught her how to look at the goals of each individual and find common ground for the good of the team.
Communication
When colleagues and contacts tell Lindsay White about communication issues in their companies, she doesn’t really get why it’s a problem. The founder of children’s apparel company Lot801 and marketing firm Lot801 Marketing says that playing softball at the college level taught her to “over-communicate.”
“If there’s a ball hit in the air, you have to yell, ‘Mine,’ if it’s yours. If someone’s throwing the ball to you, you need to communicate with them so they know where they’re throwing the ball,” she says. So it’s second nature to be very clear in her instructions—when she hands off a task, she spells out her expectations, deadlines, and other points necessary to get the job done well.