A mother/daughter research team sought to gauge the efficacy of two isolated ideas related to sponsorship:
- the idea that being personally chosen by a sponsor as a protege could serve as an important vote of confidence
- the idea that linking sponsors’ compensation to their proteges’ outcomes might serve as further motivation to the proteges
The results indicate certain aspects of sponsorship don’t work exactly how we’d want them to, at least in the lab.
Source: Human Resource Executive, May 3, 2018. Link.
Although sponsorship may be bringing about some positive effects in the workplace, Katie Coffman says, the lab results suggest that it may not be effective in closing the gender wage gap — if anything, she says, it may reverse it.
INSIGHTS: That this research being done by women of two generations adds to its importance.