Is gender equality slipping down the agenda?

Is the campaign for greater gender equality at work drifting a little and is now the time to refocus our minds? 

According to analysis of The Times Top 50 Employers for Gender Equality – the listing of employers who are taking action on gender equality – the last year has seen a greater focus on general Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policies rather than gender and not as much innovation. It’s more about maintaining the course, said Charlotte Woodworth, Gender Equality Campaign Director at Business in the Community [BITC] at an event last week on analysis of what companies are doing.

Woodworth said the highest performing areas were embedding plans in core strategy, supporting line managers and maintaining inclusive practices generally. The lowest performing areas were support for parents and carers [who make up 50% of the workforce], action to prevent sexual harassment and championing women and marginalised groups such as those on low pay.

The analysis showed just 21% of employers publish salaries for all their jobs, even though this has been shown to be key to driving progress on gender equity; 72% calculate their ethnicity pay gap, but just 53% publish it; and 50% publish their flexible working and parental leave policies externally. However, 48% said they are considering enhancing parental leave pay in the next two years – a 50% uplift on last year’s figures.

What are employers doing?

The analysis was revealed at a BITC webinar with three employers who spoke about best practice. Vicky Gallagher, Chief People Officer at Deloitte, spoke of its new equal parental leave policy and said that the company had met its target of 30% female partners by 2025 a year early. Its longer term target is 40% female partners by 2030. She also mentioned Deloitte’s menopause policy and menopause community which she said offered a safe space to talk as well as the company’s hybrid working policy and future leaders programme to promote more women and ethnic minority groups.

Rick Lee, Chief People Officer of construction firm Wilmott Dixon, spoke of its work to address harassment through its Dignity at Work campaign. It had created filmed scenarios to make it clear to employees what was inappropriate behaviour. This has been rolled out across all its sites. Lee said progress on addressing inappropriate behaviour is tracked through its people surveys. He cited recent figures from the survey including that 93% of respondents felt comfortable calling out inappropriate behaviour.

Wilmott Dixon has also enhanced its parental leave, developed a line manager toolkit on a range of issues affecting parents or parents-to-be and has a parents and carers affinity group. 

Employment lawyer Esther Smith from TLT, the company’s EDI champion, spoke about its work on neurodiversity. She said the company was moving from a preventive approach to harassment to being proactive. It has a zero tolerance policy and it takes action to uphold this across the board. It has a range of whistleblowing mechanisms which it monitors for trends and mental health champions to whom employees can speak confidentially as well as employee networks which provide a safe space. Smith said training is offered on how to deal with harassment situations and she stated that it is important to be able to say if the company has got something wrong. That is how they will learn, she said.

• Vote  
• 0
• 0
• You already voted!