What can your organization do to advocate for gender equality and diversity? LineZero’s recent #MakeAnImpact webinar featured 4 women leaders from HarperCollins Publishers, SWBC, Workplace from Facebook and LineZero, who shared tips for creating a more gender-equal workplace. Read on to explore the main learnings from the webinar. The webinar recording is available for you to watch at your convenience to tap into more ideas, tips, and suggestions that can inspire you and your team.
1. Grow the representation of women in leadership roles:
According to McKinsey and Leaning.org, there has been some progress in the development of women in senior leadership roles. In 2020, 28% of people in senior VP roles were women, as compared to 23% occupancy of these roles by women in 2015. However, there is still a lot of work to be done, with women leadership roles still being dramatically underrepresented.
2. Create informal and formal mentor – mentee programs that focus on gender equality for marginalized groups:
Mentoring can help create work environments that provide equal opportunities for everyone in your organization, especially for women and marginalized groups. A mentor-mentee program made up of male or female leaders can be a great support system for women who are beginning their career or entering a male-dominated industry. For example, one of LineZero’s customers, HarperCollins Publishers, created a program called “New to Publishing” to encourage women to think about entering the publishing industry. A mentor-mentee program can create a lot of positive morale. Employees, by diving deep into the process, can feel a stronger sense of inclusivity and belonging within your organization.
3. Launch a gender equality campaign to raise awareness and promote inclusivity
One way to build awareness and address unconscious bias is to encourage your employees to review, question and analyze their own personal biases and assumptions. And what better way to do this than to launch an educational campaign to get those wheels spinning?
Source: Belonging: A Conversation About Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
Launching a diversity, equality, and inclusion campaign within your organization can focus on gender inequities, but beyond that, it can also discuss race and socioeconomic backgrounds as they relate to inclusivity. Addressing the problem can help bring light to possible solutions.
4. Support the growth of young women leaders through internship programs:
To develop the leadership skills of emerging young women leaders, it’s important to provide them with mentorship, skills building, and internship opportunities. Taking a young student under your wing can be a great source of talent moving forward but moreover, it’s a great way to give back to the community or industry that you are part of.
5. Embed diversity and inclusion into your talent acquisition strategy:
To create real change, diversity and inclusion needs to be a company-wide priority from beginning to end of the employee lifecycle. Here are a few tips:- Focus on finding candidates from diverse backgrounds at the very top of the funnel.
- Participate in deep dive sessions on referrals, campaigns, and talent drives so that everyone in the organization is empowered and incentivized.
- Match potential candidates from diverse backgrounds with long-term employees of your organization during the on-boarding process.
6. Provide transformative leadership training to support gender equality initiatives:
One of the best ways to reinforce the importance and value of diversity and inclusion in your organization is to provide regular training to your leadership team and your employees. To combat conscious and unconscious biases, providing inclusive hiring training is essential in making sure your people leaders and managers are equipped with the right resources and knowledge to keep inclusive hiring top of mind.
7. Promote pay equality:
As organizations focus on closing the gender pay gap, there are a number of actions that both leaders and employees can take to make an impact. Check out the tips below.
Leaders
- Educate yourself on competitive salaries.
- Stay on top of what’s changing to retain your talent.
- Research market rates.
- Encourage your HR department to pay people their worth.
- Advocate for yourself.
Employees
- Know your worth.
- Be part of networks that can provide pay equality information.
- Educate yourself around starting salaries for your area.
- Research the industry - Understand the starting salaries, how women are typically treated, and what progression looks like.
- Advocate for yourself.
8. Stronger together – Engage male allies to be agents of change in pursuit of gender equality:
Consider the obstacles working women are facing, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Allyship means that both women and men need to gain an understanding of how remote work has deeply and uniquely impacted women to be able to make an impact that matters in your organization. To become a good ally, your organization can:
- Understand why the pandemic has impacted women in a unique way, and;
- Moderate some of the ways in which your organization are being allies to women and adapting them to remote work.
For example, allyship certainly looks different over remote meetings. Sometimes, the loudest and quickest responders can end up contributing to most, or all, of the meeting. Era Sahni from Workplace from Facebook says her male manager consistently asks her to go first in meetings so that her voice is heard.
3 ways technology supports gender equality initiatives in your organization
The technology you choose in your organization goes a long way to promoting gender equality, from giving employees a safe space to connect and share experiences, to promoting and showcasing new employees, and more. Here are 3 ways that technology can support gender equality initiatives in your organization:
1. Showcase new joiners to the organization through a welcome message
HarperCollins Publishers utilizes Workplace from Facebook as the vehicle to communicate with everyone in their organization. The diversity and inclusion committee at the organization uses Workplace to showcase new people and introduce them to others during the onboarding process. The committee also keeps everyone up-to-date by curating and sharing the news. Technology has played a great role in continuing conversations, continuing education, and raising awareness.
2. Provide a safe space for everyone to connect and share their experiences:
Creating communities and providing a safe space for people to connect means that your organization should consider a technology that is easily accessible to everyone. This ensures that meaningful dialogue can take place.
3. Use data to analyze and reduce the gender pay gap
If you have access to data that reveals the gender pay gap in your organization, use it! Keeping the gender pay gap in mind, you can review whether your female employees are being paid a wage that is reflective or equivalent to that of their male colleague(s).
Looking for ways you can do this? LineZero can create a custom solution, utilizing Power BI and Workplace, to reveal this gap.
We are all responsible for gender equality!
At the beginning of this blog, we mentioned the webinar we hosted to support each other and create a safe space to discuss diversity, equality, inclusivity, and belonging (DEIB). To explore resources and stories to help make your DEIB efforts more tangible in your organization, click here to watch the webinar. You can also download LineZero’s DEIB handbook to discover how other organizations are making gender equity a priority.
Want to discuss gender equity efforts in your organization specifically? Let’s connect!
