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Establish gender field

[Music] developing and implementing a gender equality strategy and plan is the must-have first step in addressing gender equality in your organization gender equality is an important business issue the business case is clear workplace gender equality is associated with increased organizational performance and improved ability to attract talent and retain employees and of course enhanced organizational reputation so just like any other business issue you need a strategic and systematic approach to gender equality to affect real meaningful and beneficial change recently the workplace gender equality agency has updated its gender equality strategy toolkit this toolkit provides a guide for organizations on developing a gender equality strategy for their business this toolkit can be used by you as a comprehensive guide it will provide you with a picture of the status of gender equality in your workplace it can help you develop a tailored gender equality strategy and plan for your organization enabling you to establish links with your broader business strategies and objectives [Music] implementing a gender equality strategy in our organization was critically important for our future direction we are facing as our all businesses incredible competitive disruptive forces the rise of technology artificial intelligence new market entrants globalization demographic shifts and all of those things mean that our ability as an organization to adapt the agile in innovative becomes really important underpinning our ability to do that has to be in my view regarding diversity as a strategic capability diversity in all its forms so that meant for us that minter ellison thinking about how we create diversity as a strategic capability and that meant setting for ourselves pretty hard targets around what diversity needed to look like so we've set ourselves gender diversity targets that by 2025 we need to hit gender equality in all of our leadership across the entire partnership so a 42 minimum forty percent female partners minimum forty percent male partners and and have that metric applied right across the business and and are now working on I guess the tactics to make sure that we hit those targets so we're treating it like any other business imperative since we started down the path of really focusing on diversity and gender diversity as a strategic capability we've really noticed the way in which the rest of the business has just risen up around the challenge of meeting those targets it was really surprising to me actually that we had there was no internal pushback on this as a concept as soon as we positioned gender diversity as a strategic capabilities everybody in the firm the board the executive leadership team the next layer of leadership all just stepped up and said right what do we need to do now to hit these metrics that we've set because they're thinking about the issue not so much in an equity or fairness mindset but actually from a business strategic comparative mindset so my advice to any organization thinking about building a gender equality strategy is starting with the business imperative around this I think it's really important to establish within your organization and with at the board and at leadership level it's got owned by bought in leadership and board and leadership really need to establish this as a critical business imperative and I think the the incredible disruption that organizations are facing at the moment and their ability to rise up and meet that disruption and the challenges of a rapidly changing market mean that a company's ability to really innovate and be agile has to be a central capability you can't do that well when everybody thinks the same looks and behaves and thinks the same so diversity is a core competency of an organization in order to innovate and and thrive in a very disruptive marketplace is going to be critical and that means gender equality has to be positioned as a strategic imperative our ability to deliver on our gender equality strategy is really underpinned by a concept of accountability and that's accountability that rests with me so I am being held accountable by our board for achieving our gender equality targets and equally I'm holding our executive leadership team accountable for in their parts of the business achieving those targets and I think driving that accountability right through the organization is a really critical foundation if you're going to be where an organization gun on a rich history of women achieving and battling the odds and I think it's really only fitting that as an organization built by women to serve predominantly women and in others that we have a gender equity strategy we also work in the health field where we know about 85% of our staff are women so if we are going to be serving people and also having a workforce photography from women we had to have a gender equity strategy we all have to take a leadership in equality and inclusion and wise gender equality is one part of it I think one of the benefits I think we've seen having a gender equality strategy is that we actually have more of focus on true inclusion and equity and whilst it's a by-product it actually lets us look at all people as being in a position of equality and how we can actually bow to serve those people but employ those people and represent them well being an organization owned by women with a hundred eighty years of history of women leading our board were behind it the executives were behind it our chief HR was behind it so the issue of gender equity was never one either I think of any challenge I think without the top leadership support these strategies don't flow through the organization unless you have that 100% commitment I would worry that they will flounder we we have had that commitment our board is selected we with women in mind we make sure that we have at least 50% on there we have a very affirmative statement in women being represented across all levels of Executive and I myself chair the equity inclusion committee so one of the challenges not so much a challenge but a byproduct of this was I think we went in this very much it went into this exercise very much on a gender equity thought about a predominately women workforce and what came up through those discussions was that men felt also as a minority in many cases where there were 15% of our workforce and in some cases one and two percent and they felt where were their needs being represented so I think gender equity whilst we look at pay parity and whilst we look at a range of issues we need to also think that we are looking at equity for all and gender equity for some of our males is a big issue so we have moved to things like you know pay parental leave for either parent primary or primary caregiver or not primary caregiver at the time I believe so making those sort of real policy decisions that also say men are equally welcome here and we need to actually attract them to feel comfortable in a workplace ensuring all your employees have equal opportunity and choice in your workplace is not just the right thing to do it's the smart thing to do so act today download a copy of the gender equality strategy toolkit and develop a sound strategy and plan for your workplace in doing so you'll quickly discover the value of measuring and addressing issues of gender imbalance in your organization you [Music]