8 Gender Equality Initiatives that Can #MakeAnImpact In Your Organization
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.
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?
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.