Women in Leadership Blogs

Counteract Unconscious Bias through Interruption and Action. Understanding how Implicit Bias plays out is crucial to the improvement of Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace. It's about bias interruption and action, with leaders creating a top down cultural shift to bring an awareness of bias out into the open. Everyone must feel comfortable to be able to speak up and challenge bias in the workplace. While looking at the top down approach it's important to recognise that only with the removal of implicit bias from the hiring process will any real movement take place for women to be appointed to the C suite and other Key Manager or Executive roles. How to remove Implicit Bias from the hiring and promotion process ? Insist on a Diverse pool of candidates. Establish objective criteria. Define 'cultural fit' - specific qualities are identified over shared background and interests. Limit referral hiring - avoid the affinity bias. Focus on performance not potential, separate personality from skillset. Clarify the evaluation criteria with those hiring and ensure accountability. The Gaming & Hospitality Industry is represented by 105 companies that report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) in Australia. (Companies with greater than 100 employees are mandated to [...]

Confidence and Leadership - the two are closely linked. A recent report released by KPMG that polled 750 high-performing executive women provides excellent insights and actions for leaders to improve Inclusion and Diversity in the workplace. " It is important for organisations to gain a more thorough understanding of the specific issues women may face as they advance in their careers and as they move toward the C-suite. We hope the thought provoking findings and solutions in this study help leaders everywhere as we work to further advance inclusion and diversity."  - KPMG US Chair & CEO , Paul Know Key findings of the report include: 74% of executive women believe that their male counterparts do not experience feelings of self -doubt as much as female leaders do. 81% believe they put more pressure on themselves not to fail than men do. 75% of executive women report having personally experienced imposter syndrome at certain points in their career. The report also identifies some key actions that leaders may take to help enhance confidence for individuals. Be Supportive Open channels of dialogue and communication create opportunity for relationships to be strengthened and reinforce a sense of belonging and acceptance in the workplace. Leaders serving as mentors and coaches are able to help [...]

How to spend with a gender focus At WGHA we believe the organisations that make up our industry can utilise their purchasing power to advocate for change by adopting procurement principles that actively support gender equity. The United National Women’s Empowerment Principle number 5 states: Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women Next month we will detail more information on marketing practices, our focus for now is why and how you should adopt gender smart procurement in your organisation. An important part of empowering women is via corporate procurement. Gender-smart procurement will allow female owned businesses greater opportunity to supply to our industry. It will encourage our industry suppliers to consider their own internal workforce and policies to ensure they are promoting gender equitable work practices and addressing gender imbalances. In today’s global economy, “less than one per cent of spending by large businesses on suppliers is earned by women-owned businesses” (UNWOMEN). The sheer size of and volume of corporate purchasing means that corporations have the potential to dramatically influence the way suppliers and supply chains operate. Why adopt Gender focused Procurement Policy? 1/3 of global businesses have female owners, they received 1% of corporate [...]

What is a mentor and how does it differ from sponsorship? A mentor is someone who serves as a guide for a defined period of time in your career journey. Mentors can be internal or external to your organisation, they assist by enabling you to see issues more clearly by asking thought provoking questions to work through workplace issues. A mentor can help you determine your strengths and what sets you apart. A mentee-mentor relationship is a two way street and both parties benefit from the process. A sponsor is usually internal to your organisation and use their network and influence to get you stretch assignments, project roles or exposure that lead to promotions. A sponsor highlights your achievements. To read more on sponsorship see our blog from last month. Why is mentoring good for career growth? Mentoring provides clarity on your strength and career goals. It allows an external, more senior person to guide you through current workplace issues and help see the bigger view of your career. The mentor acts as a sounding board with constructive feedback and encouragement. A recent survey indicated 56% of respondents have had a mentor and the majority (57%) of people experience [...]

Sponsorship is active support by someone appropriately placed in the organisation who has significant influence on decision-making processes or structures. A sponsor is someone who can spot talent and is willing to advocate for, protect, and fight for the career advancement of an individual. The WGHA December 2020 survey indicated 67% of females had considered leaving their current role for another industry with the highest ranking reason “lack of opportunities and or no pathways to leadership.” This is where sponsorship can help break this cycle in your organisation and reduce this barrier that females face in career progression.  As an industry we need to address the challenge of female representation at senior levels by targeting the career advancement of women in general and advocating the progression of high performing women in particular. Your action: Senior member of any gender – sponsor a female Female employee – seek out a sponsor in your organisation Sponsorship has the potential to breakdown some of the barriers women face in the workplace and when done effectively, it can: Create career acceleration Help individuals meet the unique challenges of new higher level roles and alleviate the perceived risks associated with moving into new areas [...]

WGHA supports gender diversity targets of 40:40:20 for all levels in organisations. The board of the organisation should oversee the monitoring and progress of these targets. 40:40:20 allows organisations to pursue gender equitable outcomes for women, with flexibility in the leadership makeup of a range of 40% to 60% female. The 20% is viewed as open, it is the remaining from the candidate pool. It ensures we stay focused on advancing gender equity and not entering the gender identity debate. 40:40:20 is contemporary business practice, the target allows a range of 40 to 60% of male or female, based on the best people for the need, with the intention that 50:50 is the desired outcome 40:40:20 will deliver real benefits to gender equality it can be coupled with other initiatives like: Constitutional requirement for chair and deputy chair to be gender balanced 50/50 shortlists ‘if not why not’. So you have adopted a gender representation target and not achieving it? What’s next.  At the WGHA Australasian Gaming Expo Luncheon in 2019 we heard from Aristocrat Non Executive Director, Kathleen Conlon she stated “implement a rule whereby your next promotion is only available if you have two potential successors, one male and one [...]

In this unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be serious knock on effects felt by all. Some more obvious and pronounced than others. One serious impact which may not be so obvious but needs to be spoken about is Domestic and Family Violence (DFV). According to the United Nations, the most dangerous place for women is their home. It is way too early to gather data on any increase in DFV related to COVID-19 but what we know from every crisis (war, bushfires, major national events) is that DFV increases. Often the reporting of this violence comes out once the crisis has ended and it is safer for women to access support, so we won’t know the real impact of COVID-19 on the safety of women and their children until well after this has all died down. This is a unique case though where a because of the crisis, victims and their perpetrators are being asked (in some cases forced) to stay at home. For many victims the workplace is their only refuge from violence. We are already seeing heightened levels of angst, even anger, for what were once simple, stress-free tasks such as going to the [...]

With COVID-19 now considered a global pandemic, we have seen immense and rapid impacts for individuals and business. While many organisations are exercising flexible work policies in the form of advising staff to work from home, or holding meetings via video conference rather than face to face, this is not possible for customer facing staff. There are many knock-on effects that COVID-19 will have including parents needing to stay home to look after children should schools close down, casual hours being cut as there is a downturn in customer trade, and possible redundancies just to name a few. During this unprecedented time, it’s critical to be aware of our unconscious bias when making decisions regarding personnel in the workplace. Should you need to consider a reduction in staff hours, or changing the wording of leave policies, review these decisions with a gender equitable lens. Question why these decisions are being made - don’t reduce a female’s hours just because she may have a partner that is able to support her, or children at home to look after. If schools close, ensure you are advising and/or encouraging your male employees to work from home or take leave to look after the children, equally as you would [...]

Six steps to improve your organisation's pay equity It’s up to every leader to call out gender equality as a key priority for their organisation. It takes more than just words, you need a clear plan with measurable outcomes. It starts with the CEO and everyone needs to work together to drive change.’ Gail Kelly, former CEO Westpac and member of Chief Executive Women Achieving gender equality, including gender pay equity, is a process that takes time and conscious significant effort. Gender pay equity is about ensuring women and men performing the same role are paid the same amount, and women and men performing different work of equal or comparable value are paid equitably. This requires a valuing of skills, responsibilities and working conditions in a non-discriminatory way. There are many reasons for the gap between earnings for women. A range of historical factors have played a part in creating the gender pay gap. Today, influencing factors can include: Unintended gender biases in hiring, promotion, performance and pay decisions The undervaluation of skills in industries and areas where women predominate Women’s lack of access to work-based training Different levels of eligibility for discretionary payments such as over-award payments, [...]

Highlighting Women’s Achievements We don’t live in a gender equal society. Men are judged based on their potential; women are judged based on their past performance. Even in 2020, society and workplaces still use two different scales to evaluate men and women. Research shows that women must prove that they can succeed in a role before they are promoted into it, whereas men may be promoted on their perceived potential. The consequence is men often move up into management positions faster than women.  This means we all need to highlight women’s achievement’s, so that their past performance is recognised, while we address the systemic gender barrier at a broader level. A study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, featured two similarly structured experiments, both conducted online via Amazon's Mechanical Turk. One featured 199 participants, who were told that a fictitious technology company was looking for a director of financial affairs. They then looked at four resumes. Two of them (one for a man, and one for a woman) highlighted the applicant's past successes, while the other two emphasized his or her potential. These were accompanied by short testimonials, which also focused on either impressive past performance or inherent capabilities. Participants [...]