Canadian HR Reporter Weekly

3 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2018 December 19, 2018 "We really don't want to be talking about this 30 years from now. In our sector, 75 per cent of the industry is male." e time for talk is over, said Branigan, and employers should do more to advance equality. "ere are some challenges from a communications perspective, but there are others who perhaps pay lip service to us and say, 'Well, we've tried. We issued a job posting — we included that we were looking for women, and we didn't get any applicants. We've tried and we're done,' this sort of thing." "at's not good enough," said Branigan. "ere's been too many excuses made for the lack of progress over the last number of decades." Gender equity is something that a vast majority of Canadian corporations are focusing on, according to Merril Mascarenhas, managing partner with Arcus Consulting Group in Toronto. "While CEOs and senior managers and board directors, especially chairs, think that gender equity is important, there doesn't seem to be a lot of action." "Only about two per cent of CEOs have gender equity as a performance measure in their performance- management evaluations," he said. "at is adequate evidence that the board does not consider it to be a significant influencer of shareholder value because the primary goal of the board is to deliver value to shareholders. And, frankly, if a CEO's evaluation does not include gender equity as a consideration, I don't know how these surveys show that organizations have seen significant movement in terms of revenue growth with gender equity." Culture shift needed What is needed is a cultural shift inside a lot of Canadian employers. And that needs to begin at the top levels. "It starts with executive sponsorship, where the CEO and the board says it's important," said Mascarenhas. "(But) if culture change isn't designed to be an ongoing drip strategy — where the information is disseminated and communicated in smaller bites — it is unlikely to be a behavioural shift in organizations." And the success doesn't happen overnight, he said. "It takes 18 months for you, me or anyone else to change a habit. I don't know how individuals or CEOs and boards expect a cultural shift without an ongoing, concerted effort over a year or two years." Change also needs to be calculated to increase its effectiveness, said Branigan. "Leaders need to commit to putting in place policies and practices that are actually going to support movement, and I'm a big believer in measurement." "I don't believe in affirmative action. I think any woman that is getting a job in the industry should get there on her own merits. But what we have to do is to level the playing field because those women aren't even getting an opportunity at the table for those interviews, whether it's to enter the industry or to navigate their careers." HR inaction A large part of the blame for the lack of progress is placed on HR, according to Mascarenhas. "ere hasn't been enough leadership in HR departments to make it important. e most important action would be for the HR lead to understand the importance and look at the best-practice standard with regards to gender equity." HR can start the process by better managing recruitment policies and employee evaluations. "We have some research on some of the strategies around gender equity; the first one is to embed gender- equity variables into performance evaluations, and a recruitment standard," said Mascarenhas. "If the HR leads understand the importance of gender equity — and I don't think they do right now; otherwise, we'd have seen a lot of movement in this area — I think it will cascade downwards and upwards because the CEOs, the HR leads are in meetings with the CEOs. ey don't bring it up; they haven't brought it up," he said. But the appetite for change in HR departments does exist, said McClellan. "ere are a number of organizations that are looking for ways to advance their diversity programs." "ey either have diversity programs that they've already kicked off, or they're looking to do that, so there is a lot of discussion and dialogue," she said. "Where I see the opportunity is being able to connect the diversity programs to their operations and their everyday business goals, so that their diversity and inclusion of programs and initiatives aren't something that happens off to the side: It's something that is embedded into their business strategy." There hasn't been enough leadership in HR to make it important." Credit: Sergey Nivens (Shutterstock) There have been too many excuses when it comes to the lack of progress in advancing equality in the workplace, according to Michelle Branigan, CEO of Electricity Human Resources Canada.

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