Canadian HR Reporter

June 2021 CAN

Canadian HR Reporter is the national journal of human resource management. It features the latest workplace news, HR best practices, employment law commentary and tools and tips for employers to get the most out of their workforce.

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www.hrreporter.com 13 Decision-makers also shouldn' t shy away from digging into the hard numbers of representation to inform future decision-making, says Juneja. "Let's recognize the power of data to inform diversity, equity and inclusion strategies. Let's leverage current data and data from the past couple of years to understand how COVID-19 has really exacerbated existing inequities in the workforce. We can't fix what we don't measure, so measurement is important." Apotex looks at barriers For Campbell, 2017 was a pivotal year in Apotex's own equity journey as she began work on an agenda aimed at change, she says. "We set out to understand from the women in our business and obviously from the men… what the barriers were." Campbell worked with two other senior executives — both men — to "increase opportunities for our women to network across the organization and to network with both men and women, to create forums where people could share, learn, support one another. There was a big void in women saying, 'I don't feel like I have the support of other women.' So what could we do about that?" Instead of the usual programmatic driver of financial success and report being "highly motivated" — revenues rose by 61 per cent, found the research. Besides the boost in funds flowing into the business, more women in higher positions will also increase the leader- ship pipeline, according to Juneja. "Having the benefit of role models at the top helps women in junior positions see examples of themselves at the senior leadership level and helps with respect to advancement." Organizations should be looking to recognize promising young women who are already on the roster, says Plotnick. "The other piece is to really start looking deeper within your organization for the leaders of tomorrow; looking at sponsorship programs, identifying women that have high potential and creating pathways for them. This is not about special treatment; it's about delib- erately creating pathways for women to move up through the organization." For example, LHH is involved in a Getting Board Ready (GBR) program that helps women find their pathway to land their first corporate board seat. "It's creating those experiences earlier in their lives as leaders so that they're ready to take on the roles when they present themselves," she says. approach, Campbell wanted to dig deeper to change the corporate mindset. "We weren't going to create this woman-in-leadership program but rather we really wanted to attack it at a cultural perspective and add a grassroots perspective. Sometimes, a program has a start and an end: I didn't want that." After a workshop and planning sessions with a number of Apotex employees, they came up with various critical themes to devise a plan and address the issue, she says. T he y em p lo yed a three-p illa r approach. The first involved encour- aging women to "evolve and ignite and that's really about developing and growing, expanding your network, seeking diversity of thoughts, inspiring others," says Campbell. Next came empowerment. That's about "enhancing confidence or enabling women to feel comfortable to stretch outside of their comfort zone," she says, while the third was about appointing women to important roles at the company. It's also important to remember to invite all comers on the gender-equality bandwagon, says Campbell. "We really made some good progress by involving, identifying those male cham- "We've seen a shift in some organizations from their focus on gender equity to focusing on other aspects of identity." Vandana Juneja, Catalyst Canada pions early on in the process because you can't do anything in isolation and just think that women can change this alone. It's really about making sure that men come along on this journey [and] it's important for women to see that men are supportive of this." After all this, Apotex has seen success. "We see now our numbers increasing at different levels — at that manager level, associate director level. We see now that we've got this much stronger pipeline of high-potential women that will obviously continue to evolve," she says. CHRR Apotex leaders volunteering with a United Way agency at a speed mentoring session for women in Toronto (pre-COVID).

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