Happy International Women’s Day!
International Women’s Day represents the movement for women’s rights and the on-going effort to create a gender-equal society.
Although the very first International Women’s Day grouping occurred in 1911, the movement truly began in 1908 when one of the most iconic protests took place by women for women to gain better pay, working conditions and rights to vote.
Now today, on the 8th March, countries around the globe will celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women since the global epidemic.
But this worldwide development doesn’t stop here. Although the globe has seen a significant change in the representation of women today, viewed that the battle has been won many would agree that there’s still on-going patriarchy even into this new decade.
Unfortunately, there’s still a lack of representation of women in a lot of roles. They’re particularly low in numbers in politics, business and higher leadership roles and are still not paid equally for the same roles as men.
According to The House of Commons, the gender pay gap was 17.3% in the UK last year. Meaning that on average, women were paid approximately 83p for every £1 men were paid.
Currently, the best-paying jobs for women include a Lawyer, Engineer, Software Developer, Computer Programmer, Scientist, HR professional, Marketing and Sales Manager.
With the mission statement for women in work being: ‘To champion women of all backgrounds who dare to innovate, lead, and uplift others towards a more equal and inclusive workplace’, it seemed only appropriate for this week’s blog to be used to discuss ways you can introduce more diversity into the workplace.
Offer Flexibility
Women are often put off by jobs when there’s a lack of flexibility, especially when it comes to family-orientated responsibility. It happens to be one of the main concerns for candidates in 2020, according to Redigwam.
So, what flexibility can you offer? Companies have started to offer job sharing, part-time jobs, remote working, affordable childcare, paid family leave, and flexible start and end times.
Evaluate Your Employee Diversity
Evaluate how diverse your current workforce is and see if there are any gaps. One of the biggest issues in diversity is with the pay gap between men and women so a good start would be to review your employee’s pay to make sure it’s fair among the same or similar job roles for both genders.
Ask Employees
Ask employees whether they are happy with the diversity in the company. You might be presently surprised by the responses and receive some new ideas on how you could improve it. Employees will be glad to know you’re taking steps to make a difference and could help you recruit new and diverse talent. Consider offering out an anonymous survey for staff members to complete, this might make them inclined to be honest on the matter.
Update Your Recruiting Methods & Extend Candidate Reach
If you are struggling to hire diverse talent, consider if you need to extend your reach. Target specific groups or agencies that are a haven for the diverse candidates you’re struggling to reach. With technology and data, it has become even easier to target a specific audience.
Educate Staff Members
Educate those who are representing your company. Applying diversity initiatives usually starts higher up so educate your company leaders then think of creative ways they can communicate this to staff members to apply to their daily working life.
Update Your Values
Make diversity a part of your company’s values and inform recruits of your ethos. But remember, just adding the vales onto your company about page doesn’t mean your business works towards diversity, you also need to show how you’ve put your values into practice.
Create Inspired Events and Activities
Show your support for the initiative by getting involved in IWD events and activities. Offer internal programs, resources and networking groups to show your support not only to IWD but to your employee’s backgrounds and cultures. If you wanted to create an inspired IWD event, you can order event packs from their website here. Orders are closed for this year, but they will be taking orders again from September.
Make Your Employees Aware
A Glassdoor survey revealed that more than half (57%) of people think their company should be doing more to increase diversity among its workforce which Glassdoor believes is because only one-third of employers polled said they knew of any diversity initiatives where they work. So, make sure they’re aware of your efforts.
And why should you make this effort to become more diverse? Not only does it make it fair, but diversity can also benefit your business.
It can make your company a more attractive place to work. According to further research by Glassdoor, two-thirds (67%) of active and passive job seekers said that a diverse workforce is an important factor when accepting job offers.
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