Strategies to drive gender equity in the workplace
How can you make a difference in your organisation? Diversity and inclusion expert, Giulia Savio, talks through a range of practical tactics individuals can apply to drive gender equity in the workplace.
Share with others who you are and what you believe in
Firstly, Giulia suggests that you bravely and honestly share with those around you: “Use your voice, be recognised… showcase things that maybe aren’t visible to people, like your ethnicity or culture and call that out to start a conversation.” Examples of how you can practically do this include participating in networks and communities, joining Employee Reference Groups- or starting one up if it doesn’t exist yet - using internal feedback channels to make suggestions and providing feedback.
Request and implement good policies
Giulia has witnessed a huge shift in recruitment and talent acquisition: “For the first time, employees are coming to us and saying ‘do you have a flexible work policy?’, ‘do you have a community or Indigenous/First Nations policy?’ ‘What about family and domestic violence support and leave benefits? Are you supporting those individuals that are struggling with mental health?” If you can not find a policy on an organisations website, ask for it. If they don’t have it, the question will at the very least help them build a business case to create one. “Company policies are a way we can learn about a company’s culture and leadership before we’re actually in there to see it and feel it and touch it for ourselves,” Savio says.
“As individuals, we want to be active, we want to be engaged, we want to know what kind of culture and value-led organisation we’re working for. And the first way you can do that is by looking into a company’s policy…. Inclusive culture and authentic leadership are all demonstrated through a company’s policies, so it’s important that we get those policies right.”
Partner with others
Another strategy to build greater inclusion is “partner with organisations, groups and people that can challenge your thoughts and ideas- as well as help progress your D&I success,” says Savio. No stranger to the power of partnerships, over the last 13 years, Savio has operated in challenging environments across Australia, Papua New Guinea and Canada as a senior leader specialising in relationship, stakeholder management and culture transformation.
Giulia is passionate about the mining industry, specifically developing an engaged and diverse workforce based around creating inclusive environments, that both educate and support people and the wider communities in which they work. Giulia is currently consulting to Orica, one of the world’s leading mining and infrastructure solution providers, to create and embed their global DEI framework.
Professional network and support groups are critical to the sustainability of any approach and successful implementation of something new, especially something as challenging and complex as D&I, she says.
Celebrate success
To create pathways for inclusion, Giulia recommends that you nominate individuals for awards, that you congratulate people and that you nominate yourself. “Put yourself into the ring. AusIMM have also got awards recognising brilliance in the sector,” Giulia says. While she concedes that nominating yourself may be seen as “un-Australian” – “Generally as a nation, we find that quite difficult, to put our hand up and self-identify or call someone else out for doing a good job… It’s so important, particularly as we’re looking for greater diversity and inclusion.”
Targets and important conversations are critical to measuring progress
“Targets or quotas used to be dirty words,” says Savio. “You might have heard the discourse around people not liking quotas or targets because it drives a culture of just appointing a woman. You would have heard... ‘I’ve missed out because they’re only looking for a woman.’. I think people misinterpret the need for measurable objectives because they’re seeing it as driving the wrong message, that it’s just to get a tick in the box.”
“There are numerous other approaches to progress and success, targets are just one example. For me, targets are important because they start a value conversation and keep it on the agenda. The way we talk about things directly links to how we think about things. So if we’re always having the same conversations, if we’ve got no diversity of thoughts or challenging concepts, even with targets being good or bad, we’re not really changing our way of thinking, which means we’ll stay in the status quo.”
“So I don’t want targets, targets, targets. I want targets, targets, targets, plus, plus, plus. And the plus is the inclusive culture, the really targeted and dedicated policies to support our people, the inclusive and authentic leaders that get that we need change and progress across a plethora of issues that are important to the communities that we work in.”
“I want targets on a macro scale but I also want conversations on a micro scale. A micro example is how a student was provided a scholarship and was the first to graduate from her family group because as a young girl, her aunt took her aside and said STEM was really cool. They’re the micro stories that I think are just as important in the targets conversation.”
Finally, Giulia impresses upon the need for individual action. “In order to progress gender equity and, more broadly a more inclusive and diverse work environment, it’s really up to you. To change the way that you think, to change the way that you have conversations, to be more bold in your behaviours and actions."
Giulia Savio facilitates the Diversity and Inclusion Masterclass Series, providing participants with workplace-ready resources and action plans tailored to the mining sector, designed to create an engaged and diverse workforce.