Essentials Hub

Awareness: Building awareness about the company and its job openings to attract potential candidates. This includes brand management, marketing, and employer reputation.

Analysis: Assess outreach and branding strategy, marketing materials

Action: Build relationships with local trade and vocational schools to diversify the potential employee pipeline, ensure outreach strategy includes gender diverse candidate pools, share a diversity of stories and ensure representation of people of all genders in website and other marketing materials.

Resource:  Equaculture podcast: Implementing DE&I in the Employment Life Cycle

Awareness: Actively seeking out qualified candidates for open positions through the creation of job postings, candidate screenings, interviewing, and hiring

Analysis: Assess recruiting channels, candidate pools, starting pay, recruitment teams and hiring committees, job postings, office accessibility

Action: Track demographics and set measurable goals for gender representation from all genders in the talent pool, make job postings using gender neutral language, remove gendered job titles, assess the need for certain requirements (ie: educational requirements), conduct a starting pay analysis, build relationships with associations working with women and genderqueer people, diversify recruitment teams and hiring committees. 

Resources: The Appcast Gender Report:  Impact of Gendered Wording on Candidate Attraction; Monster.com: Six Tips for Inclusive Recruitment Writing

Awareness: Hiring qualified candidates and integrating them into the company’s culture, processes, and policies.  This includes training, establishing workplace expectations, orientation and introduction to the role and colleagues.

Analysis: Orientation process and training materials, opportunities to connect incoming and longtime employees 

Action: Ensure office/ and warehouse spaces are accessible for people of all genders (ie: gender neutral restrooms, accessible menstrual products, etc), assess policies (i.e. around restroom facilities and dress code) to ensure gender neutral language, provide diversity and inclusion training for all new hires including educating employees about the organisation's commitments to gender equality, assess gender representation and diversity in training materials

Resources: USAID Engendering Industries: Communicate company commitment to gender equality, diversity, and inclusion during onboarding; Medium.com: Understanding and Designing an Inclusive Onboarding Experience

Awareness: Ongoing support for employees, including professional development, feedback mechanisms, and performance evaluations

Analysis: Mentorship opportunities, conference attendance, professional development usage

Action: Provide employee resource groups, mentorship and sponsorship programs, assess gender bias and implicit bias in performance evaluations, offer caretaking stipend or services to employees to enable caregivers and parents to attend conferences and other professional development opportunities

Resources:  IMD: Case studies of companies addressing gender bias in the performance Review Process; Harvard Business Review: Watch Out for These 3 Gender Biases in Performance Reviews; Grieg Seafood: Embracing Diversity

Awareness: Strategies that keep employees engaged and motivated to stay and succeed at the company, including compensation, recognition programs, work-life balance initiatives and policies, and succession planning

Analysis: Policies and benefits, retention rates, compensation packages, flex work strategy, provision of childcare, usage rates for parental leave and other policies, succession plan strategy.  

Action: Provision of benefits to include fertility and family-building benefits and gender-affirming care, flexible work arrangements to allow for remote work, provision of child care stipend, expand parental leave beyond state compliance; review succession planning process to assess for gender bias

Resources: Boston Consulting Group Report:Why Paid Family Leave is Good Business; Mowi: Gender Pay Report 2023; Hilton Foods UK Limited: Gender Pay Gap Report 2023

Awareness: The formal process of ending an employee’s tenure at the company, including exit interviews and retirement and pension packages

Analysis: Exit interviews, retirement contributions, pension plans

Action: Incorporate gender specific questions to the exit interview process, including about employees experiences with gender-related issues in the workplace, analyze exit interview data with a gender lens (i.e.: assessing for gender differences in responses), ensure that retirement and pension contributions consider long-term gendered differences in earning potential (i.e. understanding that women have significantly lower retirement savings than men), offer financial packages and investment programs that recognize and address gender gaps in wealth and financial management.

Resources: AAUW: Women and Retirement; Article:  Please leave quietly: 50% of women not asked why they resign