Spotting female-friendly workplaces
Part of a women’s career success strategy should include selecting the right place to work.
Getting ahead is hard enough without making it harder by choosing a male-dominated environment where women are isolated and overlooked for promotion opportunities.
I’ve received many emails from talented women stymied by an out-of-touch boss. One female engineer in Western Australia told me how her boss excluded her from applying for an MBA program because she was in her early 30s.
She wrote to me: “In front of a group of male colleagues my boss told me, ‘Why would I waste the money on you? You’re just going to go off, get married and have babies.’ I had a record of top performance and had done really well in my undergraduate degree and I knew then that I had to find a new employer.”
Your first step is defining what “career success” looks like to you.
If you are a young graduate just starting out, that could mean an employer with a clear program of training and development. If you are like the woman above, then choosing a company that clearly promotes on merit and not fear is also a must.
For other women it might mean workplace flexibility to accommodate child care or eldercare responsibilities or even a specific non-work related activity such as voluntary work or a sport.
A case in point is Kyla Bremner, a medical doctor, who needed to accommodate a brutal training schedule when she was picked to join the Australian team in Beijing, becoming our first ever female wrestler at an Olympic Games.
So, what’s the scoop? How do you sort the employers who empower from the ones that don’t? The answer is excellent research!
Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency
In 2008, 99 employers were endorsed as female-friendly after meeting the rigorous criteria set down by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.
Criteria includes:
That employers must have a pay equity gap less than the national average of 17 per cent;
Be able to demonstrate that they have female managers able to work part-time;
Have at least 27 per cent female management;
That they conduct sex-based harassment training regularly;
Offer a minimum of six weeks paid maternity leave once an employee has chalked up 12 months of service; and
That the employer complies with the EOWW Act.
For an employer to continue claiming to be EOWA compliant, it must be reviewed each year so a 2006 winner for instance cannot claim to be EOWA compliant unless they were also compliant in 2008.
View the list of 2008 Employers of Choice for Women.
It pays to keep up with the news
Call me biased but media research is a great way of figuring out which employers are walking their talk.
The Employment News section of CareerOne, news websites such as news.com.au and other media reports do reveal the things employers would rather keep hidden such as sexual harassment law suits, the results of the EOWA’s annual Equal Pay Day and more.
On the plus side, in a recent article on Catriona Noble, COO of McDonalds Australia, revealed the policies that have seen her rise from a 14 and 9 month-old casual to being on the board. In an article on the mining sector, Peter McCarthy explains why he champions women both in his role as the managing director of AMC Consulting and as president of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He also just happens to have two daughters in senior roles in mining.
You can search news clippings at your state library or nearest large reference library or online through a service such as NewsText but a fee might be included.
Websites and job interviews
It is always important to know what a company says about itself on its website and then to test that information at interview. If an employer doesn’t deem its polices on equal opportunity and diversity more generally as important enough to post on its website, then that is not a good sign. On the other hand, having a policy is useless if that policy is not implemented and implemented well.
Obviously you don’t want to ask questions at interview that make you appear more interested in what you are going to extract from the company than contribute to it. However, there is nothing wrong with asking questions about the company’s involvement with charities, how it has implemented its policies on diversity or if it has diversity training for staff.
It could also be seen as a positive if you discuss topics such as promotion pathways and training.
Word of mouth
One of the best ways to test information about an employer is to ask someone who works for, who has worked for, that organisation. Remember, even this information is subjective. Research is about taking in a range of information upon which to base your opinion. Someone might have had a particular great manager or a bad one who has since left the organisation. Just keep that all in mind.
Join a professional or industry association
Helping member organisations attract and retain women is often one of the important goals of many professional groups.
Organisations like the Australian Computer Society, the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Engineers Australia support women’s groups and programs to help further develop female talent from within their professional sectors.
