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Making the change real

In order to achieve your organisation’s gender diversity targets, gender diversity should not be approached on the basis of one-off initiatives.

To achieve a successful result and to make the change real for your organisation, resource planning and reassessing day-to-day operational activities is required.

Clearly communicate the change

To achieve gender diverse outcomes for your organisation, the outcomes must be clearly communicated within your organisation so that day-to-day activities are achieving these strategic outcomes.

Resource appropriately

Consider what is achievable within the context of your organisation. Identifying resourcing and capacity is critical to ensuring that your organisation achieves its strategic outcome of becoming a gender diverse organisation.

Assign a gender diversity champion

Your organisation could assign a gender diversity champion that is empowered to drive the required actions and model the behaviours in the way that your organisation plans to operate to achieve gender diversity.

Link your day-to-day to strategic outcomes

Changes may impact certain roles and activities within your organisation in order to achieve your strategic outcomes around gender diversity.

Assess current operations to determine what may be impacted and consider how to incorporate the changes accordingly.

Example: make meetings accessible for everyone

Changing the way you operate could begin with reassessing how you conduct meetings within your organisation. Consider the following:

Meeting times

Are your current meeting times suitable for all your attendees. Do they have any external commitments such as school drop offs, further study or caring requirements that should be considered which might limit their ability to attend the meeting at certain times?

Length of meetings

Can meetings be conducted within a shorter timeframe to minimise the time commitment required?

Tech-enablement

Can your meetings be technology-enabled, using teleconference capabilities that can allow attendees to dial into meetings if they are working remotely?

Addressing any barriers you identify by changing the way your organisation operates can enable greater gender diversity outcomes.

What you should do

• Ensure the person or people tasked with improving gender diversity, such as your gender diversity champion, has the time and capability to undertake this role.
• Document clear requirements for those tasked with increasing gender diversity which align with your strategic plan outcomes.
• Reassess the way your organisation operates.
• Identify any barriers within your organisation’s day-to-day activities and address the barriers in order to improve gender diversity.