awardsadmin, Author at Gender Equity Awards

The Power of a Social Contract – Accuteque

by awardsadmin | Dec 7, 2022 | SME

Many companies talk about teams being aligned & operating with a common purpose, however Accuteque is unique with its approach to this common paradigm. They have a philosophy that encourages each team member to act independently to advance the company because they feel connected to the purpose. That’s exactly what Olivia Fenton did when she saw the chance to enter Accuteque in the Recalibrate – Gender Equity Awards. She rallied the team who collectively contributed to the effort. Their plan was well underway when CEO, Caroline Patton, became aware.

Caroline Patton is a progressive woman who, like many people, comes with her own set of family responsibilities. When she became aware of Olivia’s initiative, she immediately saw the benefits. You see, part of her mission has always been to give women a voice and an opportunity to showcase their talent in the male dominated IT sector.

Says Caroline; “People First is truly part of our DNA. It is reflected in our recruitment, engagement, leadership and even at board level. Today, the majority of our leadership and board positions are held by women which is unheard of in similar companies.”

Accuteque accepts people for who they are and where they are in life. This may be at the start of their careers, towards the end where they can deliver their expertise to others or by taking risks on those wanting to re-join the workforce by giving women an opportunity after a parenting stint. As a result, they are attracting very experienced individuals and are proud they have one of Australia’s foremost female enterprise architects as a key member of their team.

Moving beyond policies and procedures, part of what makes Accuteque unique is their social contract. This is an agreement developed by the team and builds on their values to outline what behaviour should happen in certain situations. One example was a statement “Share the load. We are always ready to help. Don’t wait to be asked.” To ensure there is clarity on this, it is explained further; “We are always ready to help. Just ask. There is power in being part of a team. Working together is more enjoyable and you get a better outcome.” Then it goes further; “It doesn’t mean offloading the hard or boring jobs to someone else. Just don’t do it all yourself.” The company operates with a number of these statements which they keep current with regular review so the whole team feels involved.

When Accuteque responded to the Recalibrate Gender Equity Awards, the Social contract allowed Olivia to work “with positive intent”.

As this is so effective for their company, Accuteque will work with other companies and teams to develop their own “social contract” for what is meaningful and important to them. For example, they did this with NAB for the Data Platform team. To deliver the transformation, they needed to be able to work autonomously and have courageous conversations. The social contract implementation backed by the General Manager enabled them to land the project.

Another shift has been into true hybrid ways of working. Caroline says, “We don’t really care where you work from or what you are doing minute to minute between 8 am and 8 pm. Do what you need to do as long as you achieve your KPI’s.” And like their values, everyone is very clear on the company BHAG’s and the associated KPI’s. In fact, one team member travelled to Vietnam and used his location as a base for work whilst also taking some family time. What made it more remarkable was that he had exhausted his leave and so was not expecting to be able to go. After a discussion with his people leader, he realised that he could work around the planned family event and still get his work done.

Another key factor has been flattening the management structure. Around four years ago they got rid of hierarchies and today they describe them as “people leaders” or “coaches” making it clear that the behaviour is to encourage and nurture their staff.

To sum up, Accuteque has a unique way of working that really puts their people first. When asked why this is important, Caroline explains that it’s her role to “leave the ladder out for others and to help them with the climb.” With her championing these initiatives and her team embracing them you can understand why they were finalists in the Recalibrate – Gender Equity Awards.

Giving Women a Voice

by awardsadmin | Nov 29, 2022 | Uncategorized

For Dan Bognar, General Manager at DocuSign in Asia Pacific, giving women a voice is something he is deeply passionate about.

Over his career, this has taken many forms. From mentoring and sponsoring high potential female talent, to creating a safe place for women to work and championing them to raise issues when they have been bullied or harassed, Dan has done it all.

Early in his career, he realised there were many talented young women who had the potential to be great leaders though often lacked the confidence in themselves to see this. He found by demonstrating his confidence in them, finding them opportunities to take on opportunity outside their role and encouraging them to go beyond what they thought possible, they were able to flourish.

One example he shared was of a young woman in the marketing team who became increasingly more uncomfortable as her stakeholder map grew. When asked why she was becoming withdrawn in meetings, he found out it was because she did not feel her voice mattered, that she did not always agree with everyone else and her ideas would not be accepted. Dan, who values a diversity of perspectives & ideas, was able to get her to understand just how valuable her contributions could be in getting the team to a better outcome. Armed with renewed confidence she slowly began to speak up. It didn’t take too long for her to be promoted and she has had a fabulous career trajectory ever since.

As their mentor, female employees have often confided in Dan about situations of harassment or bullying. They go on to share that they only want him to listen and not to act. The women are concerned that if they do speak up, change won’t occur and the worst case scenario is that they will have negative career repercussions a result. Dan openly admits he is conflicted. As a mentor, he must maintain confidentiality, but as a senior leader he does not condone activities that are counter to the company’s and his own values. He says he is often “aghast at the behaviour of some men”. The only solution has been to address this at the leadership level by being clearer about the values the company stands for and the behaviours which won’t be tolerated.

One situation he described happened after a customer dinner. The morning after, he was approached by the female account executive who confided in him that one of the male customers had manhandled her as she was attempting to leave for the night. It was an awkward situation because the account executive was working on a significant deal with that customer with commercial ramifications for the company. At the same time, this behaviour was contradictory to the customer’s company’s values too. Dan was concerned about ensuring the account executive have a voice and that she could share her story safely. His decision was to get HR and the other senior leaders involved. They all agreed it was unacceptable behaviour and they would back their values and their team member despite the potential negative commercial impact. They wanted the female account executive to feel they had her back, that she was in the driver’s seat and the decision to proceed with any formal complaint was hers.

Promoting a safe environment for females to work is something that Dan is very aware of. He feels privileged to have these confidences shared with him and is actively working to raise the awareness of his male team to the problems of female employees not always feeling safe. “Many men don’t even realise that before women will go to a social event, they think who will I be going with? Am I going to be safe? And how am I getting home? Whereas men only need to consider turning up at the event.”

His overall goal is to embrace diversity in all its forms and break down the barriers, not just around gender, but across experience. disability, religion, gender orientation and more. Dan is continuing to champion awareness with ongoing training on “How to have difficult conversations” & “How to Find your Voice”. There is no doubt his actions will continue to make a difference to his team and enable many women to find their voices.

Achieving the Gender Equality Citation for WGEA

by awardsadmin | Nov 25, 2022 | Entertainment

Rosie Poniris is a senior leader at The Star Entertainment Group and winner of the Gender Equity Award for Senior Manager Making a Difference. When we caught up with Rosie, she shared that she had leveraged her role in senior leadership to agitate for The Star’s recent policy improvements in order to achieve the WGEA Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation, which The Star was awarded in March 2022.

To get these improvements across the line, Rosie participated in The Star’s gender equity working group ‘Balance @ Star’ to divide and concur the extensive list of requirements. This included undertaking the role of researcher, advocate, policy developer, and stakeholder engagement leader to increase The Star’s paid parental leave offering and achieve a generous outcome for The Star’s team members. As a result, The Star increased it paid parental leave offering from 10 weeks to 16 weeks, introduced 4 weeks secondary carers leave, removed all qualifying restrictions and now pay 18 weeks of Superannuation on top. These policy improvements have given Team Members more choice in how and when they take parental leave and has a seen a 74% increase in the uptake of parental leave since its inception.

To further establish The Star as an employer of choice, the company is championing part-time and flexible employment options. In fact, Rosie is now part-time in a senior leadership role, something that was not heard of in the organisation only a few years earlier. She walks the walk leading by example as the only part-time employee in the general management team and was promoted into the role as a part-time employee after having returned from parental leave. “I work from home as required and encourage my team to do the same,” says Rosie. “I promote work-life balance by normalising things such as caring for my daughter when she is sick, doctor’s appointments and exercising.”

Implementing these types of initiatives would not be possible without the dedication of the whole People and Performance team and the buy in of the Board and Senior Executive team. “The Board and Executive Committee has been incredibly supportive. You can’t do a change of this magnitude if you don’t have the support of all the leaders,” says Rosie. These policy enhancements are designed to attract more female talent to the organisation, as the Company aims to achieve 45% female representation in management levels. Rosie has even gone so far as to introduce mandatory Diversity and Inclusion Key Performance Indicators to link gender equity outcomes to bonus payments. This included directly contacting leaders whose teams do not currently meet the Company’s gender representation targets to include this on their individual performance scorecard.

Another key initiative Rosie has championed is embedding gender equality into the remuneration policies and processes. This started by completing regular gender pay gap audits and correcting identified issues during the annual remuneration review. In another example of the unequivocal support The Star Executive team have for gender equality, during one remuneration review the team asked for, and was given, an additional $300k by the CEO for gender pay corrections. Today, gender pay equity is one of their five remuneration principles which underpins all remuneration designs and processes. Gender pay inequities are tracked and audited by Rosie’s team, with managers required to correct these during the annual remuneration review process. This rigorous process has seen The Star’s gender pay gap reduce from 10% to 6.8% in the past three years.

Rosie’s advice to others going through the WGEA Employer of Choice citation process? “There are two critical elements that you must have to succeed. The first is the support of the Board and the Executive team and the second is a dedicated working group to make it happen.”

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Challenging the Status Quo

by awardsadmin | Nov 22, 2022 | Boards

Melanie Tran is a woman in tech, a traditionally male-dominated industry sector, who challenges the status quo not just because she is female but also because of her disability. “I often find myself working twice as hard just to prove my capability,” she says. But she has not let that stop her.

At 19, Melanie took on her first board role with Digital Literacy Foundation (previously known as LeepNGO), a not-for-profit organisation, focused on digital inclusion and addressing the challenges of the digital divide. She has continued to step up when others step back never letting anything hold her back. She was also on the board before becoming Chair for Children and Young People with Disability Australia.

Feeling like she has more to give and wanting to make a real difference, Melanie has stepped onto the board of the International Youth Foundation with initiatives that directly serve millions of young people across the globe to promote youth agency, economic opportunities and leadership. She is an Australian representative advocating for young changemakers. Melanie is not someone that has had to chase these roles. When asked how she got that position, she humbly replies they gave her a call. She first met them when she participated in the Laureate Global Fellowship, where she travelled to Spain to take part in a leadership and social entrepreneurship retreat alongside 19 young people from across the globe.

It was an amazing experience for her and clearly, she made an impression on the foundation’s leaders, who then chased her up many years later.

In her day job, Melanie is a Product Designer. Currently, she is very proud of the work she has done at Hireup to simplify the experience for those with a disability to find, manage and hire support workers who are able to assist with daily living activities.

When asked about working as a woman in tech and in the intersection of design, innovation and social impact, Melanie said “It is about creating platforms for unique and powerful voices to be heard, and empower women across the globe to create opportunities for themselves and those around them.”

Eight years ago, she vowed she would use her skills and expertise, as well as her own lived experience as a catalyst to drive innovation and positive social change in the healthcare and technology sectors, and today that dream has crystallised into her research project. She is currently doing her PhD on harnessing the power of design and technology to improve the communication experience between young people with chronic conditions and clinicians who specialise in paediatric emergency medicine. Her mission is to create a solution that may address some of these communication challenges, driven by the voices of young people, their parents/caregivers and paediatric emergency clinicians.

As you can see, nothing will hold Melanie back. Her advice to others wanting to challenge the status quo, is, “Be bold and brave” and “It’s okay to make mistakes because we can learn from these lessons. It’s about embarking on the journey of continuous transformation.”

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Taking Flexibility to a Whole New Level

by awardsadmin | Nov 22, 2022 | Legal

There is a lot of talk about flexibility and hybrid working. Yet too often, when we dig deeper, flexibility is minimal and the gains almost non-existent. So Coulter Legal, a respected Geelong-based legal firm, has decided it is time to break the mould and take the concept of flexibility and hybrid working to a whole new level.

Importantly, it is proving to be a gamechanger for their recruitment and retention objectives.

Almost all their people take up some form of flexibility. This can include varying start and finish times, compressed working weeks, part-time hours and working from home or from an office closer to their own home. They are proud they have managed to conceive and adopt a flexibility model which is possible to offer to all their people, regardless of their position. The model ensures all employees can take advantage of the scheme in an equitable manner for their own circumstances.

“We pride ourselves on our individualised approach to flexibility,” says Belinda Perisic, General Manager. They have embraced their employees’ parenting needs and turned it into a competitive advantage.

The legal industry is often known for its rigid philosophies and partnership structures which do not support partners or principals in any part-time capacity. Not so Coulter Legal who have Alicia Carroll, Principal Lawyer and Head of Corporate & Commercial. She is taking advantage of the scheme choosing a four-day working week with excess load spread across the team. Bonnie Phillips, Head of Family & Relationship Law is currently on parental leave and will return in a part-time capacity in 2023. The team are already working on a delegation structure to ensure that Bonnie is well supported in he return to work next year.

Two additional game changers include the extension of the parental leave policy to 18 weeks and the removal of any distinguishment between primary and secondary carers. Upon the introduction of these measures, they immediately went from two to three taking it up per year to seven in 2022. The program also includes paid superannuation on unpaid leave up to 52 weeks, paid leave for pregnancy loss, paid leave for IVF treatment, and additional support on return to work including part-time and staggered returns.

Quite simply, employees are trusted to work flexibly in clearly outlined relationships. For instance, Belinda personally feels it is important to mirror the values of Coulter Legal, so she chooses to do child drop-off and pick-up every day. One day, excess traffic after drop-off caused her to run late to an interview. “Whilst the situation was not ideal, it was the best way to demonstrate to the candidate that we are serious about flexibility and understand people have responsibilities outside of work.”

Graduates are included in the scheme too. One of the newly hired grads works remotely from Gippsland. She comes into the Melbourne office as agreed. The company have been inventive at ensuring adequate systems are in place for this graduate to use collaboration tools to ask questions and stay on track.

Given the number of employees working flexibly, you could argue they are out of sight and that this might impact their ability to progress their careers. The Coulter Legal team have that covered with a robust talent planning system which ensures people are assessed based on their performance and career aspirations. People are not disadvantaged by taking parental leave as promotions are given to those most deserving. Belinda advised, “We recently promoted a lawyer into a very senior position and then immediately put that on hold so that she could take her maternity leave and focus on her family. She will begin in her new role when she returns to the business in 2023.”

Empathy is one of their foundational considerations as demonstrated by their Family Violence Leave Policy. This allows staff to take the time they need to escape domestic violence through offering paid leave and additional support, including through their Employee Assistance Program. In circumstances where someone shares that they are living in or escaping from family violence, they take a very caring and confidential stance to ensure their staff member is safe first.

Managing Principal, Anne O’Loughlin, also commented that “Coulter Legal are committed to addressing the changing needs of the team on an ongoing basis and that it is part of the strategic plan at Coulter Legal to remain flexible and focused on their people.”

Coulter Legal is incredibly proud of its diversity, in particular their gender equality. They are 80% women and have equal representation of women and men across both Executive and Leadership levels. Clearly, it’s a great place to work!

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