this conference will now be recorded okay good afternoon everybody welcome
and thank you for joining us for the second of three webinars that will focus on advancing gender equality I just have
a few housekeeping notes before we get started as you know we’re going to be recording this webinar and a copy of the
presentation will be available afterwards on the EHR se website there’s
going to be a Q&A session after Jennifer’s presentation for 10 to 15 minutes based on how much time is
remaining after the webinar also during the webinar today we’re going to ask you to participate in four polling questions
in the calendar invite there is a link for you to access which is pol II b.com
/e h Farsi ma r ID make sure you have
this link ready when we get to the polling questions and you’re going to see everything live also if anybody is
getting on to the web the webinar currently if you can mute your audio that helps with any feedback so first of
all now let me introduce myself to all of our new participants my name is Murray mold and I’m the manager a
stakeholder engagement here at EHR C we are delighted to do this in partnership
with Natural Resources Canada and to support the equal by 30 campaign which
you will hear more about momentarily I want to give a warm welcome to Kim chumsky senior policy advisor in the
environment and energy policy division and in our camp we are also very pleased
to welcome nan Raphael Duane president of the Canadian hydropower Association who will speak to the importance of this
topic the webinar features speaker today is jennifer Ladouceur president and co-founder of women a
leadership nation Jennifer will provide the challenges that exist currently in the workplace and how to focus on
creating the right environment for successful unity okay so let’s get started
for anyone that’s new in the audience electricity Human Resources Canada is a national not-for-profit organized
station that addresses the human resource and labor market challenges within the Canadian electricity sector
our vision is to build a highly skilled safety focused and diverse Canadian
electricity workforce for now in the future but while Canada has a strong and
diverse energy supply unfortunately the same cannot be said yet for our workforce as in many technical sectors
women working in energy represent a much smaller component of the workforce than they should and in many instances they
continue to face barriers that limit their advancement or indeed their desire to remain in the industry we have been
working diligently over the last decade to support change and the leadership Accord was born how did that work it
provides a platform to create a culture of equality and inclusion throughout the workforce
it is a public commitment by employers labor and educational institutions to
promote the values of diversity equality and inclusion and increase the representation of women in particular in
the skilled trades and non-traditional positions it is the premise of the Accord that to effect systemic change a
bold vision is required by industry leaders that those at the top of an organization need to set the standard
for others to follow
I’m just spoken to the next slides there we go
studies show that diverse teams in the workplace lead to greater innovation and positive impacts on an organization’s
bottom line a slew of recruitment and retention benefits and the increased employee commitment however as you can
see on this slide the numbers are telling a different story there are eight point six million women working in
Canada making it approximately forty eight percent of the Canadian workforce we still represent only 25 percent of
the world in the electricity sector furthermore fewer than 13 percent of
practicing licensed engineers or women in the trades you can see that that a number plummets to fewer than five
percent despite the rise in the proportion of women in the electricity industry and best efforts to tap into develop and
retain this cohort the pace of improvement has been slow with the parity between men and women in the
industry remaining a long way off it is clear that we have more work to do I’d
now like to hand it over to Kim Jong ski who will introduce M Raphael odelay and the equal 132 company
hi everybody and for those of you who were on the call last time I would just I’d like to say thank you for coming in
and like I did before just highest praise to our partners in the EHR see the work they’re doing on the leadership
of the court is tremendous a great example of a domestic initiative I speak
to the international perspective if it isn’t perfectly clear through an hour
can we co-lead an international campaign that looks a lot like the leadership
Accord it’s called equal by 30 but I’m not going to say too much about it today my job is actually to introduce another
tremendous partner of ours I’m Raphael Oda why who is the president of the Canadian hydropower Association she is a
longtime sort of public servants in the community of Ottawa in just in the last
nine years has worked at the provincial energy department in Nova Scotia she’s been involved in social and
environmental issue issue management at hatch which is an international engineering consulting firm she’s a
founding partner of the Canadian Council of renewable electricity and as now has
moved up the ranks at Canadian hydropower but what isn’t evident in her bio is perhaps just the caliber and
passion that she brings to this particular file I’m Raphael reached out to us sometime in the fall and said I’ve
heard about your initiative I want to take part and it didn’t stop there not
only did she join she said now what can I do to help you and immediately offered ways for us to amplify our work for us
to be seen we were invited to attend their conference where she made gender
equality a major part of the conversation in her keynote in the people that she invited to participate
in the way she administered her sessions she recognized women of power and this
year it was Shauna patch all of Manitoba Hydro know you guys are on the line but what you go she is really truly an advocate
for women and when I think about equal by 30 and sort of the advantage that we have it is really in supporting other
women and Raphael walks walk on that one it is through these partnerships and
through powerful leadership like that I think we really are making progress so whether and how you decide to join on
to equal by 30 or the leadership Accord and of course I think you do it is in Rafael’s image that I would
inspire I would I would sort of challenge you to inspire yourself and with that I’ll turn it over to her who
will tell you a little bit more about equal by 30 Donna thread is among officiel we think that’s pretty
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petrichenko do not webinar which Audrey mess so this is Kim Chomsky once again
thank you thank you very very much for anybody on the call whose first language is not French and you want to know what
what I’m gonna fail has just said please reach out to me Kim Chomsky or to Murray
we do have these remarks translated of course but inclusion includes being
respectful of people’s first languages and we know that there’s callers there’s people listening in from Quebec so we
hope that we were able to follow along and if not happy to share what we have so that you can read further thank you
so much Rafael yes Kim do you want to
talk a little bit more about the equal month earlier it was covered so well by an Raphael I’ve got nothing but again
very yeah yeah well we’ll throw it over to the main attraction here today and
yeah girl k great so thank you cam thank
you and I am not super cool it gives me great pleasure to introduce our speaker today Jennifer allowed to serve
she’s the president and co-founder of women leadership nation it’s an organization committed to closing the
gender gap in creating unified workplaces Jennifer is a serial entrepreneur and as held senior
leadership positions in the private public and government sectors where she herself has faced many obstacles and
challenges jennifer has dedicated the past two years to investigating why the gender gap is not closing in developing
holistic solutions that Health Organization’s attract do engage and retain women leaders by
creating more unified workplaces today Jennifer will share the challenges that
exist in the current workplace and how to focus on creating the right environment for successful unity
Jennifer over to you I’m going to give you the screen in just one second and
you should be good to go you can see
that yes so thank you so much for inviting me to present on this really
important topic this is something that’s really dear to my heart and something
like we said that I’ve spent the last two years doing significant research and
trying to understand why in every role that I’ve held whether it’s been in
investment banking in consulting or in
the government why in many cases I’ve been the only woman in the room and and I know how that’s made me feel
and I believe that there’s so much more potential but it’s really trying to understand why why our organization is
truly struggling to close a gap it will
offer my perspective and why I believe that organizations are often taking the
wrong approach and what a new approach might look like so but to begin with
that by the very nature of you participating obviously that this is an important topic is something that you
also are looking to progress and I’m sure that we are making progress in some
ways but in many ways we still have a
long way to go now over the two years that I’ve spent the research I was shocked at how far we still have to go
women represent still only 47 percent of the labor force in Canada and yet less
than five percent of CEOs are women the percentage of companies without any
women on the board fell to 37 percent 20:17 and what we’re finding in a lot of
research that were reviewing is that we’re actually taking steps backwards on
average women are promoted at a lower rate and one in five women people say
that there are no women in leadership at all of their current taking a look at
the electricity sector the gap is significant and at a time when significant opportunities still exist by
Ernst & Young study that found that women and only 16% of board members of
over power and facility sector in 2015 according to the 2011 labor market
report power emotion electricity renewable energy drink is experiencing a
major investment boom it will see much of the existing system replaced or upgraded during the transition from
legacy to next generation infrastructure it’s estimated that the next generation energy projects will involve two decades
construction at a cost of 295 billion dollars so it’s very significant to not
have parity and have the opportunity available to women as well and as a
renewable energy sector we’ll need to run employees between 2011 and 2016
that’s 45,000 to meet the labor market associated with next-gen this is twice
the number of ways over the last five years since is low in fact it’s
absolutely take 170 years the economic
must be too slow particularly when we could be adding trillions of dollars to the global
economy if we were reaching parity you have to ask yourself why when businesses
organizations governments not-for-profits are investing money into programs
problem why are not the studies all
point to one answer when you take a look profession why organizations not
progressing what we found based on research talking to businesses and our clients is that typically organizations
are too focused on trying to solve individual pain points by applying one-off disconnected band-aid solutions
so for example an organization will be struggling with harassment in the workplace and they’ll introduce a
sensitivity training program or they’ll find that a large percentage of the workforce is stressed out or going off
on sick leave so they’ll offer flexible work arrangements maternity leave is a
big one in Europe they deal with it very differently they support the women before during and after maternity here
we Institute you know support with wage and leave extensions and that type of
thing but quite often women will go off on maternity be completely divorced from the company not really know what’s going
on and expect to just reintegrate quickly all of these individual solutions are all good each solution in
its own right helps but is it really enough is it really the right approach
or is there another approach that we could be taking launching a diversity
and inclusion committee that’s often another step that companies take and in
many cases they’re looking at it as really just checking off the box a lot
of times these committees are just random selecting speakers to come in
they are addressing a need but really is it far enough solving the gender gap and
creating a unified workplace is a complex problem to be solved and requires a strategic approach
the reality is what we are doing today isn’t working we are only seeing part of the problem part of the picture we are
too focused on the symptoms and the problem and not seeing the bigger picture
I’ll move put on – I’ll give it back to Murray – to go oh we just want to UM yes
and I see that yeah the last question
I’ll have to go back to that okay so if everybody’s logged on to the link that I provided into your calendar invite it’s
also at the top of this so we’re going to do a Paul Jennifer is there a way
that you can you’re in the live slideshow correct yep okay for some
reason okay I’m gonna have to go back to my screen because I’m not sure this is
going to
chains chain
okay well try this so everybody should
see the questions just let me clear these result or it has people but I guess people have started actually um
yeah here we go they’re actually doing the results so I’ll just wait about a
minute and see how this goes as you can see you can see the light results on
this pole currently so this is very
interesting already what’s coming in so like we’re saying there’s there’s a lot of talk and no action there’s the
concerns and resistance from men that’s going up to one of the things we found in research is that a lot of the
programs that are being developed are actually including only women and we
feel that that’s that’s really not helping that a solution needs to include
men in the the answers seems to be the
Diana don’t lots of talk know what well
hopefully we were going to cover some some ways that you can take action today
so just wait a little bit longer Jennifer and I’ll walk the results
okay looks like the activity stops all lock-in at BOTS and if you just give me
a second I’ll shoot it back to you there
you go great so the time has come for a
new approach since what we’re doing today isn’t working an approach that looks at creating a unified workplace
one that embraces diversity inclusion and collaboration we need to take a
holistic approach recognizing the need for a unity strategy that includes everyone as part of the solution and
influences the overall corporate culture an approach that might get uncomfortable
requires authentic leadership and goes and it goes beyond the internal
stakeholders and build stronger connections with all partners both internal and external if we want to make
progress we want to move beyond diversity and inclusion and towards creating a more unified workplace we
need to take some radical steps a new approach that begins with recognizing
barriers and to create solutions research has been done by Harvard and in
fact there’s an incredible book called through the labyrinth and in this book what they do is they express how women
have broken through the glass ceiling women have reached the top in many
industries I was looking at the electricity industry trans Alta wood
which was formerly a Calgary Power has a female CEO and president she’s been in
place since 2012 and she’s the second highest paid female CEO in Canada so we
can’t say that women haven’t broken through the glass ceiling however what we found once we’ve gotten through there
is that it’s a more complex labyrinth on we need to navigate and if you take that
that concept it really helps us build a solution by looking at it as a labyrinth
women are faced with more obstacles and roadblocks along the way a new approach must recognize this organizations must
understand the barriers that exist within their organization to make it easier to navigate we must focus on
creating the right environment for successful unity in the workplace that will drive innovation and other economic
and social benefits after researching the question why are we not successfully
closing the gender gap and creating unity in the workplace we uncovered 12 building blocks to unity and twelve
areas that make up a holistic approach and again study after study that we’ve read that’s
on on the market that’s available in and talking to companies and and clients
these are all all 12 components that make up a successful unified workplace
champion so again we need to have champions we need to have strong leaders with a vision if the leadership doesn’t
believe in it even you won’t be able to make any progress you need to have awareness and awareness not just from a
corporate perspective in terms of where the roadblocks to and for example in the
legal field what we’re finding is a lot of women are 5050 going into the fields
making it to manager but they’re not making it to partner so really deep awareness but also
personal awareness for the employees themselves so the women that want to
progress to certain levels and achieve things there needs to be more clarity and support and them understanding what
their strengths and what their personal challenges and labyrinths our unity goals we need to set realistic smart
unity goals and and really stick to that and and build strategies around it we
need to be inclusive so solutions needs to include everyone including men and women and even
suppliers in some cases we found businesses have a deep relationship with
strategic partners that are really a face and represent their companies they
need to be included as well you need to have training accessible to all you need
to have in-person formal training to be able to give all of your employees the
tools and resources needed to be successful you need to build a structure
around unity skills what skills are important to you in your organization what what would you represent in terms
your organization what are the habits what are the behaviors that are important to represent unity
experiential learning we need to get people to be able to be comfortable with
having courageous conversations we need to make it real in their environment we
need to build a supportive network we need to be able to have a supportive network internally and externally across
the organization this also includes having sponsors and champions and
mentors and sponsors are very different from mentors again a lot of the research is saying that there’s a lack of
sponsorship so you’re where you would have a mentor guide you but whereas a
sponsorship might actually open doors and really present opportunities to you
we need to create actual opportunities you know a lot of times that we found
organizations that were providing the support but then when it came to a woman
wanting to grow there was actually no room for growth there was no opportunities to excel on culture again
this is deeply entrenched culture captures the way in which groups and people perceive interpret and understand
the world around them these cultures communicate directives that have a profound influence on how we think what
we believe in how we act role models we need to have successful
role models that can really make it possible for people to see what possible and we need to look at the
pipeline and how we’re ensuring that women are choosing stem and and from the
very beginning when they goes in through high school through college and university and then career and measure
we need to be able to measure results activities track what’s working and what needs modification we don’t have enough
time to do a deep dive into all 12 building blocks so today we’re going to focus on number one creating gender
champions some of the obstacles and roadblocks women are facing require them
to take different routes in the labyrinth some of the roadblocks that
we’ve found based on research some of the biggest ones are you know unwelcoming environments limited
opportunities for advancements family obligations placing stress or pressure on them lack of women role models no
support during pre on a post majority lack of flexible working arrangements
limited networking opportunities lack of sponsors and so on I know in my career
there’s there’s been a number when you take a look at the the family obligations
when when I was at the City of Vaughan I was the director of economic development
and culture and that involved a lot of international travel and you know being away for a few years few weeks at a time
it can be challenging right so you know we need to take a look at we want to
have great talent in place but what are some ways that we can help them to
better navigate it and I think the responsibility lies on the corporation
to make it an organization to make it the labyrinth weren’t easy to navigate as well as the individuals we can’t
focus on fixing the women any longer what we need to do is look at the problem holistically and start
addressing problems with the entire environment in which women are struggling to navigate so Pass affects
you to Murray to to do another
or question sir and is okay here is the
second poll looks like people are already they’ve got the hang of it
fantastic
so this is really interesting so the power of speaking your truth again this
goes to the authentic leadership I believe that it really need to be honest
5050 very interesting so again you know or the for the first one I know I am
known for speaking truth to power and really being able to be your authentic
self and also the organization being able to set up a culture where that’s
okay to speak your truth is really important and this is very interesting 5050 so I’m very careful about who and
when and again that’s that’s very very interesting because we need to be able
to create a culture where it’s okay to to be able to speak your truth and
actually encourage it and and not have ramifications to speaking your truth so
what we’ve done here is the theory of the labyrinth we’ve created a little
exercise that you can will make available to you that you can actually
do within your organization to get started and and helps you see the bigger
picture and gain clarity into your current situation and develop some new strategies for creating unity and the
ideal environment for unity so you start with step one is really begin by
identifying your professional goals or your organizational goals so this can be
done at a personal level and also a professional level organizational level
so step two is really identifying what your specific challenges roadblocks and
opportunities are that you have to navigate and then third is identifying
strategies and solutions we’re actually in navigating so what you what’s very
interesting is that you start to really break down and get to the core of what
are some of the challenges and in fact what we’ve found is that sometimes it
may not be what you think it may be that there are certain systems or archaic processes that are in
place that are actually limiting you know the opportunity to increase innovation and collaboration so we’re
gonna take a deeper look at the empower empower gender champions and really how
you set that up because we believe that it’s not enough to say we’re gonna have gender champions in the organization
raise your hand who would like to be and just say okay go there really needs to
be some thought and methodology to it what is the gender champion when we
started with that we asked ourselves that question we started by really doing some looking at what is the definition
first of all of a champion and a champion is a person who fights or argues for a cause on behalf of
themselves or someone else and we believe the definition needs to expand and when you look at gender champions we
believe generations need to have knowledge of the diversity landscape within their organization and industry
they have to be inclusive and encourage radical collaboration not just
collaboration but radical daily at an organizational level and they need their
not only individuals at the top but it needs to be all employees at all levels across the organization the champions
need to drive new initiatives inspire new ideas and approaches and have a strong impact on the organization’s
culture and again these need to be men and women we need to have a culture
where women support women better and in some cases that is an issue and we need
to have a culture where men support women as well we’ve broken it down to
four phases in terms of developing a unity workplace and really within each
of those phases again the role the responsibilities and the needs for
supporting gender champions at each phase is going to be completely different so we need to be able to take
look at that in terms of the four phases we have phase 1 being the discovery phase 2 beings
strategy phase 3 launching and building phase and then phase 4 is measuring when
we look at phase 1 in terms of just discovery we need to look at defining
the rules of the gender diversity champions specifically what is it that
you would like these individuals to achieve what is the goal and with that
level of clarity they’re going to be more successful we need to build the
business case with them and so that they have a really strong sense of what is it
that we’re trying to achieve at a corporate level particularly if they come across anybody that has concerns or
is that a little more negative towards it we need to examine the organization’s
corporate culture we need to be very comfortable with being uncomfortable and being very honest about what is it in
the corporate culture that is really adding to creating barriers and what is
it that we would like to achieve in terms of creating a new culture what does that look like we need to look at
conscious and unconscious bias and everyone has that and one of my friends
she’s the president or the head of HR for Roche and she gave a really great
TED talk as a HR professional she expressed that she actually has a bias
against women and she explains in her talk that it was an unconscious bias that she wasn’t even aware of and she
actually presents some great strategies as to how do you discover whether you
have an unconscious bias and you can watch the presentation but really at the
end of the day it’s the the theory is you flip it to test it somebody had come
into her office it was a man came into her office and asked if he could have a
his hey reassessed and she said okay and
then a woman came in and she asked us a same question and she said in her mind she was thinking we are paid enough and
she and that was sort of the trigger for her we need to uncover opportunities now
there’s already a lot of things that organizations are probably doing very well and there’s always a lot of
opportunities for growth and we know that diversity and inclusion spurs innovation so what are the opportunities
that we can live our leverage by by all of these new initiatives we need to
increase the employees overall level of self-awareness and connection to purpose
particularly the next generation that’s coming up there they want to have a
sense of purpose they want to feel like that for making a difference and and this certainly can contribute towards it
we need to embrace training and experience of learning and we need to be able to train them prepare them so that
they can go out and be successful in the organization and represent them properly we need to develop unity skills and you
need to create a corporate culture of unity understanding what that means to
you what does that look and feel like within your organization and some of some of the things that recommend also
in terms of supporting the not only employees but the general champions
particularly is trying to really lead from a place of strength so allowing
them to evaluate clearly what their strengths are and leverage those so
we’ve created another worksheet that can be done for really developing a strategy
for creating gender champions step one really looks out what is the role of a
gender champion mean to you with it what does it look and feel like in your organization and then identifying the
challenges roadblocks opportunities and then associated strategies so based on
those challenges that you’ve identified what is it that they’re potentially could be coming across what area and
that might be different again that’s why the discovery is so important in terms of understanding and and
certainly signing the Accord is a great step to really understanding your
current environment and understanding where there might be some challenges and you might find that there might be
certain departments that are excelling and can be act as a role model where other departments are are lagging and
and could could benefit from some some strategies there to help them to grow
when we take a closer look at the unity skills and what I was referring to if I
was to tell you to go to work today and to be more diverse more inclusive more
collaborative just go to work and be more unified what what does that look like you know we can’t just expect that
we express a desire to our employees but
not given the skills and the understand that behaviors and habits of achieving that so we asked the exact same same
question what would that mean if somebody were to ask us to be more
unified and we created 12 unity skills that we’ve created measurable habits and
behaviors linked to if you are asking your gender champions to be your voice
in your spokesperson then you need to be able to clearly articulate the types of behaviors and habits they should
demonstrate so take a closer look at what that really means so by
establishing the unity skill is important to you and your organization you have the ability to clearly explain
the Associated behaviors and habits so clearly for us empathy when we look at
what a unified workplace would look and feel like to us we feel that a skill
that’s required as empathy and so a habit is that to perceive so again and a
behavior is I’m sensing the emotions inside and around me so mine my
colleague here might be having a really bad day and so I’m more a
ethic and understanding towards them or I might help them out on a project it’s
some of the other skill sets are the communication again that action would be listening community which would be
commitment cooperation and tension set creativity a tent that you’re more
mindful that your your negotiation again I’m thinking ahead possible roadblocks
critical thinking I’m seeing information and context decision-making I’m
articulating needs and constraints so it this could be you know these are the
twelve that we’ve identified as being key in core but you know you could take
a look at what your organization would what your mission and vision is and there might be other ones other skill
sets that can be linked to actions that can be very shown and based on those you
can then actually work with employees in terms of measuring and in terms of
teaching them how to represent tile so
phase two is the strategy phase we need to define outcomes and expectations and
we need to identify roles and responsibilities set really smart unity
goals and objectives create an action plan and look at it what it does it look like 30 60 90 days out we need to
identify and engage role models and we need to brand the entire initiative
really I’ve seen a lot of people have a lot of different initiatives when you
sit down and talk to them they they might have a committee they might have a mentorship program they might have a few
other initiatives underway they might have new policies and procedures but the
organization overall and your clients don’t necessarily know that you have that because it’s not probably packaged
and you really need to be able to package and brand your entire initiative
to create excitement to encourage engagement to to really show the breadth
of everything that you’re planning on doing and really to show that you have it’s a
holistic approach phase three which is
launching and building phase you need to be able to identify the initiatives but
really launch them in a powerful way you
might have other initiatives already going on that you could tag on to but
really encouraging and creating excitement around it from the beginning and then also finding ways I mean
maintaining that excitement is really important you need to be able to introduce the gender diversity champions
to the organizations and to key stakeholders and you know and allow them
to feel sense of pride of having that role and encouraging them to to continue
to to go out and promote diversity you need to provide ongoing support to
champions and you need to encourage and grassroots initiatives so you’ll have
your overall strategy but you need to be able to encourage others whether they’re
the champions or they’re any employee and any level to come forward with new
ideas because they’re gonna all have a different perspective and you’ll be very
surprised at what what will come from that and also a sense of accomplishment from the individuals and you need to
demonstrate support from the top so again in all the studies that we’ve read
one of the reasons why organizations fail to close a gap or to make progress
is because they don’t have support from the top so we need to be able to demonstrate that we need to be able to
encourage organizations to have courageous conversations some of this is very difficult we need to be able to be
very honest but feel that that’s not going to come back to us and we evil we
need to be able to continue to maintain that momentum phase 4 measurement
recognition that that’s very critical again this was lacking in the study
saying that a lot of organizations are doing initiatives but they don’t necessarily have know what the results
are Annie you’re gonna need that from a support from a financial perspective to be able to go back to leadership and say
you know it generated these results so continue to fund as well as just knowing
that you actually are making progress so you need to have the measurable goals you need to recognize and celebrate the
progress that you’re making even if it’s small you need to be able to share success stories and video is very
powerful again you want to individuals particularly in this world now where
everybody’s emailing or texting we need to be able to create a sense of all
coming together and actually engaging again so that’s a big one ongoing
support momentum you can’t just set it and let it go you need to really ensure
that it’s continuing to create momentum and you need to be able to be ok with
adjusting the strategy as required because a lot of times you’re going to find that it’s ok if something doesn’t
work or is not as effective at least you know now you can move on so you need to set that and that’s also something
that’s critical for innovation so again all of this is creating more innovation
in your organization and again I have to say by signing the Accord this actually
helps you put a lot of these pieces into place and you can also share success and
stories and and learn from one another so I’m gonna pass it on to other
holiness yeah try and do this fairly quickly
their toll
that’s great it looks I mean by the very fact that you’re on this call on this
webinar shows that you play a role so so that’s excellent again someone to study
found that women were not necessarily
given access to leaders and to champions um okay so I’m gonna walk it here unless
oh wait one more second it’s fairly
close okay I’m gonna lock it there send it back to you Jennifer so when you take
a look at characteristics listed just a few characteristics and actions of what
divert diversity champions really look like just quickly that some of the
characteristics are there influencers they believe in the business case you you have to truly believe in it
there are authentic leaders they’re effective networkers in their skill that
answering tough questions which they might be faced with some of the actions are they are able to start conversations
particularly difficult ones when necessary they call out barriers and for
helps to line Lucian’s they’re really mentors they walk the walk and they they bring people together and you know so
why would you so why would you go to all this work we’re all busy enough
day-to-day lives besides the fact that this is the right thing to do to to really build more
unity in your workplace well it’s proven that how many women in the workplace is proven to result in better financial
performance stronger problem-solving more collaboration and support
developing other’s trust increased trust in stronger corporate culture lower risk
better customer service and increased innovation so these are all
great reasons as to why an organization can truly build a business case around
creating more unity in the workplace we have created a gender champion toolkit
it’s really a how-to guide if you reach out to me I can I can provide you with a
copy but really it’s it’s a step by step guide and offering questions as to that
you need to answer at each of the four stages in order to divulge your strategy
and again I wanted to just acknowledge that we believe that you know signing
the leadership Accord is a great first step it provides you with really a tool
kit to getting started and also supporting you in terms of maintaining
momentum so thank you so much for allowing me to present I hope you were
able to to get some valuable insights and I think we’re gonna be open to
questions yes Thank You Jennifer I just wanted to
say it was a great presentation I love this story that you had on my conscious
bias maybe you could even share that that link of the TED talk on we could
for that off to everybody I also thought your approach seemed quite extensive and a great way to begin looking at gender
unity for those who are just starting to create a program already have a program perhaps need a few tweaks so I’m going
to open it up to some questions we do have about three and a half minutes
before we do our final poll so you can
either get on the line or send me a question
okay well Jennifer I can start off with one question so where would an
organization start when they’re looking at creating a unity workforce do they need we’ve heard this before
executive buy-in or should they be reviewing their current initiatives I think that’s a good question I think
that the first step is definitely getting a leadership buy-in you know I
work in saying government and even other organizations if you don’t have the
support at the top then you’re not really going to be able to make ground and that that goes for innovation as
well you know you want to this is going to require change and if you don’t have
the support to be able to make changes necessary then you’re you’re going to get frustrated so I think I think it’s
possible if you don’t have support at the top that you still need to be pushing and trying to do even within you
know there’s certain organizations I’ve worked in where I we haven’t had the support at the top end so you know
within the department that I managed I tried to create a community a little
community of unity and in the sense and a larger corporation that there was
still challenges but okay great I have
one from online the question is how can you tell the difference between true
buy-in from the leader versus just good talk yeah so I guess you never really
know until because it depends on the individual and a lot of people
definitely talk about it I think you’ll find out very quickly when you know a
lot of the things that we’re talking about might already be in place and you
know there’s small initiatives that be like yeah that’s fine go ahead and do it the first time you’ll be able to find
see if you don’t have full support is when there’s something major that needs
to change in the organization so for example maybe there’s some HR policies
are pro says that actually have our creating barriers that need to change and you get
resistance so you know my advice if you receive or come across resistance is
again going about it from a positive perspective in terms of building your
business case for why you need to make that change but I think it’s human
nature that you were some organizations you’re going to get individuals that top the top but you just as in a leadership
team you need to just try and keep pushing forward okay thank you I have
one last question before we finish off the last poll so how long does it take
to go through the twelve unity steps the first time I assume it needs to be an ongoing process yeah it really is I
think the great great thing to do is really sit down maybe plan if it’s
possible a day or a half-day and really look at the 12 steps and address and ask
yourselves there’s probably already areas and steps that you’re already doing really well and so you can really
you know take your time in terms of identifying what’s most important to you
where are the areas you’re already doing well and then just focus in on those key areas where you’re not and the whole
idea of the 12 steps is that we need to look at the problem holistically and so
if you are missing some you really need to have even just some small initiatives
in each area I think to be very successful great okay thank you so I’m
just gonna finish it off quickly so if you want more information about the leadership record or equal by 30 you can
visit these two sites if anybody wants to ask us more questions after the
webinar you can send it to the link the providing either registration info on electricity HR dossier
and here’s the final poll before we close out the webinar so if anybody’s left on the line I do see some people
here if they want to start putting in their responses just by contagion in one
word oh nice
this will result in a word cloud
I’ll wait just a little bit longer some great results coming in thank you
everybody
and hope in there okay I’m gonna lock it
at that so just before I finish it up Kim did you want to say some final
remarks oh sorry sorry about that yes
thank you very much Marie again for a wonderful session Jennifer insightful I always learned something on these and
you had a lot a lot to sort of take note of so I appreciate this very much I
think Maria might be stealing your thunder but we’re doing this again in a month and I encourage everybody can sign
up I’d come out and hear and learn and share and collaborate a little bit more
great thank you all right well thank you Kim and Raphael and Jennifer I hope this
has been a valuable session today to everyone who participated thank you to all of our participants if you have any
questions as I mentioned earlier you can send them to the info at electricity hrda and we do look forward to the third
and last of this series which will be happening on Wednesday March the 6th where we’ll look at you’re doing the
right thing yeah well enjoy the rest of your day everyone bye for now thank you
bye
you