Introduction

• To eliminate gender bias and sex discrimination in the area of training and development we need to adopt and implement EO policies and processes, as well as explore what goes wrong once they are in place;
• Negative human factors can intervene when people interact at a personal level, make decisions or rely on cultural norms. Our policies, processes and intent to ensure equality of opportunity can be either compromised, or fully negated;
• To move forward we have to identify, unpack and neutralise the human factors that can have a negative impact on women at work. Be they covert, overt, subtle or blatant, understanding their potential impact and how to pre-empt and prevent them in the future is essential; and
• The aim must be to create and maintain a workplace that is fair, safe and comfortable that allows all workers to achieve their potential, despite the human factors that can intervene.

MODULE OBJECTIVES

• Explore the ways human factors can compromise and negate our objective policies and merit based processes, impacting negatively on women at work;
• Identify immediate actions to defuse or counteract negative human factors.;
• Identify long term strategies to pre-empt and prevent negative human factors; and
• Determine what processes need to be introduced or tightened-up, in your workplace to pre-empt and prevent the negative impact of human factors.

MODULE INSTRUCTIONS

• Section A - read through the brief introduction to the sample workplace.
• Section B - work through Issue 1, Issue 2 and Issue 3; each Issue comprises
  - a short case study, and a list of things that could go wrong in the sample workplace, and
  - a key question that allows you to unpack a negative human factor, examine its impact, review how to neutralise it and identify strategies to pre-empt and prevent it in the future.
• Section C – finish by identifying processes and policies for your workplace that could be introduced or tightened-up, to pre-empt and prevent the specific set of human factors listed, each of which has potential to impact negatively.
• Section D - Useful Definitions