With increasing competitive pressures, many Australian organisations are achieving improved workplace performance through new ways and forms of work.

These include multi-skilling, teamwork, devolved responsibility and authority, integrated business systems, performance based rewards and incentives, restructuring, downsizing, flattened organisational structures and flexible workplace practices (for example, working full-time, part-time, from home, or job sharing).

The information provided here aims to assist you to start thinking about:

• How you could analyse your workplace to identify any work organisation issues for women.
• Suggested actions you could take to address the work organisation issues for women you have identified.

Keep in mind that women are a diverse group and differences such as age, religion, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, disability, sexual orientation, etc. warrant consideration in shaping your workplace practices. Organisations that recognise and value the different backgrounds of Australian women stand to benefit from a range of experiences and skills. These skills are a resource for doing business in a diverse society.

Not all issues, actions and examples suggested here are relevant to your organisation. It is up to you to decide what is appropriate and relevant for your organisation to consider when analysing your workplace to identify issues for women, and taking actions to address these.

Analysing your workplace
Suggested Actions to Take to Address
- Implementing Organisational Change
- Reviewing Who Does What Type of Work
- Implementing Workplace Flexibility
- Communicating about Work Organisation
Predominantly Male Workplace Issues
Predominantly Female Workplace Issues
Case Studies
Related Links and Resources

Analysing Your Workplace

To assist you analyse your workplace to identify work organisation issues for women, we suggest you:

• Revisit your workforce profile to find where your female employees are.
• Consult with your employees.
• Examine your workforce and your human resource and business needs.

Questions to Identify Recruitment and Selection Issues for Women

Remember, your organisation is unique and may have unique issues. However, the following questions may be helpful when analysing your workplace.

Is work organised in your organisation in a way that effectively meets the needs of your customers and employees?

Organisational Change

	Do you use restructuring opportunities to review the gender composition of your workforce and any business implications? Have you thought of reviewing employee diversity as part of this exercise?		When changes are made in your work organisation, are the potential impacts on all female and male employees considered?
	Would it be beneficial for areas within your organisation to operate on similar management and work organisation principles? For example, is there a consistent approach to multi-skilling, team-based organisation of work, or putting flatter structures in place?		Are men and women given the same opportunities to express their choices when changes are to be made? Has the impact of changes on women of different cultural backgrounds been taken into consideration?

Types of Employment

	Does the make up of the different types of work, for example, full-time, part-time and casual work, effectively meet both business needs and employee choice?		Do men and women get the same opportunities to work overtime? Are they given the same options to decline overtime, without negative consequences?
	Do your female and male casual employees get the same opportunities to access permanent vacancies?		Have you talked with both male and female employees to identify how shift arrangements and changes, such as set night shifts, rotating shifts, etc, may impact upon their work and family or other responsibilities?
	Are the turnover rates for casual employees the same for women compared with men? If not, is there a reason for this?		Do you consider workplace flexibility by balancing your employees’ needs (eg, related to family, lifestyle, cultural/religious practices) with the business needs?
	Does your casual workforce have access to training and development?		Given the requirements of your business, are opportunities to work in different ways, such as home-based work, job-sharing, part-time work and flexible hours, available throughout all levels and all areas of the organisation as far as possible?
	Have your outsourcing and contracting-out decisions considered the impact on your female employees?		Do employees who choose to work flexibly or part-time in your organisation have access to career development opportunities?

Occupational Segregation

Are female and male employees clustered in particular occupations or work areas? If clustering occurs, do you see other patterns (eg, in cultural or linguistic background)?

Is your organisation adaptable and flexible? Are there unnecessary barriers between ‘casual’ and ‘permanent’, ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work’, ‘blue collar’ and ‘white collar’ work?

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Suggested Actions to Take to Address

To comply with the Act, you need to take actions to address the work organisation issues for women you identified. You do not need to do everything all at once and you can aim to achieve equal opportunity over time.

To be waived from reporting in following years, you must demonstrate that you have taken all reasonably practicable measures to address work organisation issues for women you have identified. For example, your issue may be a large pool of ongoing female casual staff who would prefer to have access to regular part-time work arrangements.

The following suggestions will help you start thinking about actions you could take to address any work organisation issues you have identified.

Keep in mind that:

• Not all of these actions may be relevant to your organisation. You will need to decide whether you choose to do all, some, or none of the suggested actions, and whether you wish to tailor suggested actions to suit the needs of your workplace.
• If your workplace analysis demonstrates your organisation has no issues for women in this employment.

Implementing Organisational Change
Reviewing Who Does What Type of Work
Implementing Workplace Flexibility
Communicating about Work Organisation

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Predominantly Male Workplace Issues

An equal opportunity program must deal with the specific needs and issues of your organisation. Such a program identifies and outlines the issues you are addressing and the initiatives you will put in place to achieve results. The most significant issues facing organisations with a majority of male employees may be:

• A lack of applications from female employees
• A low proportion of women in management
• A low proportion of women in non-traditional occupational categories eg. trades, labouring, plant and machinery operators
• Problems retaining female employees

	Do your policies and practices reflect the needs of staff?		Have you introduced part time work and family leave?
	Have you surveyed staff to identify work, family and flexibility needs?		Do you allow part-time work at management levels?
	Have you introduced family-friendly and flexible practices?		Do women return from maternity leave?
	Can you introduce more flexible hours (start and finish times)?		Can you introduce a ‘work from home’ policy?
	Have you developed a job-sharing policy?		What is the usage rate of these policies? Does it vary for men and women?

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Predominantly Female Workplace Issues

EOWA is aware that some organisations have been implementing very good Human Resources policies for a number of years but have under reported on this information because they don’t see it as relevant to equal opportunity for women. All HR policies and practices, whether formal or informal, affect all the people in your organisation and, therefore, are relevant to equal opportunity for women.

	What work and family policies and practices exist?		When consulted, do women and men indicate that the organisation assists them to balance their work and family priorities?
	What is the usage rate of these individual policies? Are there different usage rates for women and men?		Do women/men resign for work and family reasons? Has this changed over time?
	Is the rate of return from parental leave high or low? Has this improved over time?

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Case Studies

Mixed Gender

• At Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, formal working hours have been abolished leaving staff to work when and where they want. This was a major finding of a staff consultation initiative with has resulted in retained talent and an increased rate of return from maternity leave.
  
  Read more about their initiatives ...

• Monash University has developed and adopted two new policies in order to promote benefits of flexible work organisation - a home-based work policy and a breastfeeding policy. Not only has this resulted in an up skilling of the workforce, there has also been a definite culture change.
  
  Read on.

• Sara Lee Household and Body Care Australia found, through analysis of the workplace, that the majority of employees were carers of school-aged children. To accommodate the needs of these employees, support was provided to working parents including work form home initiatives.
  
  Find out what resulted here…

• Sea World Enterprises found that a lack of broad-based skills was preventing flexibility and mobility within the organisation. To combat this, broad-based skills training was developed and implemented which resulted in mobility within the organisation and promoted work/life balance.
  
  Find out what other initiatives Sea World implemented.

• Through profile analysis, surveys and focus groups, The Friend’s School has been able to successfully identify that there were no senior part-time, non-teaching staff. To overcome this, advertised jobs applicants were asked if they were interested in job sharing as well as discussion groups to capture staff feedback. How did they go?
  
  Find out here ...

Predominantly Female

• Aldersgate Nursing Home quickly discovered through smart analysis that it had issues concerning work/life balance, job security and injuries in the workplace.
  
  Not anymore! Check out their results ...
  
  
• Australian National Credit Union (ANCU) realised that their staff wanted more flexibility at work. ANCU created new policies and the CEO spoke publicly about their new initiatives. Staff retention rates increased and keeping great talent is now one of ANCU’s core philosophies.
  
  Find out more ...
  
  
• Autoliv Australia had traditionally employed casuals and contractors each time they wanted to launch a new product line. Through training and development, Autoliv was able to offer some of these contractors and casuals with full-time positions.
  
  You can do this too! Find out how ...
  
  
• Staff at Blake Dawson Waldron had indicated that flexible work options were a definite must to be an EO employer. Now staff turnover is dramatically down due to work-from-home initiatives and new part-time and job sharing arrangements.
  
  This is possible for your organisation too! See how.
  
  
• At the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), there was an increasing demand from employees for greater work/life flexibility including part-time and job-share roles. To facilitate this bank-wide, the CBA has implemented their popular ‘Job Share Request System’ into an intranet site for all staff to access. Now 812 employees are job sharing of which 99% are female.
  
  Read on ...
  
  
• To improve retention rates at Country Road, management initiated family-friendly policies to improve their return from maternity leave, employee moral, and help attract quality candidates. Staff turnover is down and three is an 80% attendance at internal seminars.
  
  Find out what their actions were ...
  
  
• Hollywood Hospital has achieved outstanding results such as a reduction in total lost days and the lowest absenteeism in their industry as a result of combating inflexible work hours.
  
  What actions did they take? Find out here ...
  
  
• The Institute of Chartered Accountants has had flexible work practices for some time now, but wanted to reassure staff that their commitment was more than policy deep.
  
  What did they do?
  
  
• Jetset Tours found that childcare was impacting upon mothers returning to work, so a trail was set-up for mothers to work from home. The benefits spread to all employees.
  
  Find out how …
  
  
• Santa Sabina always knew that employee turnover was disruptive and costly to their organisation. To reduce staff turnover, they enabled women to balance work and family commitments.
  
  Look at the results!

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Related Links and Resources

• Diversity Australia
  www.diversityaustralia.gov.au
  
  Diversity Australia is a newly developed portal for diversity management, directed mainly to business, including business educators. The site is provided by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs and complements another new portal that has a government and community focus. Both sites will be available in April 2002.
  
  

• Balancing the Till
  www.eowa.gov.au
  
  Based on an in-depth study of staffing practices in the retail industry. Among its key messages, the study noted that to improve business viability and profitability, companies needed to understand and manage their workforce effectively. (AUST)

• Diversity Policy Template (PDF)
  
  A sample policy with broad commitments related to recruitment, career development and promotion, as well as and flexible work practices. Made available by the Programme for the Practice of Diversity Management of the Australian Centre for International Business. (AUST)

• EEO/Diversity Policy
  www.commbank.com.au
  
  An example, from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

• Australian Workplace
  www.workplace.gov.au
  
  The Australian Workplace produces a series of fact sheets and guides dealing with a wide range of work and family issues. (AUST)

• Work and Family Makes Cents (PDF)
  
  Ideas on how to introduce flexible work options to help make your workplace more family-friendly. (AUST)

• Business versus Bath-time (PDF)
  
  Examines types of family-friendly policies and practices, as well as issues (such as workplace culture) that are faced by women and men in accessing them. (AUST)

• Managing Work/Life Balance
  www.worklifebalance.com.au

• Council for Equal Opportunity in Employment
  www.dca.org.au
  
  The Council for Equal Opportunity in Employment Limited is Australia's leading diversity organisation. We focus on creating workplaces where differences are respected and valued; and there is no discrimination or harassment.