In a year where women have come together more than ever to rally for equality, looking at their role within your organization is both crucial and beneficial. Read on for some ideas on how to recognize and encourage women in your workplace.
- Understand
Numbers don’t lie: take a look at your staff and ensure that there is an equal ratio of men and women working for you. Hiring women and placing them in leadership roles will create a fairer and more dynamic work environment. It will ensure that female needs are addressed and acted upon. It will additionally provide first hand female opinions on employer brand strengths and threats for attracting and retaining women in your organization. If you want to attract women, you need to understand what women value about working at your company and any possible reasons why they might decide to leave. Making sure that women are well represented on your leadership team is crucial to obtaining and imbuing your employee brand with this type of understanding.
- Share
Hiring and promoting women is a great first step to workplace equality, but don’t stop there. Showcasing talented and hardworking female employees will ensure they feel valued and continue to put in their best work. Social media is always a good platform through which to celebrate your employees, and putting in an extra effort to highlight the work of your female staff members is a great way to foster a positive work environment. Take a page from Google, who’s subsection “Google Women” tells the stories of hardworking female employees at the company, celebrates their accomplishments, and talks about the important roles of female voices in Google’s future. Some people have also taken to Twitter to discuss the gendered pay gap, using hashtags like #ChangeTheRatio and #Ask4More to spark discussion around the issue. Your company can participate in this dialogue by using these tags or even creating your own.
Another way to boost female workers is by ensuring that they occupy the roles of brand ambassadors. Having female spokespeople will show perspective female talent that their opinions and work would be rightfully valued should they come and work for your organization.
- Practice
Recognizing female employees on a public platform is great, but even more important is understanding their needs within their day-to-day work environment. Let your female workers know that their concerns matter and will be addressed. Inevitably, maternity and parenting obligations and their impact on careers will rise to the fore. Your company should have a specific protocol in place to address the needs of working parents, and single moms in particular, ensuring that they are able to work and take care of their families at the same time. Being an employer who enables employees, both female and male, to reach their career aspirations while being a parent is critical if you want to attract the right talent.
Overall, employers who take the time to attract, celebrate, and continually communicate with female employees will have more progressive and dynamic workplaces, which will foster a more inclusive and effective employer brand.
About Blu Ivy Group
Blu Ivy Group is a leading employer branding and employee engagement consultancy that aligns your organization with contemporary workplace paradigms. Blu Ivy Group’s mission is to help client’s build award-winning people practices, inspire extraordinary employee engagement, and cultivate unique and desirable workplaces.
We provide integrated solutions in employer brand and engagement research, strategic consulting, employer brand integration, creative and talent communications. Blu Ivy Group is a trusted partner to many of North America’s most respected employer brands. For more information, go to www.bluivygroup.com