Step 1 - Understand your requirements

[Jen] This is a recording of workplace gender audit training delivered by consulting partnerships GenderWorks Australia in April and May 2021. This training was funded by the Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector, and it's been designed to build the capacity and confidence for Victorian public sector entities as you work to meet your auditing obligations under the Gender Equality Act 2020. This file is the first in a series of five recordings. It focuses on step one of your workplace audit process, understanding your requirements. My name's Jen Branscombe. I've co-facilitated these sessions, along with Kathy Oliver. We're principal partners at GenderWorks Australia. Really the starting point for this session is the Gender Equality Act 2020, which requires public sector entities to demonstrate meaningful progress towards gender equality. And you're required to commit to this work in your public-facing engagement with the community and also in the workplace. The mechanism for progressing gender equality in the community is through your Gender Impact Assessments. This is not covered in these audit training sessions. Our focus today is on the workplace. So in the workplace, your mechanism for progressing gender equality is going to be your Gender Equality Action Plan, which you all need to submit this year, the 31st of October, 2021. And that Gender Equality Action Plan needs to include strategies and measures in a range of different focus areas. And the focus of this training session is your workplace audit, that process that's going to help you pull together the baseline data that's going to act as the basis for your strategies and measures in your Gender Equality Action Plan. So when we look at all of these requirements within the context of the timeframes for 2021, as I've just mentioned, you do need to submit your Gender Equality Action Plan to the commission the 31st of October, 2021, which means that through August and September, you'll need to be finalising the various components of this action plan, along with a few other components, like an organisational commitment to gender equality, your case for change, and also some resourcing commitments for your strategies and measures in your Gender Equality Action Plan. One thing I'll note is that the format and focus of these various elements of your Gender Equality Action Plan is not covered in these audit training sessions. It's going to be covered in separate training the commission is organising. But the reason that Kathy and I really do prefer to bring these components into the picture today is that we do recommend that entities consider their workplace audits and everything that we talk about in these training sessions not as tasks in isolation, but really frame this audit work as a key milestone within the broader project plan for achieving that October goal of your Gender Equality Action Plan. So what we cover in these sessions is those steps you need to take to achieve that workplace audit milestone. So looking in this recording at understanding your requirements, and in subsequent training recordings at getting your team on board, collecting and analysing your workforce data, collecting and analysing your employee experience data, and then bringing all that data together for consultation and engagement in order to inform your strategies and measures that will form the foundation of your Gender Equality Action Plan. So what we're looking at in step one is understanding your requirements. What does the act tell us and how do the regulations guide us and what are some of the key requirements in terms of foundational data pieces that you need to start thinking about? So we'll look first at the legislation, which came into force earlier this year, in March 2021. And what that does is requires your entity to complete an audit which assesses the state and nature of gender equality in these seven key areas, those you can see up on the screen. So we've got workforce composition, composition of your governing body, pay equity, sexual harassment incidents, recruitment and promotion practises, uptake of flexible work and leave provisions, and workplace segregation. And what you'll need to be doing is collecting gender-disaggregated data against each of these indicators. We'll talk through in the session a little bit later in more detail about the specific data measures you need to be looking at collecting under each of these indicators. What we'll look at first, really, is an overview of the type of data that's required. So in the audit, you need to be collecting two types of data, your workforce data, which is data that you're already holding in your systems which is extracted from systems like HR, payroll, recruitment, occupational health and safety systems. And that's data that you already have. So what you'll need to be focusing on is locating that in your systems, extracting it and getting ready to report on that data. The second type of data that you need to be collecting under your workplace gender audit requirements is employee experience data. So that's new data that you will need to be collecting this year, and it'll be collected via an employee survey. That may be through a People Matter Survey through the Victorian Public Sector Commission or through an independent third party. In our section on employee experience data, we'll talk a little bit more about those options. When you are collecting your data, there are a few other things to talk about related to the type of data that you do need to collect. The first element really is that the data you're collecting covers employees. So what an employee is in the context of the Gender Equality Act is defined in Section 3 of that legislation. And that defines an employee as someone who's employed by a defined entity in a full-time, part-time, casual or fixed-term basis. It includes apprentices and trainees. It doesn't include contractors or subcontractors, outworkers, vocational placement work experience students or volunteers. So one of the first considerations you will need to be making is that when you're working with your systems holders to extract data, you need to make sure that the records you're including or excluding do match these requirements around what an employee is considered to be under the legislation. The second element of your data collection is that the data you collect for your employees is going to need to be gender disaggregated, so able to be filtered, sorted, analysed by the gender of the employee. In terms of how this works in practise, there are a couple of things prescribed in the regulations. Firstly, that entities are allowing their employees the discretion to self-identify their gender. So what this means is that gender field is not being populated based on assumptions, based on information that might be provided by an employee during the recruitment process. So things like basing the gender on an assumption based on the title of an employee. And the second element of this gender data is that the options you should be offering or should be offering in the future for your employees under the gender field are woman, man, self-described and prefer not to say. So at this point in the training, we did run a Zoom poll for the session participants on what they knew about their entity's ability to collect data for gender-diverse employees. And what we found was that almost 40% noted that their entity was already collecting data for gender-diverse employees, while around 60% didn't know or knew that they were only collecting binary information, sometimes data for woman and man, sometimes data for male and female. So the first thing to note, I guess, for those entities that aren't collecting data for gender-diverse employees is that that's not necessarily a compliance issue for 2021. What you need to do for this year for your audit data is extract data as your system holds it, and then look in your consultation and your planning for your Gender Equality Action Plan at noting that gap and implementing strategies which will help to improve your data collection so that by 2023, in the next reporting period, you are looking at being able to collect data for gender-diverse employees. So offering those suggested options of woman, man, self-described and prefer not to say. For those of you who are that 40% who did note that they already were collecting data for gender-diverse employees, the key thing to think about there is really making sure that in those data collection processes, that you're allowing your employees the discretion to self-identify their gender and making sure that you're making any improvements there, if that's not the case already. So the next requirement that you need to be looking at in your data is that you need to be working towards it being intersectional. So what that means in practise in 2021 is that the regulations are asking you to report on information on an employee's gender and a range of other attributes, if this information is available. The intention of the regulations here is really that in time, you're going to be able to think not just about gender equality or gender inequality in your workplace, but also think more deeply about intersectional gender inequality so that in your analysis, you can begin to understand how that inequality might be differently experienced by different employees of the same gender, and how gender inequality might be compounded by disadvantage or discrimination that a person might experience on the basis of attributes other than gender. So the intersectional data that you're being asked to collect and report on for 2021, if it is available, is data on an employee's gender and Aboriginality. So does a staff member identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander? An employee's age, so indicating their age range. Disability, indicating whether an employee has shared disability information. Ethnicity and race, so indicating the cultural identity group to which an employee feels they belong. Religion, indicating the religion of each employee. And LGBTIQ identifying, so indicating whether an employee identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or gender diverse, intersex, queer or questioning. We'll talk a little bit more about the guidance around how you need to report on this intersectional data, if you do have it available, and the measures that you need to be inputting into the commission's indicative reporting template for the audit under this intersectional data. But really, there's a couple of points I think that first need to be made. In the first instance, obviously, privacy and protection of staff is paramount. And there are ways that you can start to make sure that any data you collect, particularly data that's deemed sensitive information, is collected in the right way, is stored in the right way and in accordance with privacy legislation. It is the requirement of each individual entity to make sure that they are considering the privacy requirements for collecting this data, but there are also some very useful resources and tools that you can draw on, like privacy impact assessments, that might provide you with guidance on how you step through understanding these privacy considerations in your entities. I think there's also, though, some other deeper cultural conversations which will need to be considered and which will be driven by this legislation as you start to improve your data collection capabilities to complete the requirements of the audit. I think these deeper cultural conversations really need to revolve around questioning why we might be uncomfortable asking questions, why staff members might feel uncomfortable providing answers to these questions. And are we uncomfortable asking these questions because it's a point of internalised or organisational resistance? Do we not ask these questions because we're uncomfortable having the conversations? And by not asking these questions, are we really letting people's experience remain invisible? And while we do need to absolutely consider privacy as paramount, it is also really important to consider that if we do believe that equality and freedom from discrimination are fundamental rights that really belong to all people, then we do need to start to work quite deliberately to be able to sensitively and confidentially collect the data and information that can help us understand the way that workplace gender inequality is experienced by different cohorts of women, men and gender-diverse people so that we can really design meaningful strategies and measures that are responsive to the needs of all members of our workforce. So there really is a lot of different moving pieces for entities to be considering and working through as they prepare to meet the audit requirements for 2021. And one final note I just wanted to make as we wrap up on this discussion of general requirements is the commission's compliance focus in 2021 and really noting that that's grounded in the recognition of this being an initial transition period. And the commission is really focused on supporting compliance through education and collaboration and informal resolutions, where necessary. So what we're really looking for is entities having a go this year at really committing to understanding the process, demonstrating effort and measurable progress when it comes to reporting in 2023. And it is important, also, to remember that that expectation of what measurable progress and demonstrated effort looks like really is proportionate to the size of your organisation and other things, like resourcing. So maybe some entities that are larger, more well-resourced, have stronger systems, maybe you're able to progress more quickly through this initial reporting period and subsequent reporting periods. But really what the commission is keen to do is provide support to all entities, no matter where you find yourself in your baseline, so that you can really look at understanding that baseline, developing your strategies and measures, and being able to demonstrate progress through subsequent reporting periods. And that's the end of this first recording on step one, understanding your requirements of the audit process. If you do have any questions about the materials that have been shared in this session, you can contact the commission at enquiries@genderequalitycommission.vic.gov.au. Please also feel free to keep in touch with us at GenderWorks. You can see you can find us on LinkedIn, via our website or by emailing us at auditing@genderworks.com.au. You are able to also access the other four recordings in this series via the commission's website.

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