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Let's Talk 3 Advancing Gender Equity: Now Let's Celebrate Success!

Electricity Human Resources Canada (EHRC) in partnership with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) recently hosted a webinar series on advancing gender equality in the workplace.

Building on and supporting EHRC’s Leadership Accord and NRCan’s Equal by 30 Campaign, the webinars equip organizations with best practices and tools to help their own organizations expedite the process of bridging the gender gap. They guide potential or existing signatories on the development of actionable commitments to advance gender equality.

Webinar 3: Now Let’s Celebrate Success!

Learn how to analyze the effectiveness of your organizations’ diversity practices and identify any gaps. This will give you the context you need to build a business case around your organization’s diversity needs, and will serve as the yardstick for which your organization’s return on investment can measured.

  • Understand how diverse teams boost innovation and bottom line
  • Examine the relationship between culture change and organization success
  • Learn how to communicate the value of embracing diversity and inclusion – and hear some examples of what’s working in the industry
Video

Transcript

this conference will now be recorded excellent good afternoon everybody I

want to welcome and thank you for joining us for our just a second our

third and last webinar that has been focused on advancing gender equality as

I just mentioned now we’re going to be recording this webinar and a copy of the presentation will be available afterwards on our EHR si website they’re

going there is going to be a Q&A session after Jennifer’s presentation for 10 to 15 minutes based on how much time is

remaining after her presentation and during the webinar today we were we are going to ask you like we did the last

time to participate in a for polling questions though that was put into the

meeting invite with the the link to access the pole which is pol le v.com /e

h r c ma r IE so please make sure you

have this link ready when we are getting to the polling questions in order that you can participate so I just want to

give you a quick introduction of myself i am marie mold and I’m the manager of stakeholder engagement here at key HRC

we are delighted to do this today in partnership with Natural Resources Canada and to support the equal by dirty

campaign which is timely this week with being Women’s International Day on

Friday and with the equal by 30 campaign you’ll hear a little bit more from Kim

momentarily and so I will welcome Kim now Kim chomsky senior policy advisor in

the environment and energy policy division in our camp there everybody oh

I’m sorry Kim so the webinar future speaker today is jennifer Ladouceur

she’s the president and co-founder of women leadership nation some of you may

have participated in our last webinar where jennifer also did the presentation

but Jennifer’s topic today is going to cover what gets measured setting

yourself up for success from the beginning some information on systems and

processes for tracking results and finally celebrating wins and adjusting your strategy I also want to mention

that we are delighted to announce our partnership with women leadership nation and we’re very excited on working with

Jennifer and her team moving forward so let’s get started for anyone new in the

audience electricty Human Resources Canada is a national not-for-profit organization 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 and 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 at 80 HRC

have been working diligently over the last decade to support change and the leadership Accord was born out of 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 we know that studies show that diverse teams in the workplace lead to

greater innovation a positive impact on an organization’s bottom line a slew of

recruitment and retention benefits an increased employee commitment however as

you can see on this slide the numbers tell a different story there are eight point six million women working in

Canada which make up about 48% of the comedian workforce but as you can see

only 25% of the workforce is in electricity and less than 5% in the

trades it is clear that we have more work to do so with that said I would like to now

hand it over to Kim Chomsky who will introduce the equal by 30 campaign over

you – Kim thank you very much sorry for

that delay sometimes it’s so hard to find the on switch once again I am the

campaign v4 equal by 30 campaign which is NR Cannes International principles based framework on moving the dial for

women in clean energy many of you have heard from me before today I wanted to

take an opportunity first to sort of talk about how this campaign can provide an international platform for Canadians

signatories of the leadership Accord and most especially in an event that is

quickly coming that is the clean energy ministerial which in kuva will be hosting at the end of May this

international framework equal by 30 is the product of collaboration between

Sweden and Canada it launched just one year ago and we have been working really

hard over this last year to sort of collect signatories from both public and private sector to sort of Commission

action in the areas of equal pay leadership and opportunity we’ve been

making great progress in part thanks to the collaboration that we have with EHR C and on that point I would just say

that it was incredibly important to us to be able to preserve existing domestic frameworks exactly the way that they

were and to allow signatories to the leadership Accord to come on to equal by 30 without facing additional reporting

burdens so we’ve worked with the HRC to create our work through that allows their signatories to report only to EA

to proceed we would consider that in full compliance with equal by 30 and I think that the advantage is those

organizations who are already doing great work on gender have already committed to a different framework get

to enjoy some international profile by virtue of equal by 30 and Canada’s leadership on the gender file in an

international space a major federal are you for us going back several years now my conversation today with you is

gonna be a little bit different because we are now in the end stages the planning for our major event if the

organization is thinking of coming on to equal by 30 now would be the time about three days ago we issued our call for

submissions this will be the first ever equal by 30 reports highlighting 10 to

15 signatories to really have a great story to tell this is not about reporting this is about signatories to

the campaign putting in their own words why this matters what we’d like to do is put together a really great compendium

of stories of personal insights of quotes that has been left very open the

only requirement is words I emerged a second after which we’ll take the ones

that tell the story the best and compile it into something that we’ll be handing out I think the energy ministerial so if

you’re on the fence great reason to participate right now we have a great sort of opportunity to present your best

your best foot forward the other thing I want to talk about very quickly is a

parallel exercise this is also related to the international body of work that and our can leads it is the inaugural

c3e award of distinction for both an individual and an organization

application deadline is coming up it’s the 15th this is a body of work we’ve

partnered again with a great Canadian organization women in renewable energy they have proven excellence in

delivering awards I can tell you that we’re very excited we would love Canadians to win this

award I encourage you to look into it nominate people that you know to nominate your own organization we would

love to present their first Awards to Canadians in Vancouver on stage women in

energy event but it is open internationally and so if you have networks perceive yourself are an

international company we encourage you equally to apply what we want is a real great roster of candidates the closing

date for that is 15 coming out very fast please have a look at the website please consider

nominating somebody or yourself and they look forward to sort of presenting that award in in Vancouver the first time

ever that an international award is given under this framework we’re delighted to be setting the precedent

and creating a program that will continue in future years so that’s all for me today tougher selves in the last

two outings I really encourage you all to take take great notes in the in the coming discussion these webinars have

been wonderful for us to connect with you please feel free to connect with me and thank you Marie for giving us this

platform today thank you very much Kim it’s been a pleasure now it gives me

great pleasure to introduce our speaker today jennifer Ladouceur who is the president and co-founder of women

leadership nation an organization committing to committed to closing the gender gap in creating unified

workplaces jennifer is a serial entrepreneur and has 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 and developing holistic solutions solutions that help

organizations attract develop engage and retain women leaders by creating more

unified workplaces welcome Jennifer and I am going to hand it over to you as

soon as I can change the presenter screen

there we go okay great thank you so much

this is really exciting I think the measurement adjusting celebrating is a

really really critical point in making progress and being successful so I’m

really excited about talking on the subject today for sure one two to really

provide first of all a high-level context as to where does measurement fit in a holistic solution and I think that

what we’re finding based on the last few years of doing research and reading lots of studies is that lots of organizations

are attempting to understand the gender gap they’re attempting to close it but a

lot of cases they’re doing one-off solutions they’re not they’re doing a workshop or they’re they’re trying to

put band-aids on specific problems versus actually approaching the problem

holistically or the opportunity holistically and really looking at the

entire organization and the fact that closing the gender gap is going to

require that the initiative be recognized that the top senior level

leadership side and that it actually expects your overall corporate culture

so this this illustration here just identifies 12 building blocks that that

we feel based on all of our research are required in solution for moving forward and what’s very interesting is that

measurement and evaluation celebration that that should not be an afterthought

it’s it really needs to be begin from the very beginning and is something that

is carried out and should be thought of at every single stage every single

building block here so it’s critical and it makes it your life easier at the end

of of the day when you’ve going through a whole year of launching initiatives and new activities to be able to capture

that information and I’ll go through that measurement but is particularly important in the awareness so really

building us so that would be a building block number two is once you’ve had the

senior leader saying yes we’re committed we’re excited we want to do this step two is really understanding where are

you today and in creating those that benchmark setting the goals number three

and then obviously 12 is is the formal assessment we’ve identified a four

phased approach to actually getting there there’s discovery the strategy and

launching a building phase and then measurement and again like I said having

I’ll go through my presentation just what we need to be thinking about at every space to make sure that you’re set

up for success in the discovery phase what you’re doing is you’re you’re

really looking from the beginning what is it that you want to include in the

benchmark in terms of where are you today that could be everything from how

many women do you have applying for your positions that you’re posting how many

women are making it into the first level and then making it to manager maybe

director senior leadership how many women do you have on the board what you

benchmark is really going to be what you measure so having that in mind is really

really important because at the end of the year when you’re looking a natori every six months or however frequently

you decide to do your measurement um you’re going to want to make sure that you’ve established a benchmark so that

you can see if progress is being made when you’re determining what you want to

benchmark and what you want to measure it’s also really important to think of the business case so you might have

let’s be realistic everybody knows that this is a good thing this is the right thing to do closing the gender gap

but you have those individuals under pressure you know may not be as

committed and you want to make sure that you’re building that financial build the business case as well because there’s a

lot of research that shows that organizations that are in it that are innovative and that are profitable

actually have an increased level of diversity so what are those measurements

that you could be in those benchmarks that you want to be setting at the beginning that can actually connect and

align to building a business case and showing at the end of the year on that you’ve not only progressed in closing

the gender gap but you also have increased profitability if increased employee engagement you’ve increased

levels of communication maybe you’ve also increased your public profile which

also had a direct impact in can be linked to increased client attraction

and retention so so those are some of the things you want to think about from the very beginning you want to be able

to uncover new opportunities as well and also find you know what is it that

you’re already measuring that could also be linked to in fine linkages to the gender gap and and diversity you want to

be open to new ideas and new approaches to not just what you measure but also

how you capture that information and this is where you know you your

employees and I know based on experience and many organizations as soon as you

say we’re going to be tracking more information they get a bit of a sigh or

they think it to themselves that oh my gosh I’m busy enough I don’t need to be tracking anything new and so you want to

be able to incorporate their involvement and their feedback as to what they

should be tracking so that it feels like it’s coming from them and and it is but

also feedback and advice as to how can you make how can you coorporate the tracking into everyday

life so that it’s not all-encompassing at the end of the year of oh my gosh

what what what did we do and not consider it a big chore but it’s actually been tracked and I’ll go into a

little more detail about that and also you want to consider tracking unity skills now there’s certain things that

are always hard to measure and those you know the soft skills and so you know

there’s some opportunities and I will go into it a little bit more but of what

are your what is your vision what’s your mission what are the key words and key key insights as to how you want to

define what unity looks like for you in your organization and one example might

be unity is as a skill is empathy so an organization that is unified and

diverse is very empathetic and so breaking and looking at what – what is

that behavior and how do we track that in and can some of these metrics also be

included in performance reviews so that we’re also tracking it at that level and

again for organizations that are just getting into it you don’t want it to be too cumbersome you know even if you’re

tracking less in the beginning and you increase it later that’s always a good thing as well so we have our first

survey question getting started and the question is what percentage of your

organization’s senior managers do you think could give a specific example of a

gender equality business benefit relevant to their work and I’m going to

we have the live results if everybody can log in and an answer if it’s 75

percent more about 50 percent more at 25 percent or hardly any we’ll be able to

see the live results coming in

we do you see from your side I’ll have

to check just a second thought

there okay that’s not me maybe we can

play with that and then do you want me to come back to these questions yeah okay sure okay okay so the other section

is measurement recognition so again this is what we’re gonna be really getting into is what gets measured gets managed

and that’s that’s a common phrase and it’s very true if you know to be

successful you need to have the senior leaders committed and you need to know

that people your feet are going to be held to the fire to actually produce into to to move initiatives forward so

you know what what you choose to measure should be linked to your vision your

unity strategy your all sort of on my school really unlock so that you’re able

to knock some of the success stories that are coming from your organization

so so what should be measured it’s very important like I said to set up the

magic metrics right from the very beginning you don’t want to listen list

too many and make it too difficult to track you don’t want it to become

something that’s really cumbersome from the beginning you also don’t want too

few if you have too few metrics you’re not able to to really analyze was was it

were we successful and where do we need to make changes you want to involve the

key stakeholders in determining what’s really important for your progress I

suggest maybe even have a couple of focus groups or workshops internally

where you’re listing out and coming up with ideas first of all what are you

already measuring that won’t require any additional work that could be linked to this and then

what is it that you should be measuring that going forward you want to gain

insight and ideas from all levels across the entire organization from every level

even you know from and every committee every department as well I think that by

having that you’re able to engage them and they see that their role and they

see their importance and it’s incredible everybody has a different perspective

and different experience and to be able to pull that and you really do get to

see the full culture you get to be able to to really understand the organization and the other thing is not to put too

much pressure I think what’s incredible about each HRC’s Accord is that you’re

measuring yourself against yourself and so I think that’s a really great

consideration especially if you’re just getting started that um senior managers

may our senior leaders may be a little hesitant to if they know they have to

measure against say their competitors or other organizations and this is just

something that they’re getting started with it might be overwhelming measure it

against yourself and and really look at what can you achieve especially if

you’re getting started you know three major things in a year and and start to gain progress from there some of the

things that individuals might want to measure and certainly you can get a lot

of ideas from the Accord and the incredible package that they’ve the

review process that they’ve put together but some of them might be simple as what are the new initiatives how many how

many new mentorship connections hopefully need across the organization

have you won any awards are there more women applying for positions so it

really depends on what you what’s important to you by signing the AHRC of

court you gain access to a guided review process a self-assessment tool the

Accord prompts organizations to implement strategic human resource policies and plans focused on

recognition and validation of the personal skills of individuals regardless of gender the review also

allows organizations to identify the people resources needed to move forward

with each priority so that’s really important I mean you could you could set

all sorts of goals but really not at the end of the day you know it will be difficult to gain the access and

resources for those and that’s not helpful you want to be able to show

success from the beginning which will also for the previous years hopefully

allow you to access more resources to help you to continue to grow

organizations may use is tools differently depending on the time and resources available to conduct the

assessment and what they’ve done a great job doing is really breaking it down

into three key areas of policy and governance practices education and

workplace readiness and recruitment and retention practices so again if you if

you’re this is something that’s new to you it really provides you with a great framework so we do have another would

you like me to try this one yeah I’m from what I understand they were able to see it on the screen do you want to just

go back to the first one and see if we see the results because I did lock them there we go yeah Wow let’s see it’s 50

percent 70 percent or more so that’s great so I think if you go to the next

one it should be okay perfect okay so this next survey question is

does your organization regularly measure its progress on gender diversity so this

would be really interesting so yes and results are why they communicated yes but communication is very limited

maybe but I never hear about it and no it’s not on the radar so if you want to

put in your opinion here this survey question is excellent because it really

brings up the point of communication if you do it and nobody hears about it it’s

almost like you didn’t do it so oh that’s very interesting so it looks like

communication is definitely required more communication that’s an interesting

split mm-hmm yeah right okay are you

able to lock the results for me don’t know okay I’ll do it

okay so in terms of scoring so once

you’ve established and again this is guidelines from the review process but

how how HRC does it is that they allow you to again compare against yourself in

terms of the progress that you’ve made and they really simplified the scoring scale again if you already have a

strategic plan in place at your organization you may want to I think

closing the gender that should be included in that and that you know

you’re scoring might be completely different in aligned with your strategy however it’s graded but um this is

really clear and simple in the great great place that started number zero is no action is taken and that’s not a bad

thing to get a zero to begin with because that means it’s something that you really need to do and

you could show some results in commitment so the entry level the

organizations that have recently started the progress achievement excellence and

not applicable so so this is really a very simplified approach and again the

amount of the measurement I continue in terms of timing is completely up to you in the organization I suggest that if

there’s things that you’re already reporting on that you align it with that so and I also believe that the one thing

that you should be doing is reporting consistently so in terms of if you have

for example departments have monthly management meetings make that a standing

item of discussion but is always on there so that each month you’re you’re

actually reporting on and you don’t forget certain things that have happened and you keep a running total so that at

the end of a six month or a one-year period you’re you’re able to recall

everything that that’s happened some of the examples of the metrics pulled from

HRC is you can commitment to ongoing improvement in the workplace policies

practices operating procedures another one is our organization’s help to devote

women’s resilience to thrive within the sector or workplace initiatives or our

organization works to promote occupations in a way that attracts more women but you know it’s a great starting

point and then you can think of and create any other metrics that you feel

make sense this is an example of some of

the unity skills these are the twelfth of we ought women research nation came up with that we were able to attach

habits and behaviors to but you can create your own and you can really tie

it to how do you want and how do you feel that your organization should behave in or our

habits make sense in terms of driving the organization further towards

becoming unified so you know in your decision-making for example you know if

you’re you you’re around the table and you recognize that it’s not as diverse

as you’d like well are you coming to the right decision should there be are there certain committees and we’re

gonna end initiatives in your organization that aren’t as diversified

and diversified in terms of women but also diversified in types of experience

and thought processes and you know organizations really really can become a

lot more innovative by being able to pull all of those components so tracking

systems and processes again you don’t want it to feel like it’s too cumbersome

and I think there’s some ways of being able to do that by really strategizing

from the very beginning first of all you need to prioritize what you’re going to be reporting and maintain consistency

throughout so really going to again what is it you’re already tracking that

actually can be completely aligned and maybe just adding a couple components to

it or you know are there are there certain things that are absolute

priority and you can maybe drop a few others again you don’t want it to be too

overwhelming the ongoing tracking and I talked about that but creating habits

and opportunities – like I said in the manager’s meeting for example sorry

about that the manager’s meeting for example you know having a standing item where you

are always prompted to remember what

happened and you can write that down having having technology and then you said it’s

the last one but really using technology to be able to track it so it can be as

simple as having an excel file or a word document that is created with a month

and so you know you something happens for example you wouldn’t award or that

there’s a major breakthrough that because there is diversity thought that

you were able to come up with the new solution where before there was more conflict and and you weren’t making

progress that’s just one example maybe you maybe you know you were able to hire

more women or maybe you were able to promote and create new opportunities so

you’re tracking all of that as you go and I think it makes it a lot easier and

there’s some technology that can help you you might already have technology in

place that creates some attracts your results for your overall strategy so I would look to that as well

one technology the used before it is called clearpoint strategy and it really

helps you create balanced scorecards and and it’s a tracking system but being

very honest it’s you know you can really just create your own templates to start

with and and have that shared assessing

the culture you know learning to recognize and record some of the antidotal activities that you know that

are happening I think that’s really important as well and I think by having it top of mind regularly where you know

at the end of each month you have to submit you know just the preliminary findings of things that are happening is really

important and you can maybe one one example of that might be that yeah we

found that there are certain individuals in the organization that perhaps were kept to themselves a little bit more but

they they felt more comfortable to be to open up and to talk and to discuss and to come up with I share

ideas and things so about my TV one or that you that you were able to form new

partnerships across the organization and also maybe with some major suppliers and

other partners um storytelling is really important and

starting to think of some case studies as to how you were able to maybe even

get you know a lot of organizations have silos and their departments in because

of this initiative you were able to get departments speaking more to one another

that could be one example and making connections and linkages with an open

mind and what I mean by that is that these initiatives that you’re putting in

place to close a gender gap might actually have even broader opportunities

and connections where you were able to again come up with completely new ideas

for maybe a problem that you’ve been facing in terms of a product or an

opportunity trying to stretch and make those connections throughout the year is

going to be really really important to you because we have another survey

question so this one looks at the

overall overall on advancing gender equality how does your organization

industry or profession compared to the two five years ago so have we made good

progress slow and steady progress no progress that I can see exciting I don’t

know nobody talks about it so if you want to provide your your

feedback on that

we’re starting to see some go slow and

steady well at least there’s progress being me that’s good oh that’s good

that’s a good sign good progress and slow and steady and I think I think

that’s excellent you know this is not a quick fix it’s excellent to see 30% and

is making great progress I mean the fact that you’re on the call I think that’s that’s progress there too it shows that

it’s top of mind which is really important that’s great so what we really

want to do is unlock the potential in the organization and your employees and

and everybody connected to it so you know when you’re reviewing the results

it should not look upon as another chore or that it’s oh my gosh I’m going to be

I hope they’re good because if we’re going to be you know under fire they’re

not it’s the reviewing the results is really provides huge opportunities for

growth so you want to make sure that it’s first of all supported by senior

leaders that they feel that it’s important enough that in fact you stay

on time and and commit to reporting and again one of the tactics for that is

aligning and making sure that you’re aligned with when you report on your overall corporate strategy because this

really needs to be incorporated within it you really need to take a look at your world corporate strategy that

already exists and see where where you can fit this into it

you want to make sure that even if you’re just getting started that it’s

not seen as you didn’t make enough progress any progresses it’s really great and you want to be able to have

courageous conversations around it as well um in terms of you know creating a

safe environment where you can really speak openly and honestly about the

period of time that’s just passed so though it could be that yes we have great intentions we wanted to to launch

this initiative but we were actually surprised that it wasn’t embraced as

well as it should be or that if being honest about what worked and what didn’t

work and being able to to really deal with the current situation will actually

move you forward there’s opportunities to learn and grow from the successes

that you’ve achieved and also from the failures so you know certain things that

were embraced as much might be just because of timing it might have been that you launched an initiative but

there’s you know it it was at a time when on say for example I’m looking at

the accounting for accounting profession right now and working with them and you

know it’s they’re coming up to their silly season as they call it and so they’re just overwhelmed with so you

know work so now so at the time necessarily to be really focusing in on

on certain new initiatives but you know maybe there’s a better time where maybe there’s Deborah different approaches and

new tools and techniques for being able to implement things so you know being

very honest and open and and like in innovation you you actually learn as

much for your failures as you use as your successes so being able to embrace that and being able to again listen to

everyone across the organization is really important that all levels creating that because everyone equally

has has valuable insight into the organization celebrating your successes

I think you need to celebrate the big ones as much as you celebrate the little

wins as well because each each win is gonna move you forward and you you really need to you

know there’s typically in organizations there’s there’s typically a group of individuals that are always involved and

always come up with ideas and and really challenging yourself to to look at new

individuals and new groups of people that maybe you don’t care from as frequently encouraging them to be

engaged and encouraging them to share with share some of their their small wins and allowing them and encouraging

them to see from their perspective how what they do helps to close the gender gap and create more unified workplace

overall again across all of the organization and in terms of financial

and resources to be able to take on new initiatives why not leverage existing

events or existing initiatives to be able to celebrate successes so if there’s already something that you do

regularly annually that is already existing it might be an all-stock Town

Hall that always happens or it might be

an activity maybe a fundraising activity that you do in the summer

aligning it was something that already exists will reduce your cost but also

increase the awareness so you’re able to leverage that event and be able to

announce certain results and and that you’re deeply committed and just always

making it top of mind and constantly communicating as well as communicating

successes over social media and Trinette for those that have one as well

as postings for those that don’t that don’t necessarily they’re individuals

that work maybe outside and don’t have access to computers as much as those

working in the office all the time being able to to send out postcards of you

know quick wins and and getting them excited about it and making sure that they’re receiving communication as well

you need to really step into the shoes of your employees and understand from

all the different perspectives how best to communicate with them and so that

they’re really getting the message you need to be able to adjust your strategy as well again I mean learn from the

failures and the challenges you need to be completely open to changing your

strategy it’s a living document and just like with your corporate strategy and

you need to be able to assess there might be situations that are happening

that are beyond your control that will influence certain things so you need to

be able to modify and adjust it as you go and that’s again why it’s so important that you choose the right

things to measure so that you’re able to have the the right knowledge and insight to be able to make adjustments and

understand how you need to be adjusting it assessing new opportunities as well

that come up based on some of the initiatives that might create new

strategies that you’re gonna really focus in on and and also continuously

learning from best practices and those best practices don’t necessarily have to be just from the electricity industry

your specific industry you can actually also go to completely different

industries this is where the diversity of thought is incredible and you could

say wow they’re you know this industry is having they’ve tried this approach

and what would that look like for our industry how how could we apply that because it looks

like they’re getting a lot of success from it and encouraging the sharing of best practices which is excellent in

terms of best practices that we’ve been able to to get from the HRC some of the

things that that they’re seeing which which is incredible in the electricity

industry is a few ones one is starting with attracting women actively through

public panel presentations or forums to speak to the breadth of the careers

available for women as well as engaging with organizations colleges universities

to promote women and technology so that’s a that’s a huge one and making

sure you get you’re getting that pipeline so they’re seeing a lot of results in delivering that strategy and

considering the diversity of the interview panels and I was speaking with an organization in Calgary last week and

one of the things that they’ve done that made a big difference is also looking at the job descriptions and how do you

write the job descriptions so that you’re getting you’re attracting the best candidate possible and is there are

there ways of writing them so that you were you’re not excluding certain

individuals from wanting to apply at the end of the day you have to look at what

are just specific skills so it can be as simple as that they’re seeing some results in that as well

insuring at least one female interviewer is on all educational program intake

panels as well as striving to ensure at least two qualified women are shortlisted for each position and

promoting diverse leadership teams having women make up 10% to 30% of the

organization’s board of directors and senior leadership teams and providing

female to staff with development opportunities so it’s sponsorships or mentorships and

sharing successful success stories and video is also

Rate Mechanism for for doing that and i think that organizations are are seeing

results with that as well it’s you know especially with a social media people

are less likely to read lots of coffee but they can quickly feel the emotion

and I get energized by watching a short video and and really feel proud of the

organization they work and when they cease to be success stories I mean painting momentum it’s easy to

get started in many cases and and it’s easy to get people really excited the

the first you know something new and shiny but maintaining that momentum can be challenging and so you need to think

about that from the beginning and really start to come up with some strategies

for maintaining that and again being able to share some of the successes

regularly at a monthly level for example or communicating that or or relaunching

certain things that maybe you already had a mentorship program in place but

now that you’re doing this major initiative relaunching it and raising attention is really important to

ensuring that individuals maintain enthusiasm and excitement for the

initiative and again piggybacking off of existing events and making sure that you’re talking about every opportunity

that you have employees realize that this isn’t just a face that that is

actually deep going to be ongoing deeply entrenched in your organization in the

world that’s so reliant on technology I think nothing beats face-to-face

meetings and networking I’ve I feel that organizations that are going to be

successful in creating increased collaboration is that you need to have

more one-on-one face-to-face interactions and I think in terms of developing your

strategy you need to be able to to include that and I feel that also

organizations will identify some some quick wins and some successes easier by

having a having a conversation if it was for example just an email that was sent

to say these things happened and here’s our successes versus having a conversations and maybe exploring like

while you’re talking your trigger you it triggers your mind that oh that’s right

yeah this this happened in I think it might be connected so you need to be able to encourage more of that

relationship building in and having one-on-one conversations rather so I

just wanted to mention one more time that really especially if you haven’t gotten started really signing the Accord

and using their amazing framework to really getting started and tracking and

again assessing yourself against yourself is an incredible way to get

started and to be able to to measure your your progress so we have our final

question somebody some people have

already added it in which is amazing so was one word that describes your

reaction when you hear about step forward for gender diversity anywhere so

it’s awesome that is awesome I love that they jumped ahead and

started answering the play easy enthusiastic that’s great so this is this is great I mean it’s

it’s amazing to see that there is this is not going away and particularly as

people see the value that it has to businesses in terms of the growth

sustainability competitive advantage this is really really important so

it’s amazing to see that excellent so

that was um that’s a high-level overview of what I

feel in terms of the the measurement and adjustment I believe that again I guess

I would end on just saying that it’s really important that again that you

think about this from the beginning it’s always harder to do it after the fact

and the previous years you know take a look at what’s worked for you in terms

of measurement and don’t be afraid of making adjustments to it as well because the last thing you want is organizations

to feel like it’s a chore and too much of a chore that they don’t end up tracking and we need to associate it

with value and and try and make it as seamless as possible awesome thank you

so much Jennifer I’m actually now going to bring up our presentation here and

bring it right over to let me see the Q&A all right

and what I really liked about your your presentation today was obviously you

know data can reveal so much information so I thought the fact that you said that

it should not be an afterthought and the fact that it should be included in every

step of the process so I really really did enjoy that so thank you for that and

what I want to do now is open it up to questions so you can either send your

question over the chat line or if you want to get on the speaker please go

right ahead

okay I don’t see any questions coming in right away did you have any questions

okay well in respecting the time I’m just going to finish it up for today so

if you wanted to learn more about our leadership record or anything to do with electricity HR you can go to our website

at electricity HR CA and as well the equal by 30 which is that equal by 30

dot org Kim did you want to say any lasting thoughts before I finish up will

desire with being leaders on the spread

we do have room to grow there their response program to be made it is to our

view part of our job to keep momentum

going it is longer again until such

point is we don’t have to come back to it anymore okay thank you

so I want to say thank you to Kim and to Jennifer today and to everybody that participated I hope that you found this

to be a valuable session today and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contest or directly and with

that says enjoy the rest of your day thank you everybody

you