The beginning of 2022 has marked the commencement of the third reporting season under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) (Act). All eligible entities operating on the Australian financial year should have submitted their second modern slavery statement by the end of December 2021. Those operating on a calendar financial year are due to submit
There’s been a lot of debate in mainstream and social media in the past week about major Australian corporates removing pay secrecy clauses from their employment contracts. The Financial Services Union is keeping sustained pressure on employers in that industry to remove the clauses from their employment contracts. The Labor Party has made it known
The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021 estimates that at the current rate of progress it will take more than two and a half centuries to close the worldwide gender gap in economic participation and opportunity, with Australia ranked 70 out of 156 countries. Although the proportion of skilled women in the workforce
The pandemic has prompted many organisations to adopt ‘hybrid’ work models. Seyfarth’s global Future of Work pulse survey in 2021 found that navigating remote and hybrid work was the number one concern that in-house legal and business leaders had coming out of the pandemic. There are a number of key reasons why ‘hybrid’ work is
Our project was finished. With grins on our faces, my colleague and I walked towards each other, hands sailing through the air in synchronised arcs. Onlookers shouted, “No, don’t! It’s not COVID-safe….” Our grins faded, but it was too late. We high fived. Cringed. And hand sanitised.
There’s going to be an awkward
The first time a global client asked me for a template employment diversity form, I didn’t know what they were after.
They wanted to track their workforce’s diversity attributes (asking every person about race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disabilities, etc.) so that they could track performance on their broader diversity targets. This is typical practice
Care or career – it doesn’t have to be a choice
Do you know which one of your nearest eight colleagues provides unpaid care for a loved one? The number of working adults who juggle unpaid carer’s responsibilities is high, hidden, and growing. Most working Aussies will have unpaid care responsibilities intrude regularly throughout their
There was an ever so slight increase in the proportion of women in senior management roles. And I guess the
It is an indisputable fact that women are not equally represented in leadership roles or management positions in Australian companies and governments, not even close. Even in 2016, this is the case in almost all arenas of business and politics and is most certainly a global issue, although Australia even appears to lag in this indicator among developed nations. This flows through to an under-representation of women on boards of directors of Australian public companies. Earlier this year consultant Conrad Liveris found that there were fewer women in CEO and chair roles in ASX 200 companies than there were men named either John, Peter or David in such roles. What an alarming statistic! In this note we consider whether this under-representation is caused by a failure to recognise that women as much as men are able to achieve and sustain appropriate business outcomes and conclude that this is a matter that good corporate governance can resolve.
Continue Reading A perspective on the unequal representation of women in leadership
As we celebrate International Women’s Day, the 2017 campaign message asks us to #beboldforchange and to “take action to drive change for women to forge a better working world”.
The campaign’s aims are admirable and worthy of support. But I find myself querying whether such a campaign really helps our workplaces become more holistically diverse and inclusive.
Continue Reading Playing the numbers game – diversity and inclusion