Various initiatives introduced by GHD to promote a diverse workforce have won the company the Employer of Choice for Gender Equality (EOCGE) citation from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) in Australia. One of 90 companies to receive the honour, architecture firm GHD has been acknowledged for the second year running with the citation recognising the company’s continuing evolution in creating a diverse and inclusive workforce.
WGEA Director Libby Lyons said the initiatives demonstrated by this year’s EOCGE recipients showed that more employers were taking a sophisticated and whole-of-organisation approach to supporting equal participation by women and men at all levels of the workplace.
Arup engineering consultants, and construction and developer outfits Mirvac and Lend Lease were also named on the list, which contains a diverse range of companies, from fast food outlets to university organisations.
According to Phil Duthie, GHD’s General Manager – Australia, a WGEA Pay Equity Ambassador and a member of Consult Australia’s Male Champions of Change group, it is great to see real change happening in a historically male-dominated industry, with Jacobs and AECOM joining GHD and Arup in the list of citation recipients.
Duthie is particularly proud of the strides made by GHD including a flexible working policy introduced earlier this year to help men and women balance work and personal commitments.
Based on research that proved how flexible working helped attract and retain a diverse workforce, a unified flexible working policy was created by GHD’s Diversity & Inclusion Group, comprising of a cross-section of people from across the Australian business.
Duthie adds that the cultural acceptance of flexible working as a legitimate and valuable way of delivering quality outcomes for clients and the business represents a major change. The company is now seeing more people with flexible working and part time contracts applying for management and other key positions. GHD considers this development as a real win-win situation as they now have a more comprehensive list of applicants for roles.
