Podcast: What organisations can do to promote gender equality at work
Sharing data about gender across an organisation can help managers learn from each other without getting HR involved, says Professor Isabel Metz.
In the latest Melbourne Business School podcast, Professor Isabel Metz discusses strategies for organisations to improve gender equality.
Prof Metz is an expert in organisational behaviour, human resources and gender who recently released research on the book Lean In.
"We need to get out of the mindset of 'if one gender group wins, the other loses'. That's not necessarily the case," she says.
One of the strategies from Lean In is to let line managers see which of their peers are succeeding when it comes to improving their team's gender balance.
"If you have the data, then one person could contact another person interstate and maybe have some dinners together and find out 'how do you do it?'," says Professor Metz.
"There's nothing like having your peers talk to you about what is possible, what are the obstacles, and how to overcome them. Peers are quite credible. It's a much better way of approaching it than having, say, HR talk to the line manager and say 'you need to do X, Y and Z, and if you don't do it there will be consequences'."
Professor Metz teaches on our MBA program. Her research has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Human Resource Management the International Journal of Human Resource Management, and she also contributes to outlets such as The Guardian and Australian Financial Review.
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