What You Can Do

Workplace Checklist

This checklist includes key actions that can help move your workplace toward gender equality.

 

CREATE THE RIGHT CONDITIONS

  • Do you have paid internships, scholarships, and other opportunities for diverse women starting their careers?
  • Do you offer or subsidize child care and elder care for employees?
  • Do you provide increased flexibility and protections during the pandemic, such as measures for those with caregiving responsibilities (e.g.modified workweeks; flex time) and appropriate personal protective equipment?
  • Do you ensure that women who take parental & and elder care leave don’t lose out on opportunities for career growth?
  • Are diverse women included in the creation of plans to build workplace equity?
  • Are you focusing your equity efforts on those with the greatest barriers to access and who are most often subject to discrimination?
  • Have you reviewed policies and practices to reduce systemic barriers to equity?
  • Do you hold leaders accountable for their role in building equity?
  • Do you know the specific types of barriers diverse women in your workplace face? Are you asking them and making it safer for them to tell you about them?
  • Are complaints and resolutions processes robust and helpful to address equity concerns at all levels of the workplace?
  • Are you reviewing complaints and concerns regularly to improve policies and practices?
  • Do you have plans and supports in place to make equity a whole-organization priority rather than the responsibility of one or two employees?
  • Do you offer transit subsidies and/or ensure employees have safe transportation methods?
  • Do you offer supports to those who work from home e.g. digital literacy, internet access, software, and equipment?

 

ROOT OUT BIAS

  • Do you train and support your employees and leaders to recognize and disrupt their own biases?
  • Do you ensure job listings welcome diverse applicants and promote job opportunities in ways that they will know about it?
  • Do you require diverse slates of applicants for each open position? And do you have policies to make this happen?
  • Do you have clear, transparent criteria for hiring, development, and promotions?
  • Do you collect data on who is being hired and promoted and where the gaps lie to be able to act

 

BUILD EQUITABLE LEADERSHIP

  • Do you provide development and leadership opportunities for diverse women at all levels of the organization?
  • Do you promote from within?
  • Do you have women-led, organizationally-supported mentorship opportunities?
  • Do you support leadership programs for young women and girls interested in your field?
  • Have you developed an equitable leadership plan with goals and metrics to measure progress on an annual basis?

 

END THE GENDER PAY GAP

  • Have you conducted an internal pay-equity audit to identify and address the gender pay gap? Have you stopped asking for an applicant’s salary history or other inappropriate recruitment questions that might lead to a pay gap?
  • Do you ensure that women have fair and meaningful access to permanent, full-time positions with benefits?
  • Do you have a robust and transparent pay equity action plan that includes wage setting and monitoring processes?
  • Are you transparent about pay grades so that future and current employees don’t have to guess?
  • Do you hold your hiring managers and HR employees accountable for taking actions to reduce pay gaps? And do you support their efforts?
  • Are there policies and practices that end up saddling more women with lower pay and fewer opportunities to progress?

 

Other Resources

 

 

CANADIAN WOMEN’S FOUNDATION

 

CATALYST

 

PLAN INTERNATIONAL CANADA

 

YWCA CANADA