What You Can Do
- Download our latest case study research, Defining SMEs Success in DEI: What Small Steps Matter?
- Tune in for our upcoming event, Present and Future of Women in SMEs or listen to one on demand.
- Check out the essential workplace checklist to move your workplace toward gender equality.
- Watch events on demand
- Read the latest IGC Blog
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
- Facts about the Gender Pay Gap
- Resetting Normal: Women, Decent Work, and Canada’s Fractured Care Economy
- Corporate Citizenship for Gender Equality – A panel discussion
CATALYST
- The Power of Empathy in Times of Crisis and Beyond
- Are You an Empathic Leader? (Quiz)
- Remote-Work Options Can Boost Productivity and Curb Burnout
- Getting Real About Inclusive Leadership – Canada
- Why Diversity and Inclusion Matter
- 11 Harmful Types of Unconscious Bias and How to Interrupt Them
PLAN INTERNATIONAL CANADA
- The Power of Youth: A Youth-Led Guide to Engaging with Voices of Change
- Plan International Canada data reveals only 10 per cent of youth in Canada picture a woman when they think of a CEO
- Youth-Led Roadmap for Gender Equality: A Plan to Achieve Sustainable Development Goal 5 in Canada