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Gender equality
Practice meets perfect
May/June 2023 issue

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Opinion

Striking the right balance at work

Open-access content Thursday 7th March 2019
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

The theme for the coming year is #BalanceforBetter. This is not about reducing the role of men, hence the call for "balance". We all have unconscious bias. It is not gender specific. We all make snap judgements but can counteract this by taking a more reasoned approach. When we tap into everyone's strengths it creates diverse teams and uses a broad range of talents.

Performance bias studies have shown employers underestimate women's performance and overestimate men's performance, so women often have to do more to achieve parity. Gender bias can be removed from the selection processes by removing information about gender from a CV in the first stages of selection.

Women have been shown to be held to higher standards in the workplace but often receive less credit and are more likely to be blamed for failure. This means they can wield less influence which erodes their confidence, so they are less likely to secure senior positions and more likely to disengage when faced with repeated challenge.

We all automatically gravitate to people of a similar appearance, belief system or background as ourselves so in organisations where there is a predominance for one group this can have a negative effect on people who are seen as different.

Personally, I don't feel the answer is to create women-only groups

Maternal bias affects women when they choose to have families, but it has also been shown to affect men too which is important in a world where men rightly want to spend more time with their children. Men can be held back from roles which are considered to be more likely to be associated with women and face bias if they are from a minority group.

Only around 20% of IOSH members are women and women are disproportionately more likely to be represented in the lower membership grades. If our role and influence is to be enhanced within organisations, we need to tap into the widest talent pool possible and retain members within the profession, so this really matters.

When people feel excluded, when they feel they have been treated differently, face greater obstacles or fewer opportunities than those they work alongside, we know it triggers the same response in the brain to physical pain which makes this an OSH issue.

Personally, I don't feel the answer is to create women-only groups, which isolates men, but to look into how we interact with each other to achieve the same energy and sensitivities. When we achieve gender parity everyone feels happier in the workplace, it is better for business and good for the lives of men and women.

So, let's look into ourselves, at the decisions we make, our behaviours. Let's challenge negativity in a positive manner and not be afraid to call out inequality when we see it because having balance is better for us all.

You may also be interested in...

 The business book club: Seth Godin’s Tribes offers a practical perspective on improving performance through people

Tuesday 19th March 2019
Best-selling author and speaker Seth Godin argues that everyone is a marketeer. The advent of social media has caused us all to have the ability to present ourselves as a product. But more than that, everyone is now also a leader. For the first time, everyone in every organisation – not just the boss – is expected to take responsibility, to lead. And our job as leader? To unite tribes.
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 The business book club: key lessons from Simon Sinek’s, Start with Why

Tuesday 19th February 2019
Simon Sinek’s TED talk from 2009, based on his book Start with Why, is the third most watched of all time with more than 42 million views.
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 Learning from: black belts

Monday 18th February 2019
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 How practitioners can be both moral compasses and business enablers

Thursday 7th February 2019
When I started writing exclusively on OSH management about 15 years ago there was a movement well under way in larger organisations to go beyond compliance with national regulations.
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 Evidence is growing on the links between mental wellbeing and productivity

Tuesday 19th March 2019
Recently, I took time out to play a game of badminton with members of staff at IOSH and it was a great experience for many reasons.
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 The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Working at Height’s new report, 'Staying Alive'

Tuesday 19th February 2019
Falls from height is the number one cause of deaths in the workplace. Unfortunately, for the ten million people in the UK who work at height, decision-makers have yet to place this at the top of the policy agenda.
Open-access content
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