7 tips for achieving gender balance in your organization

Over half of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s — or UNISDR — current staff is made up of female employees. The U.N. agency — which is one of only seven to have achieved this balance as of December 2016 — worked hard to accomplish this milestone and efforts to maintain the balance are ongoing. Devex spoke with the UNISDR head, Robert Glasser, to find out how they did it and what tips and advice he would offer to other organisations trying to achieve the same. Here are seven ways an organization can help make gender parity a reality. 1. Leadership dedicated to achieving gender balance When asked how they managed this gender-equal employee make-up, Glasser responded with a modest laugh, “First, I guess just starting with me.” In order to lead the way to achieving gender balance within an organization, it is crucial to have a leader that is fully on-board and spearheading the change. “If people understand that [it is a priority] and if that commitment is clear at the top and among the senior managers,” then there will be progress, he explained. Leadership plays an important role in implementing and following through with any strategies and commitments. “I just have to speak as a head of an organization: If you call out issues that come up and make it clear that they are unacceptable and if there’s follow up, [then] if that behavior doesn't change, you know, ultimately, there has to be accountability.” Ensuring the pledge to gender balance is fully implemented by everyone and at all levels of an organization is key in upholding its importance. Leaders need to call out people who are not taking it seriously in order to reinforce the seriousness of the commitment. There has to be someone leading it who is reminding the rest of the team of the end goal, and this will be problematic if the head of an organization is not on-board with the initiative. 2. Elicit feedback from female employees Glasser went on to explain that if the organization’s leader or other members of staff — particularly male staff who may not be aware of these issues — don’t recognize there is a problem or understand the importance in achieving a gender balance, then the team should organize feedback from female employees to highlight the issues. “[I]f we're talking about a man who had a head of an agency who hasn't taken it seriously, then at least take the first step … to get feedback, honest feedback, from women that will probably highlight the extent to which it's a problem.” From there, the issue can’t be denied or ignored, and so efforts can begin to start making a change. Raising awareness is key. 3. Prioritize and focus It’s great to say your organization is committed to achieving gender balance, but actually accomplishing it is another thing. An organization can make a lot of well-intentioned commitments — particularly at the start of a new year — but if you commit to too many things, you can end up spreading yourself too thin, and not actually achieving any of them. “[I]t has to be a priority. You know, with big organizations, you can't have too many priorities or things don't really get done… you have to identify the five or six things you're going to focus on to move forward … and if this [gender balance] is one of them, then there will be progress,” advises Glasser. Additionally, you have to ensure the commitment is continuously reinforced throughout the year. “It really does need to be a priority for a change to happen. I mean, it has to be a priority not once a year or twice a year, but it has to be kind of mainstreamed … it needs to be present,” says Glasser. If the initiative is only embraced at the preliminary stages and then lost and forgotten among everything else, nothing solid will be achieved. It has to be an ongoing commitment that is acted upon and checked against throughout the year. 4. Have a dedicated staff member for gender issues At UNISDR, there is a dedicated team member — in addition to the human resources team — who acts as their “gender leader” and point of contact between staff and managers on gender issues. Glasser explained, “I meet with her — for example, before each of the staff meetings — to check and see if she's had any feedback about, you know, any regressive behavior. And if she has examples of that, then I can call it out at [the] staff meeting.” This can be an effective way to form a communication channel between staff — particularly women — and higher levels of management, to express any concerns surrounding gender issues. Glasser went on explaining the role: “She's kind of our focal point in the organization … who helps me — particularly as the head of the organization — to just have an additional avenue of information on gender and what's going on.” It also means the people reporting these issues can remain anonymous to the rest of the organization, without fearing there could be retaliation imposed on them if they personally report an issue. 5. ‘Go the extra mile’ when recruiting A common excuse in the gender balance debate is that the most qualified applicant for the job wasn’t female, or there weren’t enough qualified female applicants. However, Glasser argues that, “in most areas, to say, ‘well, we couldn't find any good women applicants’ or ‘they didn't make the shortlist,’ I think that really means that people haven't tried hard enough. Haven’t looked hard enough, to really go the extra mile to make sure this happens.” He explained that, while he would not hire a female candidate over a more qualified male candidate, most often this does not need to be the case. He advocates that there are plenty of well-qualified and experienced women out there, but sometimes finding them requires a bit of extra time and manpower. “And that's what we need to do. Because there has been gender bias in a whole variety of respects, so it's perfectly legitimate to go the extra mile.” Glasser went on to evidence an example of this: He was tasked with employing a senior official, but after going through the recruitment process, they were left with “three finalists — they were all men. They were all OK but we decided … there are excellent female candidates out there. So, [we] went out again and searched more widely.” UNISDR received further applications and went through the process again until they ultimately found, “a wonderfully qualified — the most qualified — person, who was selected. And she is a woman and we are very glad she's on our team.” 6. Ensure gender balance spans all levels of the organization Gender balance isn’t simply a numbers game. You have to make sure that “balance exists at the highest levels of the organization as well as the lowest levels,” Glasser remarked, “particularly at higher level positions because often, as you know, you can have gender balance in an organization but it can often be in administrative positions and lower-level positions … the ‘glass ceiling’ sort of thing.” Ensuring women are employed in managerial and other high-level positions is key for promoting equality, and also has an impact on the culture of an organization. Glasser explained, “I’ve also been in organizations where they are predominantly male, at least at the senior level, and the culture changes a bit … I’ve just always found that having gender diversity in an organization ... is actually good for the culture and also just good for the quality of the decision making and discussion.” Women need to be regarded equally and be able to input their ideas across all levels. Glasser described experiences he witnessed when, “sometimes the smartest person in the room is a woman but she's … not even able to be heard, or she said something [and] a few minutes later, the man around the table says the exact same thing. Everyone hears that, but they don't notice.” The culture of an organization is essential in underpinning equality and if women are ignored — particularly at the higher-levels — then key ideas can and will go unheard. Having “an atmosphere in the organization, where women feel very comfortable leading and communicating and contributing to a discussion and to the work we're doing, is fundamental," says Glasser. In fact, Glasser’s successor — who will be taking over the role as head of UNISDR at the end of this month following his two-year mandate — is a woman, Mami Mizutori of Japan. 7. Keep your foot on the pedal Once you start to see progress within the organization, it is extremely important not to take your foot off the pedal, advises Glasser. “It's just one of those things that needs to remain a high profile and … just because the organization is doing well now, doesn't mean it can't revert to something else or move to something else that is less constructive. So, I think you just have to keep plugging away and when issues come up, don't let them slide, raise them. Yeah, and try and embed these things systematically.” Gender balance clearly takes a lot of time and purposeful effort to achieve, it doesn’t happen overnight. Therefore, it is vital to keep checking in and working out what more can be done, even once a gender balance has been achieved on the basic numbers level. Update, Feb. 14, 2018: This article has been amended to clarify that UNISDR is now known as the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.