The problems you should be searching for.
Dear friends,
Here’s something you weren’t expecting. Words from former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that could help make workplaces fairer and safer for women.
“As we know,” he said during a press conference in the lead up to the Iraq War, “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.”
Leaning into your knowns and unknowns is an approach worth taking when it comes to gender equity in the workplace.
The ‘known knowns’ are clear. All industries have a gender pay gap, with the national average sitting at 21.7 percent . Only 22 percent of CEOs are women. One in three people have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. And that’s just for starters.
But it’s the ‘known unknowns’ that we really should be focussing on in order to drive change. These are those policies, procedures and behaviours (conscious or otherwise) that sit behind those statistics.
Unearthing them is critical to creating fair and safe workplaces for women. Typically they come to light when a scandal hits the headlines. Big media networks are the latest to have their reckoning, but workplaces ranging from the retail sector to Parliament House have also been called out.
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So here’s a radical idea. Why not go in search of those problems before they create a public scandal (not to mention, impact your staff and workplace)? Work off the assumption that there is something to find - the known unknown.
It’s something Australian Border Force (ABF) Commissioner, Michael Outram, says he was doing when he “proactively commissioned” a review of the ABF . What was uncovered was shocking and led to a public apology from Border Force leadership.
Outram told the Guardian he wanted to know “warts and all” what was happening inside his organisation, and that, while confronting, doing so has left him with recommendations and a blueprint for the way forward.
If you need us, we’ll be diving into the unknown. We hope to see you there.
FW
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Senior Business Development & Client Relationship Leader | DevOps, Cloud Transformation & AI | Driving IT Solutions & Automation for Global Clients
4 个月When women raise their concerns or issues normally at leadership levels where they really have a platform to be heard, unfortunately their concerns will be brushed and assured that such issues don't exist and since the women leaders cannot cite specific examples in those forums due to the sensitivity and risk, their concerns gets either invalidated or suppressed since the supported voices are minimal due to gender gap but certainly all of the women leaders at the same level will acknowledge those issue. However sadly the reality is things get heard only when senior leadership or executives raise them and they will be cheered and glorified for noticing such challenges and voicing them out.