Developing a Flexible Working Arrangement Policy

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility
  • Workplace Wellbeing and Safety

SOURCE
  • Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Development, Institutional Policies

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Developing a Flexible Working Arrangement Policy

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)
This briefing note provides guidance on the key features of a flexible working arrangements policy. Organizations leading the way in workplace gender equality have in place a policy that specifically supports flexible working arrangements for all employees.

The key features of a flexible working arrangements policy are:

  • Statement
  • Purpose
  • Guideline (i.e. definitions, eligibility and exclusions, process, and performance and review)
  • References and resources (i.e. existing legislation and internal policies)

To learn more, click here.

Flexibility Business Case – Building Your Business Case for Flexible Work Through Workforce Metrics

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Flexibility Business Case – Building Your Business Case for Flexible Work Through Workforce Metrics

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)
This toolkit aims to help organizations identify the areas where flexibility could positively influence an organization’s productivity and employee engagement.It alsoprovides advice on how to measure the business benefit for flexible working through workforce metrics.

Specifically, this toolkit aims to:

  • Identify workforce metric categories and metrics to measure the benefits of flexible working
  • Provide steps on building your business case for flexibility through workforce metrics
  • Provide templates to collect and calculate workforce metrics

Metrics can be developed from the following categories:

  • Uptake and perceptions of flexible work
  • Attraction of employees
  • Employee retention
  • Training investment
  • Productivity and engagement
  • Absenteeism
  • Employee wellbeing
  • Office space accommodation costs
  • Workforce composition

To learn more about each category and their metrics, click here.

Flexibility Focus Group Guidance – How to Run an Effective Focus Group on Workplace Flexibility

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Development

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Flexibility Focus Group Guidance – How to Run an Effective Focus Group on Workplace Flexibility

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)
This document provides guidance on how to run focus groups with your employees on flexibility in your organization (e.g. timing, participants, facilitator, questions, circumstances). Focus groups can reveal a wealth of information and deep insights that can be used to structure flexible working arrangements to meet the needs of both employer and employee. This tool also includes an extensive list of sample questions and a script for carrying out a focus group.

To learn more, click here.

Readiness Assessment – Is Your Organization Ready for a Strategic Approach to Flexibility?

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Readiness Assessment – Is Your Organization Ready for a Strategic Approach to Flexibility?

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)
This toolkit provides the framework and practical guide to conducting a systematic diagnosis of “where are we now” – a key input to building your workplace flexibility strategy. Prior to developing your workplace flexibility strategy, it is recommended to undertake a readiness assessment. Specifically, this toolkit aims to:

  • Provide a comprehensive framework for organizational flexibility
  • Enable organizations to plot where they are on the flexibility roadmap
  • Help organizations conduct a flexibility assessment

The following are the capabilities to be assessed for determining the organization’s readiness:

  1. Leadership: Evaluate executive leadership’s commitment to flexibility.
  2. Business case: Determine the strength of the business case for flexibility in the organization.
  3. Flexibility vision, strategy, and policy: Determine what flexibility means for the organization and how to achieve such vision.
  4. Management capability: How managers directly impact their employees’ working arrangements.
  5. Employee experience: Understand employee’s risks and needs for implementing flexible work.
  6. Results management: How performance and productivity are measured, and transparency.
  7. Technology and infrastructure: Evaluate the needs for flexible work and implemented resources.
  8. Client and supplier experience: Analyze how flexible work can impact their expectations.
  9. Learning cycle: Understand the organization’s learning needs and potential difficulties.
  10. Change management: Assess the existence of change management resources within the organization.

To learn more, click here.

Employee Flexibility Toolkit – How to Negotiate and Manage a Successful Flexible Working Agreement

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Employee Flexibility Toolkit – How to Negotiate and Manage a Successful Flexible Working Agreement

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)
This toolkit provides information and advice for introducing flexible working arrangements and integrating work practices into an employee’s job.This toolkit provides information about issues to consider:

  • What flexibility means in terms of changes to existing work arrangements
  • How to request flexibility to maximize your chances of success
  • Things to consider before requesting flexible working arrangements
  • How to make flexibility work for you
  • Dealing with issues that can arise over time

Learn more here.

Manager Flexibility Toolkit – How to Create Successful, Engaged and Productive Flexible Teams

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Manager Flexibility Toolkit – How to Create Successful, Engaged and Productive Flexible Teams

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)
The aim of this toolkit is to provide information and guidance on how to successfully implement flexible working arrangements to maximize the opportunities and benefits that flexibility brings. The toolkit provides an overview of what workplace flexibility entails, benefits of workplace flexibility (e.g. productivity, effectiveness, job satisfaction), description of types of flexibility (e.g. flexible hours of work, compressed working weeks, telecommuting), and in-depth information on key flexibility elements to consider for managers.

The following are examples of good practices for managers found in this toolkit:

  • Leadership: Leaders should consider a flexible work arrangement themselves. This creates a role model within the organization demonstrating successful flexible work.
  • Team culture: Adjust communication tools and platforms to suit flexible work arrangements and consider communication training to help employees improve communication effectiveness.
  • Active learning: Establish a trial period to test a flexibility arrangement that works for the organization and the individual team.
  • Resource planning: Allocate tasks that suit flexible work options and use a central project planning tool to manage team’s workload and project advancement.
  • Information flow: Establish communication patterns such as daily project updates, weekly deadlines, set team meetings, etc.
  • Results-based performance management: Discuss performance as part of reviewing flexibility arrangements to make sure transparency, accountability, and autonomy are understood.
  • Self-management: Become aware of flexibility bias to learn and adapt to these arrangements.
  • Stakeholder management: Discuss and resolve issues around flexibility that can impact other internal stakeholders.
  • Legal risk management: Become aware about legal obligations related to flexible work.
  • Change management: Each team may go through an adjusting period to flexibility work.

To learn more, click here.

Building a Workplace Flexibility Strategy – A Guide to Building an Organization-Wide Approach to Implementing and Managing Workplace Flexibility

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Recruitment, Retention and Promotion
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Building a Workplace Flexibility Strategy – A Guide to Building an Organization-Wide Approach to Implementing and Managing Workplace Flexibility

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)
This guide provides a holistic frameworkto support a strategic approach to implementing organization-wide workplace flexibility programs. Specifically, the aims are to:

  • Ensure alignment between an organization’s workplace flexibility strategy, gender equality strategy, and broader business strategy.
  • Enable organizations to design a comprehensive workplace flexibility strategy.
  • Enable organizations to develop and implement an organization-wide approach for improving flexibility capability.

Also, this resource provides steps to building a workplace flexibility strategy:

  1. Envision a clear vision of what the organization looks like with improved flexibility.
  2. Ensure leadership commitment, support, and involvement, especially while running workshops.
  3. Develop specific goals and actions for each capability area (from the Readiness Assessment).
  4. Create an implementation plan based on the goals and actions with corresponding outcomes.
  5. Evaluate through an established learning cycle that includes pilot, testing, learning, adjustment, and retesting to find the best-suited strategy for the organization.

To learn more, click here.

My Career Toolkit: Professional Associations and Networking Groups

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Career Development
  • Outreach Initiatives and Partnerships

SOURCE
  • Catalyst

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Employee Support, Implementation

TARGET UNIT
  • Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

My Career Toolkit: Professional Associations and Networking Groups

Catalyst
Catalyst has created a list of several professional associations and networking groups for women, LGBTQI, visible minorities, and people with disabilities around the world and in Canada. Some of the Canadian groups are:

  • The Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women (BPW)
  • Canadian Association of Women Executives & Entrepreneurs
  • Women’s Executive Network (WXN)
  • Aboriginal Professional Association of Canada (APAC)
  • Black Business and Professional Association (BBPA)
  • exeQutive
  • Canadian Association of Professionals with Disabilities

To learn about more groups, click here.

Employee Resource Groups: Toolkit for Diversity and Inclusion Practitioners

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Career Development
  • Organizational Culture

SOURCE
  • The Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Development, Programs and Initiatives

TARGET UNIT
  • Diversity & Inclusion, Employee Resource Groups, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Employee Resource Groups: Toolkit for Diversity and Inclusion Practitioners

The Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion
The Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion created this toolkit to provide practical suggestions and strategies for implementing and managing Employee Resource Groups within companies. The toolkit contains information about:

  • Types of ERGs: Cultural, inter-generational, single parents, working parents, women, etc.
  • Value of ERGs:To organizations and individuals (e.g. community and ally building; engagement, inclusion, and retention; leadership and professional development)
  • Barriers and Challenges:Examples of what ERGs face in Canadian organizations (e.g. buy-in from management and leadership; ERG structure and logistics; membership engagement and retention)
  • Setting Up ERGs for Success: CCDI recommends action in aspects such as formal structures and budget; communications and synergies; accountability; engaging stakeholders; etc.

To learn more, click here.

7 Ways You Might be Overlooking Talent – How Unconcious Bias can Play Out in the Workplace

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Career Development
  • Recruitment, Retention and Promotion

SOURCE
  • Center for Creative Leadership

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Development

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, CEO, Senior Leadership

LINK TO RESOURCE

7 Ways You Might be Overlooking Talent – How Unconcious Bias can Play Out in the Workplace

Center for Creative Leadership
This resource lists unconscious biases that negatively impact people’s opportunities to advance in their career and examples of specific actions to fight them. As female employees often face higher barriers to advancement due to bias and stereotypes, becoming aware of what those biases are can help address them.

  • Likeability: Depending on one’s dimension(s) of diversity (race, gender, ethnicity, etc.), one’s likeability may be perceived differently.
  • Similar to me: Unintentionally gives higher ratings to employees who are similar to them.
  • Personal: Individual preferences may prevent objective analysis of an employee.
  • Horns and halos: Managers may make assumptions that a particular type of employee is naturally good or bad at the job.
  • Stereotyping: People may assign attributes to an entire group and act upon those ideas.
  • Shifting standards: Leaders may not realize they’re applying more stringent standards to one similarly situated employee over another.
  • Confirmatory: Once a judgement or recommended action is made, people are highly motivated to find or produce evidence to justify it.

Examples of strategies for fighting unconscious bias at work:

  1. Look back at talent conversations and assess if any unconscious bias might have been at play.
  2. Assess past selection processes to determine if the candidates you considered were all men – perhaps all white men – and why.
  3. Establish a practice to recognize if your selection process is overlooking talent.

To learn more, click here.