Executive summary
The
main issues identified in relation to OneSteel are that gender inequality is
still high despite the form commitment by the organisation to the contrary.
There also seems to be a perception that service staff jobs are a preserve of
the males as indicated by females being only 2% in that job level. This fact
also indicates that the production processes are unhealthy and strenuous hence
the rationale to keep women out of them. Unfairness in promotion is indicated
by the fact that the proportion of female employees lowers as one move up along
the ladder. These are some of the issues addressed.
Recommendations
for the manufacturing and distribution sectors are as follows:
Manufacturing
section:
-
Make greater measures to attract more
service staff that are female
-
Entrench job rotation to facilitate
flexibility in times of maternity/paternity leaves
-
Take sharper affirmative actions in
terms of training and promotions
-
Promoting a culture of gender equality
and equity
Distribution
section:
-
Promote affirmative action to make up
for women to make up for deficiencies in other departments
-
Create job descriptions that are allow
workers to work from home
-
Ensure cross-departmental training to
facilitate job rotation
This
report recommends that these measures be implemented to make gender parity
easily achievable at OneSteel. Further details are as contained in the
report.
OneSteel
is a constituent company of Arrium, a mining and manufacturing company
operating in Australia. It is the manufacturing and recycling division of the
larger corporation. The management model at OneSteel is a decentralised one
where different divisions are empowered to make decisions that are specific to
them including human resource management decisions. The company makes efforts
to entrench equality and maintains a comprehensive policy for ensuring
transparency and equality in its human resource management practices. The
company’s report on equality indicates that the females are greatly outnumbered
in the organisation forming only about 11% of the total employee population.
This is in addition to the fact that some categories such as service staff have
only 2% female (Appendix 1). In addition to this, the percentage of women seem
to decrease as one moves up the management ladder and this is an implication
that promotion and training practices may need to be revaluated. The main weakness in the making of this report
is that the main source of information is the company which would ordinarily be
expected to put more emphasis on facts that put them in positive light at the
expense of any prejudicial information. Nevertheless, weaknesses in the policy
can be deduced from the statistics provided.
2.0
Recommendation 1: Steel manufacturing section
2.1 Brief description of
recommendation
-
Make greater measures to attract more
service staff that are female
-
Entrench job rotation to facilitate
flexibility in times of maternity/paternity leaves
-
Take sharper affirmative actions in
terms of training and promotions
-
Promoting a culture of gender equality
and equity
2.2 Existing initiatives in
context
The
company maintains fairness, transparency and equity in the recruitment of
employees. The element that is in question is the aspect of equity which does
not necessarily guarantee equality. There needs to be conscious efforts to
ensure that there is equality of either gender when recruiting. Given that
manual jobs in the manufacturing sector could be excessively manual, it is
anticipated that females may be avoiding the jobs. The improvement of working
conditions would not only increase working conditions for the men but also
attract the women to the jobs.
The
company allows employees to embrace flexibility of work schedules and this is
done by allowing them to work online from home. This may be very favourable to
the female employees. However, in certain functions like service staff involved
in factory operations, this work arrangement may not be sustainable.
Flexibility can on the other hand be promoted through job rotation. For
instance, as soon as an employee is aware that she’s pregnant, she can notify
the management which would then assign her to job roles that she can handle
while pregnant and shortly after childbirth.
The
current initiatives in the company are such that participation of females is
higher than their average rate of 11%. For instance, Steelers leadership
program contained 25% females; 16% of new recruits are women; and internal
appointments contain 23.4% women (Appendix 1). This means that there is a
marginal approach for affirmative action. But this approach is too marginal to
entrench equality. If the trend is to be maintained, it would take decades
before equality is realised. The new initiative suggests more radical measures
such as raising the numbers to at least 35% for each training initiative.
Resorting
to culture is important since the policies do not seem to produce results.
Policies may promote fairness but with sufficient grounds allowing
‘exceptional’ implementation. That is why cultural perspectives should be
promoted.
2.3 Level of consultation
expected
The
level of consultation in the case of promoting work flexibility will be
limited. The policy shall be made and employees will be informed of the
policies and encouraged to consult with the human resource management
department whenever they have an issue that could affect their work. In the
affirmative action in training and promotion of staff, unions would need to be
involved. Affirmative action can at times lead to cases of discrimination against
members of the dominant gender that may be more deserving of the appointments.
Consultations with unions would be important in determining the extent to which
affirmative action can go without aggravating existing employees. The unions to
be consulted in this case are the Australian Worker’s Union whose main goal is
to fight for the rights of the workers in terms of remuneration and working
conditions (The Australian Workers’ Union, 2013). Where initiatives are to
extend to the technical and engineering aspects, the union to consult is the
Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union which also ensures that workers’ rights
to fairness and good working conditions are upheld in addition to helping the
organisation access trainings which they conduct for their professionals when
promoting affirmative action (AMWU, 2013).
2.4 Organisational context
It
is also an indicator that the workers are not equipped properly when it comes
to handling manual tasks where work equipment such as trolleys, lifting
equipment and others that can easily be applied are exploited to make their
work easy (Dean and Peter, 2012). In organisations where workers are fully
furnished with equipment to enable them handle manual jobs, the work is made
easy enough for females to tackle without strain (Dean and Peter, 2012).
Working on the assumption that females are largely excluded from these jobs
because of their inability to use their muscle in executing the tasks, there is
an indicator that the workers are poorly equipped. This could mean that their
working conditions are not healthy and this constitutes grounds for
intervention by the relevant trade unions that are dedicated to ensuring that
the welfare of the worker is maintained. On fairness, statistics on the
distribution of work between genders is telling. It is difficult to justify
that the organisation is committed to fairness where the average employee
proportion is 11% female. Besides, only about 23% are recruited into the
organisation.
2.5 Theoretical basis
There
is a difference between equity and equality where the former does not imply
that genders must be equal in an organisation. In reality, equality is the best
measure of equity as it is easily visible and measurable.
Ideally,
the percentage of either gender would be at around 50% for it to be considered
fair. The Australian government sets a good example by maintaining a workforce
that is slightly fairly balanced along gender lines female (McCrystal and
Orchiston, 2013). The trend has actually been common in most sectors in the
Australian economy as equality is promoted in recruitment. Promotion of
equality is a concept that has been discussed in various forums with industry
players from across the world emphasising on the need to entrench equality and
fairness within the organisations (Baird, Williamson and Heron, 2012). The law
prohibits employers from engaging in any acts of discrimination against
employees based on characteristics such as gender, race, disability, religion
and others (Commonwealth of Australia, 2013; Commonwealth of Australia, 2013a;
Williamson, 2012). For instance, the legal provisions envision a situation
where recruitment is done using means that do not disqualify anyone based on
their gender.
Gauging
fairness is an intricate exercise that cannot be simply subjected to the
absolute gender numbers of those who are recruited. The managers can only
evaluate job applicants based on the applications received: they cannot go out
to entice people to apply for the jobs based on the gender balance (Williamson,
2012). This hurdle has been experienced in many companies that have in the past
advertised jobs that the society perceives to be suited for a certain gender.
The opposite gender tends to keep off and in the end; the organisation has to
consider only those who are interested in the jobs. In this case, the question
on why the organisation appears biased against women could be answered by this
argument where it is possible that female applicants kept off the service staff
jobs. This could explain the reason why recruitment of service staff is biased
against women despite the policy at OneSteel to be fair and transparent and
fair.
The
maintenance of an equal opportunity environment in the organisation is a thing
that must be entrenched into the organisational culture (Bacon and Hoque,
2012). The commitment to do the same is one that is not easily enforceable
through rules. This is because cases of discrimination are very difficult to
prove. In as much as gender parity is an important consideration, the overriding
factor is the issue of suitability for the job (Deirdre and Mary, 2012). Where
an applicant is deemed to be unsuitable, their rejection can be done without
giving rise to claims of discrimination. In most cases where companies are sued
over discrimination charges, they tend to assume the argument of qualification
and suitability and it becomes extremely difficult for the aggrieved parties to
prove that they had been discriminated against (Deirdre and Mary, 2012).
Companies therefore use these legal loopholes to maintain their line of
thinking even where it is flawed.
Further
discussions on the role of trade unions are contained in section 3.5
2.6 Merits and demerits of
measures proposed
The
advantage of promoting recruitment of more women as service staff is because it
will help in entrenching the culture of gender equality. Demystification of
jobs considered as male jobs and getting women to perform them properly will be
a good initiative in achieving this. This would be followed by promoting further
measures for job flexibility and affirmative action. These initiatives will
certainly help in promoting gender equality.
The
demerit of these approaches is that they are likely to be unfair to the male
employees. The process of encouraging promotion of women may lead to qualified
men being left out unfairly. Besides, proposing to emphasise on the employment
and promotion of women could reduce emphasis on competence and productivity.
These may negatively affect performance of the organisation. Besides,
affirmative action could lead to women being demeaned as they’d be seen as
people who can only excel if systems are modified to favour them. The
implementation of this system must therefore be done in a manner that overcomes
these demerits.
2.7 Monitoring and reporting of
problem
Targets
should be set for each element of human resource management. Aspects such as
recruitment, training and promotion should be done. This should be done on an
annual capacity where the proportion of women within the organisation rises by
at least 5% until the overall percentage is over 45%. The department would
accordingly report regularly on progress based on comparative analysis on
observed trends.
3.0
Recommendation 2: Distribution
The
distribution section deals with transporting manufactured products from the
factories to the distribution centres and to the customers. The main functions
would include warehousing, inventory management, order processing, and
transportation.
3.1 Brief description of
recommendation
-
Promote affirmative action to make up
for women to make up for deficiencies in other departments
-
Create job descriptions that are allow
workers to work from home
-
Ensure cross-departmental training to
facilitate job rotation
3.2 Existing initiatives in context
As
highlighted in 2.2 above, the company has made steps to promote gender equity
by creating opportunities in training and appointments at a ratio higher than
the average distribution of employees in the market. However, these initiatives
are not sufficient as maintaining the trend would mean that equality would not
be realised in the foreseeable future. The
company is already involved in initiatives for promoting flexibility of work by
facilitating work at home (Appendix 1). This can be improved through flexible
reporting hours and establishing online work arrangements that can facilitate
employees to work from home or in different locations. There is little
initiative in making the cross-department rotations more common. The operations
of the distribution department should be publicised to make all in the
organisation to understand the department. This would help in facilitating
flexibility of work schedules especially where job rotation is done for the
pregnant and sickly in other departments to facilitate work from home without
compromising the overall performance of the organisation.
3.3 Level of consultation
expected
Consultations
shall be limited to employee-management consultations when it comes to job
flexibility perspectives. However, unions such as the Transport Workers Union
that represents workers involved in transportation shall be engaged with to
ensure that confrontations do not arise over the rights of the workers. Structured
consultations shall always be facilitated to ensure that employees are kept
happy and that any grievances related to the proposed changes are tackled very
quickly.
3.4 Organisational context
The
distribution section is the only section in which most of the jobs can easily
be handled with women. The level of expertise as relates to coordination and
implementation of distribution schedules can be acquired with relative ease by
brilliant employees from either gender. Given that there may be a difficulty in
promoting gender equality in other divisions, the distribution division
provides this opportunity. To try and balance gender equality in OneSteel,
female numbers in the distribution business can be raised to over 60%. This
would go a long way in improving gender parity in the wider organisation. Functions
such as coordination, order processing and many other functions related to
distribution can be conducted at home. This means that the option of promoting
flexibility using this division may actually be more successful than in other
divisions.
3.5 Theoretical basis
The
dilemmas to be faced here are about the remuneration and working conditions for
employees on job rotation and the role of unions in defending workers’ rights.
The
provision of good working conditions is very crucial to the employees. Apart
from the issue of salary increment, disputes about the working condition of
employees are among the leading causes of trade disputes between organisations
and their workers (Akkerman, Born and Torenvlied, 2013). The basics of good
working conditions are that the employee should be provided with necessary
tools and safety gears to ensure that they can conduct their work with ease. In
the increasingly modern manufacturing centres, manufacturing processes are
almost entirely mechanised with the workers required to put in very little
effort to ensure that the systems work as they should (Dean and Peter, 2012).
Where the level of work facilitation is high, the bridge between men’s jobs and
women’s jobs is reduced drastically as the women are also able to undertake the
manual jobs. For instance, the task of moving products from point the warehouse
to the manufacturing site needs not be a man’s job where automated trolleys are
the ones used to do the work.
While
the creation of good working conditions may be an extra cost to the
organisations, they tend to give in under the weight of trade unions which tend
to be unrelenting in defending the workers. In relation to the manufacturing
and distribution aspects of the organisations, the relevant trade unions are
Australian Worker’s Union and the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU, 2013; AMWU,
2013). The two unions have something in common in that they push for
remuneration and good working conditions for their union members. Even though
the unions are always willing to sit with the management and negotiate, they
have a legally secured weapon of last resort: strikes.
Research
indicates that most strikes that occur due to industrial disputes are only
started after intense and lengthy negotiations have ended in a stalemate
(Heery, 2009). Unions are therefore not a major threat to organisations as they
allow for sufficient time for deliberation. As a matter of fact, unions can
work to the advantage of the organisation as they compress the diverse demands
of the employees through consensus building into fewer issues that can be
satisfied with ease. Organisations are actually better off dealing with staff
unions than spending endless amounts of time with individual employees over
similar demands (Akkerman, Born and Torenvlied, 2013). At OneSteel, the
managers appear open to the idea of workers forming unions even though they
appear not keen to enforce it.
3.6 Merits and demerits of
measures proposed
The
main challenge of trying to use this department to balance gender parity in the
whole organisation is the fact that it may amount into injustice for the male
employees. Besides, the question of performance still applies. In some job
descriptions such as transportation where drivers may be needed to drive for
hours and be away from home, women may not be able to handle the tasks.
Inter-departmental transfers on the other hand may be challenging when it comes
to the harmonisation of remuneration across roles. Individual employees may not
be agreeable to the idea of altering their salaries just to accommodate their
new roles.
On
the positive side, the organisation should be able to demonstrate its
commitment to gender equality by ensuring that roles that can be handled by
women are given to them. Maintaining a huge proportion of women employees in
this section would go a long way in proving this.
3.7 Monitoring and reporting of
problem
Concerns
over the impact on performance can be alleviated by maintaining records on
performance and how they differ as more female employees are brought into the
department. Training needs and facilitation of manual tasks through provision
of equipment should also be done and progress made reported. As is also
suggested in 2.7 above, regular reports should be made to monitor trends in
employment of females and as compared to preceding years.
4.0
Summary
In
this report, the main suggestions made involve efforts to fast-track measures
being taken to promote gender parity at OneSteel. It was observed that even
though the policy of fairness is already in place, the gender disparity is
still very high in the organisation. Enhanced measures for affirmative action
have been proposed with the target being an 8% improvement in the proportion of
women per year until they are more than 45% in the whole organisation. Differences
in work description can be exploited to raise the percentage of women in areas
that can easily be handled by women such as in the distribution department to
make up for imbalances in areas such as engineering where bridging the gap may
be difficult due to difficulties in getting competent women. Other measures
suggested include using job rotations to promote flexibility and making manual
tasks easier through provision of equipment to make them less laborious hence
enable women to handle them in addition to making work easy for all employees.
If these measures are implemented as suggested, gender parity wold be improved
within a relatively short time.
References
Akkerman,
A., Born, M.J. & Torenvlied, R. (2013). Solidarity, Strikes, and Scabs: How
Participation Norms Affect Union Members’ Willingness to Strike, Work and Occupations, 40(3), 250-280
AMWU,
(2013). The Union: About Us. Retrieved
from: http://www.amwu.asn.au/the-union/
Bacon,
N. & Hoque, K. (2012). The Role and Impact of Trade Union Equality
Representatives in Britain. British
Journal of Industrial Relations, 50(2), 239-262
Baird,
M., Williamson, S. & Heron, A. (2012). Women, Work and Policy Settings in
Australia in 2011. Journal of Industrial
Relations, 54(3), 326-343
Commonwealth
of Australia, (2013). Workplace Gender
Equality (Matters in relation to Gender Equality Indicators) Instrument 2013
(No. 1), Retrieved from: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2013L00434
Commonwealth
of Australia, (2013a). Equal Opportunity
for Women in the Workplace Amendment Act 2012. Retrieved from:
http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2012A00179
Dean,
S. & Peter, F. (2012). The limits and prospects of union power: Addressing
mass redundancy in the steel industry. Economic
and Industrial Democracy, 33(4), 649-668
Deirdre,
C. & Mary, Q. (2012). Attitudes to
employment law and the consequent impact of legislation on employment relations
practice. Employee Relations, 34(5),
464-480
Heery,
E. (2009). Labor Divided, Labor Defeated . Work
and Occupations, 36(3), 247-256
McCrystal,
S. & Orchiston, T. (2013). Industrial legislation in Australia in 2012. Journal of Industrial Relations , 55(3),
321-337
Ralph,
F., Heidi, G. & Rioch, B. (2011).
Discrimination and Unfair Treatment in the Workplace. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 49(S2), s207-s235
The
Australian Workers’ Union, (2013). Your
rights & entitlements. Retrieved from:
http://www.awu.net.au/your-rights-entitlements
Truss,
C., et al. (2013). Knowledge work: gender-blind or gender-biased? Work, employment and society, 26(5),
735-754
TWU,
(2013). About the Transport Workers Union
of Australia. Retrieved from: http://www.twu.com.au/about/
Williamson,
s. (2012). Gendering the Bricks and Mortar: Building an Opportunity Structure
for Equality Bargaining. Journal of Industrial
Relations, 54(2), 147-163
No comments:
Post a Comment