MeToo six years on: what’s changed?

Garreth Hanley:
This is INTHEBLACK, a leadership, strategy and business podcast brought to you by CPA Australia.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Welcome to the INTHEBLACK. I'm Jackie Blondell, and today we're discussing gender equity at work, six years after Me too. Our guest today is Genevieve Collins, Chief Executive Partner, Lander & Rogers and a member of Chief Executive Women. Today, we'll be talking about the six years after Me Too. Now, Me Too lit a touch fire around sexual harassment that began in Hollywood and rippled through workplaces throughout the world. Today, we're going to discuss what's changed for the better and what work still needs to be done. Welcome, Genevieve.

Genevieve Collins:
Hi, Jackie. Thanks so much for having me.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Well, let's kick off with a little bit of the legislation that's happened in December around positive duty. Can you explain, without getting into the legal weeds, I believe you're an insurance lawyer, not a workplace lawyer.

Genevieve Collins:
I am.

Jacqueline Blondell:
About what that means for you as the chief executive partner of your firm, how do you deploy positive duty?

Genevieve Collins:
Yes. In December last year, the Commonwealth Government amended the Sex Discrimination Act, the Federal Act, to impose a positive duty on workplaces to take what we call reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate as far as possible sexual harassment, sex-based discrimination and hostile work environments. Obviously, that's something that I, in this role, have to be alive to. Actually, the obligation applies to all organisations and businesses in Australia, regardless of size or their resources. In some cases, the positive duty actually extends to third parties beyond actual employees within an organisation.

Jacqueline Blondell:
What does that mean by third parties?

Genevieve Collins:
Well, that might mean someone that you come in contact with in your work.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Positive duty itself, the wraparound is prevention rather than waiting for it to occur and then dealing with it. Is that correct? You have to put in an environment that allows it to be called out immediately or to be prevented?

Genevieve Collins:
Yes, I think that's exactly right. What's powerful about a positive duty is it's an obligation to be proactive. To prevent harm at work before it happens rather than responding once the harm has occurred, although obviously, there's an obligation to do that as well.

Jacqueline Blondell:
What are some of the practices that you've deployed to empower this positive duty in your firm?

Genevieve Collins:
I would say that every organisation responds differently, but some of the things that we've done at Lander & Rogers include introducing a mandatory reporting policy for sexual harassment. What we did was we changed our sexual harassment policy to introduce mandatory reporting for anyone who experiences, witnesses or becomes aware of sexual harassment within our firm. It's designed to empower not only the impacted person, but anyone who I think significantly becomes aware of that inappropriate and or illegal conduct. If someone tells you that they've been sexually harassed at Landers, you must act and report it. This applies to everyone. You can't put your colleague in a position where you tell them that this conduct has occurred, but that you don't want them to say anything. The reason we've done that is we're very conscious that the culture in Landers is collegiate, and we do feel confident from our engagement surveys that people feel and know that management will act and people will not be treated less favourably for reporting. Once you've got that confidence, I think in an organisation as part of the cultural fabric, it's reasonable then that we know about this so we can address it. If we don't know about it, it's very hard to do anything about it. Also, I think realistically in a professional service firm, complications can also arise where there's consensual. Sexual harassment is obviously unwelcome conduct. In a professional services organisation, which tends to be hierarchical, there can be consensual workplace relations, but involving a power imbalance. In addition to that, really to compliment the sexual harassment policy, we've introduced a complimentary policy on consensual workplace relationships. What that means is if you are in a position of power imbalance with someone else and you have a personal relationship with them, then that relationship needs to be reported to management. It's not so we can be the moral police, that is not our intention, but it's simply where those relationships involve an actual perceived or potential conflict that must be reported so we can manage it.

Jacqueline Blondell:
That's quite interesting. Because I think it's like upwards of 60 to 70% of people meet their partners at work.

Genevieve Collins:
Yes.

Jacqueline Blondell:
It's a kind of delicate balancing act. When you say it might be a situation with a senior partner and a junior worker, how is that reported and then how is it dealt with? Do they not work together anymore or what do you do?

Genevieve Collins:
It's a really good question, and it may not be that they don't work together, although that may be a consequence. The expectation is, or the requirement under the policy is that it is reported and it will then be managed so that, that person in the position of power is no longer able to influence decision-making around the other person's career progress. For example, promotions or remuneration. I think that protects the people in that relationship and it certainly protects the team around them because those power imbalance relationships as we know can impact morale of a team very negatively.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Is there a time limit for reporting this? Because some relationships just might start as a drink after work and then they evolve. Do you have a set policy on when these must be reported? I mean, that's difficult, isn't it?

Genevieve Collins:
We do. I guess we have those personal relationships defined in the policy. It's quite clear when, so to speak, a line is crossed and the relationship has to be reported. It has to be reported if that person is in a position to influence the other party's career in any way.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Let's talk a little bit more about moves towards gender equity and professional services firms and the specific issues and challenges around it. Because these firms have been traditionally over the last 100 years, very hierarchical and very male in structure. It's only been in the last 25 years or so that things have started to change. What issues are we still dealing with in for professional women in firms like this?

Genevieve Collins:
I think that's absolutely true. I started at Landers about 35 years ago. When I started, there were absolutely no females in senior positions at the firm. There were no female partners certainly, but there weren't even any female senior associates. I recall we had one female judge in the county court. There were no female judges in the Supreme Court. I think it was at least a decade later when we ticked that milestone. Also, I can remember that there was no paid parental leave for partners. When we had our first son, Tom, he's 26 now, I distinctly recall being told by the senior partner there that our partnership agreement had no provision for this. That the closest provision was sick leave, but that my predicament was voluntary so there was no paid leave. I'm now happy to say that Landers and pretty proud actually that Landers now has the highest number of female partners, very Australian law firm. We've just hit 50% as of last week and four of our eight, I think this is significant, so four of our eight practice groups led or co-led by women. There's been an enormous shift in relation to the makeup of the firm in terms of gender balance.

Jacqueline Blondell:
If we bring it back to the initiatives and challenges, if we use Landers as an example, how has this huge shift, 25-year shift happened from when women got pregnant and it was a predicament or a sickness to parental leave as we have it today, and women being able to move up into partnerships positions just like men? How are those issues being dealt with over time?

Genevieve Collins:
It's a great question, Jackie, and it's a big question. I should add now, we have a 26-week gender-neutral paid parental leave policy.

Jacqueline Blondell:
We'll talk about that when we come to men and what men get out of the equation.

Genevieve Collins:
Great. In terms of what's brought about the changes, I think gender equity I would say is not about or achieving gender equity is not about one distinctive initiative or one particular policy. I think it relates to an entire culture, the leadership, the operating model or the fabric, I would call it, of an organisation. I think that's different for every organisation. What I think has worked for us, if I had to identify, the projects I guess, or initiatives or activities that have led to this significant change. I think it starts with the leadership. There has to be a desire, firstly for equal opportunity for both genders. If there isn't that, I think it's very difficult. You then have to focus on equitable recruitment, I think, an equitable promotion. We've done that with not having targets. We haven't needed to have targets. We also spend some time I think listening to our people about their experience of gender equity. Because the leadership moves further away, I think, as people become more senior and you don't actually appreciate necessarily how other junior members of staff might experience their gender differences. I think it's important to continue to listen. There's some practical ways we've achieved this. One of those is adopting a fully hybrid working policy. Thank you, COVID. We have no mandated days or numbers of days in the office.

Jacqueline Blondell:
You haven't gone all Facebook with a three days mandatory?

Genevieve Collins:
No. We've retained it. We obviously, I've just described our policies around sexual harassment, zero tolerance and that any contravention of that is acted on immediately. Something else we've done, which I think has been powerful, is we've removed our pay secrecy clauses from employment contracts.

Jacqueline Blondell:
That's interesting. We should get into the juicy topic of pay equity and that's aligned with that, so yes.

Genevieve Collins:
Yes. That's interesting. I can talk about that. The other things that we've also promoted, I think at Landers, we've continued to use data and innovation. Innovation is something that's very important to us. We've continued to use that to support our progress in gender equity. An example of that I think is in our LawTech Hub, we've supported the scale up called Elker, which is actually a platform for reporting sexual harassment. I'm aware that the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner now has that platform in place where people can report sexual harassment anonymously, partially anonymously.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Is Elker something that's an open platform for lawyers working?

Genevieve Collins:
Yeah. Other professional service organisations use that platform or other similar platforms where you can report anonymously and it's recorded.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Is it to the senior executive in the firm that you report anonymously?

Genevieve Collins:
Exactly, yes.

Jacqueline Blondell:
How does it work if there's a report, how do the senior team act then if it's anonymous?

Genevieve Collins:
If it's anonymous, it's simply I guess a warning. Somebody's chosen not to want to make that public. That's in some organisations, it obviously doesn't apply to Landers because we have mandatory reporting. In other organisations that have that confidential anonymous reporting process, that then triggers. If there's more than one complaint, I imagine the person's spoken to. Then it depends on the actions that, that organisation choose to.

Jacqueline Blondell:
That the organisation has in place. Let's get onto the topic of pay equity and outlawing pay secrecy. I believe there's changes coming through the women in the workplace group.

Genevieve Collins:
That's actually right. We removed about five years ago because I think it's well researched and accepted that not requiring people to keep their pay confidential ensures that there's far more gender parity in relation to pay. Under the new legislation, it's a workplace gender equality agency has introduced or is introducing from early next year, so early 2024. Requiring their member organisations to publish employer gender pay gap information. I think in later next year or early '25, they'll be doing the same for Commonwealth public sector employers. That means all members of workplace gender equality agency, of which many people listening today I think will belong to organisations who have signed up for that as employees of choice. That gender pay gap information will need to be made public. I think that's a significant shift forward.

Jacqueline Blondell:
How do you think it can be used to achieve a fair pay? Is it just lifting the veil, so to speak?

Genevieve Collins:
I think it's got a few benefits. Firstly, it focuses the mind, doesn't it? This is not meaning that men and women have to be paid equally. It means that they have to be paid equally for the same role. If there's a difference in your data, then I think it really focuses the mind about what you're going to do about that. Some other people will of course, be motivated by feeling that, that information is now in the public. I feel there'll be some internal pressure too from impacted people.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Like a name and shame situation.

Genevieve Collins:
I guess so. That's right. In a positive way I think it would mean that the organisation, if they haven't previously been aware of it, now will be aware of it and focus on it. I think that can only be a positive thing. A bit like imposing a positive duty, actually.

Jacqueline Blondell:
I think it's a great thing because the data may be there, but no one may be paying attention to it. At least now if you have to report the data, then you can actually act on what you see in it.

Genevieve Collins:
Exactly right, Jackie. I think that's the rationale behind it.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Are there any other issues around pay equity where we still need work still needs to be done?

Genevieve Collins:
I absolutely think so. I think just last week on the 25th of August, it was WGEA equal payday, which marks 56 days in the new financial year that Australian women must work to earn the same as men for the same role last year. I think the gender pay gap now is at around 13%. It's an all-time low in Australia. We have improved the ratio.

Jacqueline Blondell:
It's remarkable. Do you think Me Too has anything to do with that, to return to the beginning of our conversation?

Genevieve Collins:
I'm not sure. It's definitely a focus on women, isn't it, and equality between genders? I think that's what it's all about. Me Too is perhaps more about shaming men. Clearly, there was a need to do that because I don't think there's any doubt that they completely egregious figures about sexual harassment. I think it was one in three people reported that they'd been sexually harassed in the last five years in their workplace. It was unacceptable. This is more, I think a positive duty about equality between genders.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Let's turn the attention to men. Because often, there might be some pushback with why women, women, women, why are we discussing women? It's actually about parity between men and women. What do men get out of this move to gender parity?

Genevieve Collins:
That's a really good question, and I think they certainly do, and I think if you introduce policies which prejudice one group against the other, either way, it's unhelpful to everyone. I think moving forward together, we now for example, have a gender-neutral 26-week paid parental leave, period. What that means is that we have more Landers fathers, stereotypically taking that parental leave than ever before. They experience what it's like to come back, I think from parental leave, which isn't always easy. We have processes in place to reduce fees, et cetera, and provide resourcing for mentoring and support. Men that come back experience what it's like for women. I think they're very much more understanding of that, but they also love the opportunity to spend time with their families. I think that's only a good thing. I think the other way, hybrid working, for example. Yes, it definitely assists people with caring and other responsibilities. It's a great freedom for men as well. It's not just for women. The feedback we get is that men love it.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Do you have a specific example where it's a 12-month parental leave period, but if the female partner in the relationship doesn't work at Lander & Rogers, they work somewhere else and they take their 12 months, do then allow the other partner who works at Lander & Rogers to then take their parental leave outside that 12-month period?

Genevieve Collins:
Yes. It actually comes back to that point I made earlier about listening to people. Because we allowed access for the paid period of 26 weeks, 12 months after birth or adoption, what we were told by the Landers fathers, if I can use that stereotypical typical language for a minute, was that in effect if their non-Landers partner took off the first 12 months after birth or adoption. They then wanted to access the period of paid parental leave for 26 weeks. They couldn't do that because the 12 months had expired. We simply extended our policy to 18 months so you can access a paid period within 18 months. That was largely to benefit the fathers, not the Landers mothers, if I can express it like that.

Jacqueline Blondell:
It seems to be it's not just about your firm. It seemed to be an issue throughout the workplace that if that 12 months is up, then the father doesn't take up the parental leave, therefore they don't get the benefits and they don't pick up any of the empathy that is involved in coming back to work after time off. I think that's sounds like a good move.

Genevieve Collins:
Well, I think it is a question of fairness, isn't it? It does typically apply in a professional services environment, I think, but it's a fairness for all.

Jacqueline Blondell:
In terms of hybrid, is that there is some feeling that women have benefited so much from hybrid working. That there is a downside in that you're not visible in the office, therefore you may not be seen as someone that's up for promotion or up for a good project or contract. Do you see that happening or are you finding it that hybrid, both men and women are really taking advantage of the hybrid working?

Genevieve Collins:
I would say that it's both, men and women. I've heard that, that's certainly a criticism of hybrid working. Working at home, you're not visible and you're not seen and people can't be trained, et cetera. I tend to take the view that there's opportunities for people being at home and being able to manage their life and responsibilities, male or female. It's better to focus on how we can ensure that they do receive visibility and do receive training, et cetera. Part of our hybrid policy requires our people to respect in-firm and team events and attend anchor days, et cetera. Necessarily prioritise client requirements and team requirements. It's a bit of mutuality there, but I would definitely say the mutuality applies to men and women equally.

Jacqueline Blondell:
That's great. It's like a give and take situation.

Genevieve Collins:
Absolutely.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Let's just sum the whole thing up. I know it's a sort of piece of string type question, but how long do you think it would take to achieve a gender shift towards gender equity in our working lives?

Genevieve Collins:
Well, I think it's well and truly happening, but I would say we certainly have some way to go. I think you have to look at the stats for that. I think we now have good measures in place to address sexual harassment. We've talked about some of that, simply that's unacceptable. It's illegal conduct and it has to be stamped out. In terms of for example, pay, we still have in Australia a gender pay gap of 13%, which is an all-time low, but still unacceptable. I think it means that women earn on average 87 cents for every dollar earned by man for the same role, which in 2023 is quite extraordinary on any view, I think. Also, significantly, I think women are underrepresented in key decision-making roles across almost all industries in the Australian workforce. While women make up half of the employees, they comprise less than 20% of CEOs, for example.

Jacqueline Blondell:
It's still a very shabby figure, that one.

Genevieve Collins:
Very shabby figure and it probably gets worse if you look at some of the research undertaken by Chief Executive Women, for example, their 2022 census conducted last year shows that there are more ASX 300 companies who have no women at all in their executive leadership teams in 2022 than they did in the previous year of '21. So in fact, we're going backwards if you look at that as a statistic. On their assessment, it will take 100 years at the present rate to reach parity.

Jacqueline Blondell:
This is bleak, Genevieve. I thought we're looking aft for the last bit, but is there any little golden beams that we can see in the future? I mean we are moving towards some sort of pay equity narrowing of the gap. In terms of this ASX lack of women, what should be happening there and do you think the respect at work and the changes to the policies might shift that a little bit, even though that deals with sexual harassment and not necessarily with all the other areas where companies fall down on gender equity?

Genevieve Collins:
Well, I think that's a multifactor question, really.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Sorry about that.

Genevieve Collins:
No, I think it's a great question. I do think that the acceleration of progress is happening. I don't mean it to sound bleak. In fact, I would be disappointed if I came across as being unoptimistic about it. I think there's a lot of work being done. Yes, there's the sexual harassment legislation, b ut there is also the WGEA mandatory reporting for pay equity. Some people believe in targets and I think Chief Executive Women, for example, would say that most companies that have lost their gender balances in 2022 have no targets, so they would support targets. You can see across the ASX, for example, the top 100 companies about half already have gender targets. There's a lot of activity, even this discussion today, everything raises awareness and I think everyone has to show perhaps some leadership in this area.

Jacqueline Blondell:
It'll be good to keep a watching brief on it. If those targets are coming in, we'll see what happens next.

Genevieve Collins:
Absolutely.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Which is interesting. Well, I think that's all we've got time for today. Thanks so much, Genevieve, for joining us, and you've been listening to In The Black.

Genevieve Collins:
It's a pleasure, Jackie.

Garreth Hanley:
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