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Our Approach: The Best Practices Framework for Advancing Gender Equality
Engendering Industries' approach to advancing gender equality consists of several core components. Implemented together, these components promote gender equality in the workplace.
Despite the global evidence that gender equality strengthens business performance, women continue to encounter structural barriers that limit their participation in the workforce, particularly in lucrative industries. The Best Practices Framework for Male-Dominated Industries outlines a strategic and comprehensive change management approach that advances gender equality across an entire company structure.
Actions that Advance Gender Equality
Engendering Industries designed the Best Practices Framework around the employee life cycle; a well-known human resources model that provides a management structure for most companies. The program developed its own unique life cycle model, characterized by eight employee phases and four cross-cutting organizational enablers.
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The Best Practices Framework defines a set of actions companies can take at each phase of the employee life cycle to holistically advance gender equality at all levels of the workforce. The best practices included in the framework are curated using program experience, literature reviews, and analyses of emerging data in the areas of gender equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Human Resources, operations professionals, development practitioners, gender experts, and technical advisors working in lucrative sectors around the world have used the framework to systematically advance gender equality in their organizations. While Engendering Industries encourages companies to implement the actions defined in this framework in partnership with an experienced change management coach, the tool can also be used to spark dialogue, increase management buy-in, and generate ideas at companies that are at any stage of advancing gender equality. In 2023, Engendering Industries created an online, interactive version of the Best Practices Framework, increasing the accessibility and use of the best practices to organizations looking to advance gender equality. The online Best Practices Framework enables companies to:
- Take an online survey to assess the status of gender equality at their organization.
- Generate recommendations for best practices the organization should consider to advance gender equality across the workforce.
- Create a customized action plan to increase equality in their organization.
Engendering Industries operationalizes the framework through:
Change Management Coaching
Engendering Industries’ change management coaches support companies to use the Best Practices Framework to implement gender equality best practices at each phase of the employee life cycle to ensure sustainable, transformational change.
The Engendering Industries Course
The Engendering Industries Course trains companies to use and implement the Best Practices Framework. Course participants conduct an organizational gender equality assessment, which they use to determine which best practices are currently being implemented by the company. During the course, organizations learn about the actions outlined in the Best Practices Framework, and develop a custom gender equality action plan for their organization using the results from their gender equality assessment to identify entry points for change.
Men’s Engagement and Gender-Based Violence Trainings
Engendering Industries provides complementary trainings that support organizations in implementing gender equality initiatives across the employee life cycle. This includes identifying best practices to engage men and prevent and respond to sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence in an organization.
The Impact of a Strategic Approach
The Best Practices Framework guides organizations to move beyond a focus on changing the gender composition of staff, toward comprehensive reforms such as addressing unconscious biases in recruitment, strengthening talent and leadership development to prepare women for promotions, or ensuring the workplace has equitable benefits such as childcare and parental leave to foster work-life balance.
Engendering Industries partners have used the Best Practices Framework to effectively advance gender equality at their companies.
Snapshot: Implementing Best Practices Enhances Parity
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When EDESUR Dominicana partnered with Engendering Industries in 2018, the Dominican electricity distribution company was interested in enhancing gender equality but did not have a strategic plan to do so. A baseline evaluation revealed that the company was implementing only 19 percent of the initiatives and only one of the policies recommended in the Best Practices Framework. Women held only 37 percent of all jobs at the company and only 33 percent of technical roles. EDESUR worked with an Engendering Industries change management coach to assess gaps, identify evidence-based practices that could advance gender equality in specific employee life cycle phases, and build a holistic and strategic plan.
Over the next five years, EDESUR steadily implemented that plan, even through leadership changes that resulted in significant employee turnover. By 2023, EDESUR was implementing 86 percent of Engendering Industries’ best practices, including 10 new policies that create the conditions for gender equality. As a result, EDESUR’s staff composition has steadily changed. Women now hold 39 percent of jobs overall and 35 percent of technical positions. In 2023, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) awarded EDESUR a Gold Seal for gender equality; the highest rating offered by the certification program.
