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Our Approach: Change Management Coaching for Gender Equality
Engendering Industries' approach to advancing gender equality consists of several core components. Implemented together, these components promote gender equality in the workplace.
Increasing gender equality in the workplace requires a multifaceted, systemic approach. Enacting company-wide change can be challenging, and resistance is common. Engendering Industries’ change management approach supports companies to advance gender equality at each phase of the Engendering industries Employee Life Cycle to ensure sustainable, transformational change.
The Role of the Coach
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In 2015, USAID’s Engendering Industries program began partnering with companies worldwide to advance gender equality in lucrative sectors. The initial goal was to increase employee knowledge of change management and gender equality concepts while building a cadre of change agents within an organization. The program now employs a stronger systems thinking approach and combines academic coursework with more intensive change management coaching and technical support to partners. This has made the learning experience more practical, enhanced partner motivation and accountability, and facilitated long-lasting change across partners.
Engendering Industries’ change management coaches support companies in defining a process for achieving gender equality in their organization. Harnessing tools in the USAID Engendering Industries Best Practices Framework, Engendering Industries uses the GROW approach to coaching, which empowers companies to collect data on gender equality, assess their corporate reality, set clear goals, identify viable pathways and strategies for progress, and establish the will and accountability needed to drive progress. Using a systems thinking approach, coaches support partners in identifying how corporate structures, policies, and procedures must align to produce transformational change on gender equality across the Engendering Industries Employee Life Cycle.
"The whole program would not work if the coach was not there. The coach helps us to push beyond our comfort zone, structure [our] thinking, and … understand whether we are moving into the right direction to make long-lasting and sustainable change happen."
– Participant from BSES Rajdhani Power Limited
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The Engendering Industries approach is characterized by:
Using data for decision-making
Coaches facilitate an in-depth organizational assessment of a company’s gender equality status, using quantitative and qualitative tools to collect data. This baseline assessment allows companies to identify gaps and opportunities for advancing gender equality and prioritize dynamic interventions that will increase gender equality at each phase of the employee lifecycle.
Generating a business case for gender equality
Coaches support companies in developing a compelling business case for advancing gender equality using in-depth assessment data. The business case illustrates how gender equality will improve business performance at a company and is vital for generating the leadership commitment and buy-in needed to enact change.
Facilitating and enacting learning
Alongside course facilitators and technical experts worldwide, coaches support companies participating in the Engendering Industries Course. During the course, companies develop a Gender Equality Action Plan, which is then implemented with the support and guidance of an Engendering Industries coach over the course of a year.
Providing demand-driven, tailored technical support to companies
Coaches support companies to select, prioritize, and apply globally recognized best practices across the employee lifecycle in the Engendering Industries Best Practices Framework to achieve their gender equality vision. Coaches ensure adaptability, continuity, accountability, and commitment to the implementation process.
Empowering change agents
Coaches empower teams to become agents of change at their companies by cultivating their ability to create solutions, think outside the box, and identify and engage stakeholders that will enable success. This includes incorporating strategies for engaging men and key stakeholders across gender equality interventions.
Snapshot: Coaching with a Strategic Lens
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Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM) provides electricity to nearly 30 percent of Mozambique’s population. In 2018, only 19 percent of the utility’s 3,800 employees are women, and few work in technical, engineering, or leadership roles. In 2018, Engendering Industries began supporting EDM to address gender inequities at each phase of the Engendering Industries Employee Life Cycle.
Over a two-year period and more than 80 hours of coaching, the company was supported to work towards its goal to develop the third pillar of its business strategy to improve gender parity and employ a 40 percent female workforce by 2030. To attract more women to the workforce and widen its pool of candidates, they engaged technical schools and adapted their hiring and recruitment process to address the reality of barriers to entry to the power sector, which women in Mozambique face.
With Engendering Industries' support, they revised the language used in job advertisements, changed the way they screened applicants, and used targeted hiring practices. After enacting these changes, EDM hired more than 160 women, bringing the total proportion of female employees to 19 percent, a 9.2 percent improvement.
