We, along with our Champions for Change, herald transparency as part keeping ourselves accountable and learning from one another. A new piece on Newsroom shows the importance of being candid about progress, challenges, and offering insight around the tweaks that need to happen — and we’re proud to see our Champions boldly weigh in on this.
Our Partners Fonterra and Goodman — fronted by our Global Women Member Kate Daly (Managing Director of People and Culture at Fonterra) and Champion for Change John Dakin (Goodman’s CEO) — share their insights of their efforts to see the 40:40:20 target set out by the Champions. In this spirit, they pulse-check the progress of their efforts and share some learnings from along the way.
The key focus? Focusing on progress not perfection.
“Our targets for 2022 are ambitious and we may not deliver on them, but they are still important because they give us focus and they encourage innovative thinking” — Kate Daly, Global Women Member Managing Director of People and Culture, Fonterra
Our Partners Fonterra, who are far from their 2018-set goal of having 50% of women in senior leadership by the end of 2022, share that this involves “[giving them] focus and they encourage innovative thinking” to get beyond their current board and senior management team,where women make up 36% and 24% respectively.
“We recognise that some of our targets for 2022 are ambitious and we may not deliver on them, but they are still important because they give us focus and they encourage innovative thinking,” shares Kate Daly, Fonterra’s managing director of people and culture.
“We have a real focus on gender-balanced recruitment, flexibility, leadership development and addressing unconscious bias to help accelerate progress. We hope to retain women with our parental leave changes and flexible working policy.”
“If [the property sector] wants to be a contemporary modern industry, it’s got to change its diversity. I’m a firm believer that the more diverse views there are around the table, the better decisions you’ll make” — John Dakin, Champion for Change and CEO of Goodman.
Goodman also shares how they’re tracking in their goal of having 40 percent women on its board and in its executive team, and 35 percent in its management pool by 2023 — a goal also set in 2018. Currently ,they’re close with 37.5% women in senior management roles, but a more stubborn rate of 29% women on the board.
Our Champion for Change and CEO of Goodman, John Dakin, says the board is going through a “refresh” at this time. He says the company is very conscious of its target, while still making the right decisions for the business. “At this stage, I’m confident we’ll make some progress towards those targets and we’ll report on those in 2023. The goal remains intact, and remains achievable.”
“If [the sector] wants to be a contemporary modern industry, it’s got to change its diversity. I’m a firm believer that the more diverse views there are around the table, the better decisions you’ll make.”
“We must celebrate those who are putting their hands up because they might at least start to improve those numbers” — Jarrod Haar, AUT professor of human resource management.
As always, we’re proud to see our Champions and our Partners be bold, accountable, transparent and offering inspiring information to help everyone advance.
Jarrod Haar, professor of human resource management at our Partners’ AUT, also weighs on the power of sharing these insights, and offers insight to other firms looking at deep dibing into their diversity numbers. “We must celebrate those who are putting their hands up because they might at least start to improve those numbers,” he shares.
Read the full insights from Fonterra, Goodman, and explore comments from AUT over on Newsroom here.