Workplace Gender Equality Agency Libby Lyons urges bosses to challenge unconscious bias

AUSTRALIAN businesses must abandon the concept of the “ideal worker” who is free of family commitments and chained to their desk, says the head of a national agency set up to achieve workplace equality.

AUSTRALIAN businesses must abandon the concept of the “ideal worker” who is free of family commitments and chained to their desk, says the head of a national agency charged with achieving workplace equality.

Libby Lyons, director of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency and former BHP executive, has also urged every company to conduct an audit of pay among male and female workers to determine the extent of their pay gap.

“The dynamics of our workplaces still centre around the concept of an ‘ideal worker’,” Ms Lyons told a Property Council of Australia event in Adelaide on Friday.

“That is someone who is unencumbered by commitments outside of work and who can be present for long hours in the office.

“There is growing evidence that a new generation of men want to work differently and more flexibly but … are not being given real permission to set limits around their work hours.”

Workplace Gender Equality Agency chief executive Libby Lyons. Picture: Richard Jupe

Ms Lyons said this outdated model disadvantaged both women, who continue to carry the burden of unpaid caring duties and housework away from the office, and men who are “locked into ways of working that value them only as breadwinners”.

She said “new ways of working” were needed to “unlock the potential of our workforce”.

“We have to challenge, and in fact reject, the idea that certain types of work are better suited to women or men,” Ms Lyons said.

“It might be 2018 but today’s workplaces are still shaped by deep and long-held beliefs about the ways in which women and men can and should work, and about the value of their work.

“The unpaid caring and domestic work is, sadly and quite simply, taken for granted.”

Ms Lyons cited data showing women make up three-quarters of the part-time workforce.

Six in every 10 workers are employed in an industry dominated by one gender or another.

Latest data shows about 16.5 per cent of CEO positions are filled by women and the pay gap remains at about $26,500 a year between full-time male and female workers.

To address these issues, Ms Lyons called on employers to:

FOCUS on outcomes “not on the time spent sitting at a desk”.

USE tools available on the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to determine the pay gap present among their employees.

LINK management KPIs to outcomes because “what gets measured gets managed”.