Gender Diversity Talent Pipelining

Background

As a statutory authority owned by the Victorian Government, Melbourne Water works on behalf of the community to deliver a range of valuable services across the Greater Melbourne region.

Melbourne Water treats and supplies drinking and recycled water, remove and treat most of Melbourne’s sewage, and manage waterways and major drainage systems in the Port Phillip and Westernport region. In doing so, they strive to deliver solutions that are financially and environmentally sustainable and achieve the best outcomes for the community.

Their success is built on strong relationships with our customers and stakeholders in the community, government and industry, and care for the health and wellbeing of our people – which includes nurturing a diverse workforce and inclusive working environment.

Melbourne Water has taken a leadership position in the sector on diversity and inclusion, and has developed a leading practice Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and a number of supporting implementation plans, including the Gender Equity Plan (2018-2020; with a new plan currently in development).

Melbourne Water adopts a strategic, systematic and data-driven approach to improving Gender Equity across the business. This includes targeted long-term actions to manage the impact of biases, and addresses areas of under-representation (of both men and women). Actions are supported and embedded across the organisation.

The Gender Equity Plan delivers change through a focus on multiple areas, including retention and development, fostering an inclusive workplace culture, attraction and recruitment, demonstrating leadership in gender equity, leadership accountability and flexible working. To support delivery of the Attraction and Recruitment strategy Melbourne Water partnered with Universe, an experienced Melbourne-based consultancy, to support the identification and attraction of females to male-dominated area of the business.

The challenge – a progressive organisation driving change in an imbalanced sector

While the benefits of a gender-balanced, diverse and inclusive workforce are well established, the Victorian water industry has traditionally been a male-dominated sector, with women making up only 38.3% of senior leadership (1 level below CEO), and 33.5% of senior management (2 levels below CEO)[1].

A high demand for technical and STEM skills within the water industry and a limited pipeline of females studying STEM has resulted in strong competition for women in the sector and a real challenge to achieving gender balance, particularly within operational business areas. Melbourne Water recognises the business, social and ethical drivers and benefits to achieving a diverse and gender-balanced workforce, and after considerable internal efforts, the workforce is now comprised of 39.7% females (October, 2020). At the leadership level, females comprise 33.3% of the Senior Leadership team, and 55.8% of their reports (October, 2020). Yet challenges remain in attracting and recruiting diverse employees, in particular women within technical and service delivery functions.

Craig Dixon, General Manager Wholesale Services at Melbourne Water and a key stakeholder in this project, says

“We have a large operational and engineering element to our business, areas which have always been highly male dominated, and we’ve struggled to recruit diverse employees, particularly women.”

“Diversity is important to me for many reasons. Diversity and inclusion is a critical enabler to understanding and delivering services for our community, and gender-balanced teams absolutely lead to better business outcomes. I have experienced it first-hand many times; the power of bringing different perspectives and experiences into the organisation enables us to effectively respond to our changing work and environment, meet challenges and deliver innovative solutions.”

Melbourne Water recognised the need to not only improve the gender balance of its workforce, but also to build a strong and diverse talent pipeline.

[1] https://www.vicwater.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Victorian-Water-Industry-Annual-Diversity-Inclusion-Report-2020.pdf

The strategy – partnering to achieve balance

To support Service Delivery, Melbourne Water engaged management consulting firm Universe, to conduct an executive search to identify female talent within the market.

Universe had delivered a number of projects with similar clients and understood the importance of partnering with the senior leadership team to achieve buy in and organisation-wide support for driving better outcomes.

Universe worked with internal stakeholders to identify 8 target roles within Service Delivery, to both improve gender balance and bring new and diverse skillsets and talents to Melbourne Water.

An extensive talent mapping process was undertaken across all of the identified roles to source potential candidates, and provide Melbourne Water with insight into the current market and future strategic workforce planning opportunities.

Using a data-driven approach, Universe analysed the comparative percentages of potential candidates identifying as either male or female, to develop a talent pool across comparable industries and organisations.

Key to the approach was identifying candidates with transferable skillsets, which Universe sees as a critical element in achieving greater gender balance; the traditional approach to STEM recruitment of solely focussing on technical skills results in many suitable candidates being overlooked.

Universe then worked with senior leaders within Melbourne Water’s Service Delivery team to develop and implement a talent pipelining and promotion plan.

Building a pipeline for the future

Universe engaged with over 100 potential future candidates who were not actively seeking roles with Melbourne Water.

This enabled Universe to have authentic conversations with the identified talent about Melbourne Water’s vision, and the benefits and support available to drive women’s careers in the organisation, building Melbourne Water’s brand as an employer of choice for women. Universe was able to profile some of Melbourne Water’s senior women in STEM at Melbourne Water, and discuss how Melbourne Water’s policies and development programs support women’s career advancement, for example workplace flexibility and their women’s leadership program.

These conversations helped to position Melbourne Water in the market, and assisted the organisation to understand the range of talent who may not have applied for roles with them previously.

Importantly, this also built a pipeline for Melbourne Water’s future strategic workforce and succession planning.

The results – an organisation well positioned for the future

Coupled with Melbourne Water’s Gender Equity Shortlist Policy, and a number of other initiatives, the project was successful in identifying two women to immediately join the organisation, which alongside other actions, contributed to a 14% increase in female hires for the 19/20 financial year, along with connecting the organisation with a potential future pipeline of female talent.

“We continue to progress gender balance at Melbourne Water, in particular in our operational parts of the business. At each step along the journey we continue to realise the benefits of greater diversity in thought and approach in our workforce” said Craig. “This project in particular connected us with a range of female talent not active in the job market, whom we don’t get to connect with through traditional recruitment means.”

The project helped Melbourne Water broaden the skills base of talent within their Service Delivery function, introducing talent from other sectors and assisting the business to identify an untapped talent pool. This project has also supported Melbourne Water to reach its target of 45% female representation across by 2023.