Gender

Our pursuit of gender equity in a traditionally male majority industry has continued since 2014 when female employee targets were first set. We monitor our Australian progress against targets, outlined below.

Parental leave and return to work

Our Parental Leave Policy supports our people before, during and after periods of parental leave by providing time off work to care for their child, and by encouraging them to return to work at GHD when they are ready. We offer 12 weeks of GHD Paid Parental Leave and a total of 18 weeks of paid superannuation for those who take the 12 weeks GHD Paid Parental Leave. There is no qualifying period or minimum tenure to access leave under our Parental Leave Policy. We also offer flexibility in how our people can take the paid parental leave, such as half pay over 24 weeks. Our policy includes all circumstances where there is a new baby, such as same sex partners, surrogacy or adoption. And to make the return-to-work transition easier, our people are encouraged to adopt flexible working practices.

Women in GHD (WinG) Program

Our WinG group was established in 2007, in Australia, to provide a platform for our women to feel empowered and to network. In 2014, WinG became an ERG, and today, WinG operates across all of our offices globally, running local initiatives and events, providing a platform for our women to connect, inspire, grow and lead all of our people to foster a culture of gender equality inclusion.

International Women’s Day

We celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD) 2022 in line with the theme #BreakTheBias – we can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. Our people around the world pledged what they challenged and we also profiled the many people of GHD who are challenging everyday biases in a video compilation.

Pay equity

We’re committed to achieving pay equity – this is central to our reward culture at GHD. We have tools that help us assess and maintain pay equity such as a subscription to Syndio, an online pay equity analysis platform which provides pay equity consulting and regression analysis to allow us to understand what factors are driving pay differences. The system analyses pay equity at an Australia-wide level, comparing people in like for like roles across base salary and total compensation. It also analyses at the individual level by calculating a predicted pay. We run pay equity analyses twice yearly in line with our salary review cycle.

Jobs Academy: Helping women get back to work

We partnered with Future Women’s Jobs Academy program for 2022 to help women who are unemployed, underemployed or looking for a career change. This 12-month pilot has helped leverage connections with partner organisations to identify employment opportunities. As a partner to the program, we presented open roles with GHD in two webinars, promoting roles on the program’s website and assessing applicants.

Cultivate Sponsorship Program

A cohort of nine GHD women participated in our female sponsorship program with Cultivate in 2022 – our fourth year running the program. The seven-month program gives business leaders the tools to build strategic alliances with women and matches future leader participants with sponsors from our leadership teams to break systematic barriers.

Amplifying the benefits of gender equality

We see gender equality as a critical part of being an effective consultancy firm and an employer of choice. As a member of the Consult Australia Champions of Change, it’s a message our EGM Dean McIntyre is keen to amplify: “The diversity aspect is very important, but we also recognise that everyone is impacted by gender inequality - women, men, trans and gender diverse people, children and families. It impacts people of all ages and backgrounds. For all these reasons and more, achieving and maintaining gender equality at GHD is an important part of our commitment to inclusion,” he says.

As part of this, in recent times GHD has reviewed and refined our Global Workplace Behaviour Policies to ensure they form a solid platform for gender equality. “We want to make it clear that we have zero tolerance for gender-based harassment and discrimination, sexual harassment or bullying,” says Dean.

Executive (Target ≥40%)

34.8%

Leader (Target ≥25%)

21.9%

Snr Professional (Target ≥30%)

23.4%

Professional (Target ≥40%)

43.2%

Entry (Target ≥45%) 45.7%

Championing breastfeeding in the workplace

In 2022, for the second year in a row we’ve received the Breastfeeding Friendly Workplace Accreditation from the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA), and we will retain this accreditation for the next two years.

This year we have also been awarded the Breastfeeding Friendly Workplace Best Practice standard by ABA. Supporting individuals to breastfeed or express milk during working hours helps enable equal and full participation in the workforce for pregnant and breastfeeding employees.

Career Relaunch Program

Our Career Relaunch Program encourages and welcomes professionals back into the workforce after an extended career break – most commonly women who have taken a break for parental responsibilities. The 10-week, paid, flexible program was a first for our industry when launched in 2017 – and is now an annual program offered Australia-wide.

118 86%

Career Relaunch participants since 2017

offered ongoing roles at GHD

→ Read some real Career Relaunch stories here.

Promoting women in STEM

To support, retain and attract more women to science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers (STEM), we partner with organisations to implement initiatives, such as the University of Newcastle’s HunterWiSE program which we have been involved with since 2017. This program features three interlinked activities – a network for women working in STEM professions, a ten-week schools outreach program, and an alumni initiative to support girls who have participated in the program in their path to STEM education and careers. As part of this program in 2022, we hosted a networking event and again hosted female year eight students from Hunter River High School where they participated in a range of hands-on workshops and a site visit.

We also ran our annual GHD STEM Pathways program in Victoria for the sixth time. This year, 16 year 10 students from five schools took on STEM roles for a week, with each student assigned a technical discipline and tasked with various ‘real life’ project scenarios and challenges to solve – including a site visit. This year the program also included a client event for the first time, where senior women from our client organisations spoke with the students and answered questions within a ‘see it to be it’ theme.

“As a mother of four, I felt resigned to the fact that after ten years out of the scientific industry, the only way back in was through full-time study.

Then I found GHD's Career Relaunch Program, which offered me a genuine opportunity to redevelop my career while still being able to support my four children as a single parent. I was offered an ongoing role, and now three years later, I have a leadership role, looking after 40 wonderful, talented professionals in my group.”

Emma Harrison

2018 Career Relaunch participant and Business Group Leader - Contamination & Environmental Management