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Review of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999 – Submission

The University of Queensland

Theme 3: workplace program, reporting and compliance Reporting Obligations

Are the EOWW Act’s requirements regarding the content of reports clear and useful? If not, how could they be improved?

The Equal Employment Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Commonwealth Agency (EOWA) assesses organisations’ compliance with the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace (EOWW) Act 1999 (Commonwealth) and makes the award of Employer of Choice for Women. EOWA provides an opportunity for two different types of reporting. First, to monitor compliance with the relevant Australian legislation organisations with 100+ employees are required to submit either a Public Report or an Application for Waiver from Reporting. Second, organisations may in addition submit an application for the Employer of Choice for Women (EOCFW) awards; a prestigious accolade granted to those organisations that excel in addressing issues for female staff. Some of the concerns raised in this submission relate to the EOCFW application and these are addressed in a separate section.

The University of Queensland (UQ) agrees that Australian organisations with over 100 employees should report on the actions they are taking to ensure compliance with the (EOWW) Act. EOWA reporting requirements are crucial in compelling organisations to gather the information needed to recognise structural barriers to the employment and advancement of women. This process has greatly assisted UQ in setting institutional strategic objectives related to improving opportunities for women, developing flexible work policies and improving data collection methods that enable monitoring and reporting.

Issues for consideration

The requirements of the compulsory annual Public Reports and/or Applications for Waiver from Reporting pose a substantial and onerous burden on organisations. Specifically, the requirement for eligible organisations to report on an annual basis on how they have “consulted with staff to identify issues for women” is unreasonable. It is difficult for large organisations (UQ had over 15,000 continuing, fixed term and casual employees in the last financial year) to consult with all staff on an annual basis. In an organisation the size of UQ, the only feasible way to do this would be to conduct a survey, a limited ‘consultation’ process at best. It is also unreasonable to expect that a large portion of staff will respond. Such processes are not only time consuming for the organisation, but are also unlikely to provide meaningful information. Further, there is little possibility of implementing substantial change in the issues identified or in shifting staff attitudes within a 12 month period.

Organisations are also required annually to provide information on the impact that the implementation of flexible working arrangements has had. As UQ has had flexible work policies in place for a number of years it is difficult to quantify, for any one year, the impact of arrangements that have become embedded in organisational practice.

Applicability to Tertiary Institutions

Some of the reporting requirements are not applicable in a university context and should not be required for an institution of higher education. For example, a number of the definitions (e.g. “managers”) and criteria (e.g. “promoted and recruited into senior management positions”) required by the Application for Waiver from Reporting (and for the EOCFW application) are ill-defined and do not necessarily translate from wider industry, or the business environment, particularly a medium size business, to a large university which has a miux of academic and non-academic staff, and therefore lack relevancy for the higher education sector.

The most problematic of these discrepancies are highlighted below.

  1. Universities do not ordinarily “promote” non-academic (“general” or “professional administrative”) staff except in very limited circumstances. Such staff are required to apply for higher level positions.
  2. While Academic staff are promoted through the academic promotion system, they are not “promoted” for the primary purpose of undertaking senior management roles. Additionally, within the Academic structure, it is not always clear that holding a senior administrative role is necessarily a “promotion”. For example, winning a Research Fellowship, or taking a role as Head of School, both of which may be relatively short term appointments.

    3. While it is important to ensure that women are equitably represented in senior management roles, the issue of “promotion” in a university setting is not comparable with other institutions. An appropriate measure needs to be developed to better capture the relevant data in the higher education sector.

  3. The EOWA definition of “manager” as someone employed at academic Level C and above or at HEW Level 10 excludes many administrative professional staff below this level with considerable management responsibility, and includes many academic staff who have no such role.

The definition of “manager” should be developed to better reflect institutions of higher education.

EOCFW Awards

The following points outline UQ’s key concerns with the type of information required for the EOCFW awards:

1. The manner in which pay equity is reported.

The guidelines and method used by EOWA for analysing pay equity within an organisation is not consistent. The pay equity reporting requirements of the Public Reports and the EOCFW award vary. EOWA advises organisations in its Pay Equity Audit Tool Guidelines and instructions for use that:

a pay equity audit payroll analysis involves analysing the difference in remuneration between groups of employees that are nominally equal.

The audit demonstrates any difference in remuneration between all male and female employees, broken down into variables such as level, age, and with and without loadings and other benefits. This provides greater insight into the actual earnings of male versus female employees.

The Public Report (and Applications for Waiver from Reporting), Section 1, Workplace Profile, states that organisations are required to provide data on the composition of their workforce, broken down by gender. The number of full-time, part-time and casual male and female staff at the “Senior Executive, Middle Manager, Manager, Admin, Sales and Service” levels must be provided. The average salary of all men and women within each of these six employment categories is also required. This procedure for calculating pay equity allows for a true assessment of “equal pay”, defined as “equal pay for equivalent work”.

However, in the 2008 EOCFW awards application organisations were required to provide pay equity data at each level of the organisation and for the organisation as a whole.

UQ has two concerns about calculating pay equity for the organisation as a whole. The first relates to misuse of the term pay-equity and the second to the use of changing cut off points. These two concerns are outlined in some detail below.

1.1. Examination of the gender pay gap across an entire organisation does not provide an accurate picture of gender pay equity (i.e., equal pay for employees that are nominally equal), but rather of gender segregation within the workplace. This figure does not analyse whether women at UQ are being underpaid relative to men when performing an equivalent role.

Using the prescribed methodology, The University of Queensland’s 2008 EOCFW application showed an overall pay gap of 16.8%. This gap is a direct reflection of a large difference between the numbers of men and women in the highest paid occupational classifications (Academic Levels D and E), which UQ is currently working to address through programs such as the Promoting Women Fellowships and a newly developed Women-in-Leadership program.

Labelling this statistic as an overall pay equity figure is misleading. It confuses gender segregation with pay equity. The University of Queensland does not pay female staff on average 16% less than male staff. In fact, women at UQ have close to pay parity with their male counterparts when salary is analysed within each of the academic (Levels A- E) and professional (HEW 1-10) occupational classifications. This process of calculating overall pay equity does not measure or identify the inequitable payment of men and women who are undertaking equivalent jobs.

1.2. The University has also identified shortcomings with the calculation and implementation of annual “average” pay equity cut-off points. Each reporting year organisations are required to show that pay parity in their organisation is better than the industry average (Pre-requisites 5.1 and 5.2); a figure which changes annually. A changing cut-off means that not only are organisations faced with a fluctuating set of criteria but that they are also unable to monitor and track progress in improving the status of women against a stable benchmark.

A more coherent and productive methodology would be to use an industry’s average pay-gap as a baseline starting point. Organisations could then be required to, a) meet this baseline figure, and/or, b) show sustained improvement over a period of time. A reasonable level of change in an organisation’s average pay gap may be in the vicinity of 1% - 1.5% over a three year reporting period. Requiring organisations to show sustained improvement over a period of years will compel organisations to respond promptly to any gender segregation that is driving a gendered pay gap.

2. Lack of, or improperly defined definitions and criteria.

Concerns about how some categories are defined (e.g., “managers”) have been already addressed as they also apply to Applications for Waiver from Reporting. However, we reiterate in this section the issues we have in regard to definitions and criteria. Many of the definitions and criteria (e.g., “promoted and recruited into senior management positions”) required in an EOCFW application, while perhaps applicable to other industries, are not appropriately defined for the higher education sector resulting in confusion, differences in interpretation between universities, and potentially therefore, inaccurate reporting and/or comparisons between institutions .

Is the frequency of reporting optimal? Are the provisions for waiving reporting requirements effective? If not, what changes do you think are necessary?

At present, all organisations with 100+ employees, unless they have waived status, must report to EOWA on an annual basis. According to the EOWW Act Compliance Guidelines at the beginning of the reporting period organisations should:

Furthermore, at the end of the reporting period, organisations need to report on each of the activities undertaken before again preparing a workplace profile and planning actions for the next reporting year.

Issues for consideration

These consecutive actions; identification, implementation and evaluation cannot be undertaken in a meaningful way within a 12 month timeframe when what is being required is effectively a process of cultural change; a process which is often slow and by its nature can be expected to indicate incremental improvement over time. In many organisations, and certainly in all large organisations, a period of 12 months does not allow sufficient time for a significant change to have occurred in the advancement of women or to the organisational culture. UQ understands that the transparent reporting of actions undertaken to improve the status of women is crucial. An optimal reporting period would be triennially.

A requirement to provide a detailed report every three years would allow organisations sufficient time to identify the barriers that women face in entering and/or advancing within the organisation, develop and implement policies and procedures to address these barriers, and to then meaningfully evaluate these initiatives. Data gathered over this longer time frame would reflect a substantial implementation phase and be of far greater value in effecting lasting organisational change.

Requirements for an organisation to achieve waived status are,

  1. an organisation must be compliant for three consecutive reporting years and,
  2. an ability to demonstrate that the organisation has been analysed to identify the equal opportunity issues for women and taken all reasonably practicable measures to address each matter.

Overall, these are effective. However, in line with arguments made above, with a less frequent reporting schedule, the necessity for providing organisations with waived status may become redundant.

How resource intensive are the reporting requirements for organisations? Can you provide examples of the costs of reporting from your experience?

As previously noted, the University of Queensland employed over 15,000 continuing, fixed term and casual staff in academic and non-academic positions in the last financial year. The reporting requirements for an organisation of this size and complexity are extremely resource intensive. The amount and detail of data that is now required by EOWA, to be compliant or to apply for an EOCFW award, is becoming unsustainable. The dedicated staff time necessary to gather the required data, undertake analysis and develop an accurate and informative report is substantial. The time and resources consumed by EOWA’s reporting requirements are exacerbated by the constantly changing criteria. Additionally, changing the criteria (especially for the EOCFW awards) on an annual basis, particularly at short notice, increases the work load. There must be a better balance between the effort required to report and the payoff in improved performance for the organisation.

How useful are the reporting requirements to organisations? That is, what benefits can be attributed to the reporting process for the organisation and for women workers?

The reporting requirements of EOWW Agency have been useful to UQ in engaging in a process of continual improvement in addressing the situation for women in the workplace.

UQ is committed to providing an equal working environment for all women and to this end undertakes a great deal of its own analysis and reporting. We acknowledge that an increased sophistication in our data gathering and analysis has in part been driven by the reporting requirements of EOWA. For example, UQ’s Annual Report on Equity and Diversity contains a number of time series graphs on the status of women within the organisation. The information contained in this report is modelled on data gathered in part, for the reporting requirements of EOWA. However, these reporting requirements could be made much more useful and much less onerous if the issues highlighted in this submission were addressed.

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Theme 5: Relationship with other legislations and institutions

Should EOWA remain as an independent statutory authority or should the role and functions of EOWA be combined with those of another entity that also holds responsibilities related to achieving equal employment opportunity for women? If you think the role and functions of EOWA should be combined, with which entity and why?

We believe consideration should be given to combining the role and functions of EOWA with those of the Australian Human Rights Commission. Such an amalgamation would increase the capacity of EOWA to support and encourage leading practice in the advancement of women and to enforce compliance if necessary. It would also improve EOWA’s ability to enhance the current dataset (see below).

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Theme 6: Measuring the success of the EOWW Act and EOWA

Is the EOWA dataset adequate to measure changes in women’s participation and equality in employment? Could it be improved? If so, how?

Data Collected

The EOWA dataset is unique in Australia. It is based on a substantial amount of detailed information gathered from the vast majority of mid-sized and large organisations (those with 100+ employees). While it is acknowledged that a great deal of detailed information is provided by organisations in their annual Public Reports, there is still scope for improvement. At present there is no provision for the data collection of the nationality of staff members. EOWA could have organisations provide information on the cultural and linguistic diversity of a workforce, the number of women who indicate that they identify as Indigenous and/or Torres Strait Islander and potentially provide information on their accommodations for female staff members with a disability. Such expanded data would acknowledge the additional and specific disadvantage of women in these minority groups. In short, while EOWA collects a great deal of useful and detailed information, there is significant scope for data on the diversity of women in Australian workplaces to be collected.

While it is acknowledged that this would provide even further impost on organisations, such additional requirements could be phased in over time and with sufficient lead to enable the development of human resource systems to a level of sophistication where such data can be captured.

Data Availability

The current design and layout of the publically available EOWA datasets greatly limits an organisation’s ability to measure changes in women’s workplace participation and equality in employment. While the data collected through the compulsory Public Reports process would enable an organisation to benchmark themselves against other organisations of a similar size or industry, this is currently not possible without applying for a unique report to be generated by EOWA. For example, UQ may be interested in examining whether there has been a change in the proportion of women employed at the senior management level across all higher education institutions in the past five years and to benchmark itself against this data. This information is collected by EOWA, however, a participating agency is unable to undertake this sort of detailed analysis or generate such reports itself.

While the content of the EOWA dataset is adequate to measure changes in women’s participation and equality in employment, the format of this data makes answering such questions impossible. A publically available dataset for each reporting organisation in a format similar to AWIRS (Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey) would prove much more useful for measuring change. Such a dataset would have individuating information removed and crucial information, such as the nature of the policies and benefits provided to staff, coded in a way that would enable quantitative statistical analysis to be conducted. Publicly available data in such a format would allow for a more detailed scrutiny of the employment patterns of women in all reporting organisations and would provide valuable information about the work-life balance provisions currently available in Australian organisations.

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