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Blogs

WGEA Employer of Choice for Gender Equality

24/02/2021

Greg Barsby, Managing Director QinetiQ Australia

We’re proud to be named as one of only 136 companies to receive the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s (WGEA) Employer of Choice for Gender Equality (EOCGE) citation.

We’re proud to be named as one of only 136 companies to receive this year’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s (WGEA) Employer of Choice for Gender Equality (EOCGE) citation. For the third year in a row, we’ve committed to strong and meaningful action to support equality in the workplace and to champion change through WGEA’s voluntary leading practice recognition program.

The WGEA EOCGE citation is designed to encourage, recognise and promote the active commitment of Australian workplaces in achieving gender equality. Our citation represents our significant diversity and inclusion journey and our continued focus on gender equality outcomes. We have also continued to maintain our focus on gender equality throughout the pandemic and we recognise how important gender equality is for both our business and for economic recovery.

The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled our flexible working strategy forward, and we have far exceeded our initial expectations. We continue to support our people to work flexibly and this has positively impacted the engagement and productivity of our teams. Increased flexibility continues to make our industry more accessible and ensures that we are able to attract the best and brightest talent to support Defence Industry capability. We will continue to work with our customers and people to preserve flexibility into the future and are focused on evolving our processes to support the diverse ways in which we are now working.

Our Diversity, Inclusion and Gender Equality Strategy maintains its focus on addressing gender balance across all levels of our organisation including:

  • increasing the representation of men in functional and non-traditional roles
  • increasing the representation of women in our workforce, including in leadership and in STEM

We recently reached our FY25 target of 40% female, 40% male and 20% any gender representation on our Australian Executive Leadership Team. This is a significant milestone for the business and will support the progress of gender diversity outcomes across the business into the future.

We also continue to focus our efforts on gender equality in leadership, learning and development, gender pay gap, flexible working and other initiatives to support family responsibilities, employee consultation and surveys, preventing sex based harassment and discrimination and setting targets for improving gender equality outcomes.

As a member of Australia’s Defence Industry we maintain a strong focus on supporting the STEM ecosystem in Australia by actively championing and encouraging women to pursue careers in STEM. We continue to support activities which encourage young girls to consider STEM careers and as a STEM Decadal Plan Champion, we maintain alignment of our gender equity plan with Australia’s Women in STEM Decadal Plan.

The WGEA EOCGE citation is a voluntary recognition program that recognises that gender equality is critical to an organisation’s success and is a feature of well-managed, leading organisations. Research has demonstrated that groups with diverse perspectives and flexibility in thinking almost always outperform homogenous groups, leading to higher levels of creativity, innovation and organisational agility.

We are proud to continue to demonstrate best practice initiatives and strategy through the WGEA EOCGE citation and encourage all members of Australia’s Defence Industry to commit to meaningful action through the WGEA EOCGE program.

https://www.wgea.gov.au/what-we-do/employer-of-choice-for-gender-equality

For further information, please contact us.