- [Jen] This is a recording of Workplace Gender Audit training delivered by consulting partnership, GenderWorks Australia in April and May, 2021. This training was funded by the Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector and designed to build the capacity and confidence of Victorian public sector entities as you work to meet your auditing obligations under the Gender Equality Act 2020. This file is the fourth in a series of five recordings. And this recording focuses on step four of your workplace audit process, collecting your employee experience data. My name's Jen Branscombe and I co-facilitated these sessions along with Kathy Oliver. We're principal partners at GenderWorks Australia. So what we're going to talk through now is step four, employee experience data. The first thing to note here is making sure that we are all aware of what employee experience data adds to your workforce data. So while your workforce data provides that point in time snapshot of your workforce statistics, what your employee experience data can start to do is tell the story of your employee's personal perception of the organisation they work for. So really start to understand how they may experience equality or inequality across your workplace environment and culture. So, one example that might be useful here to consider is if, for example, we're looking at sexual harassment, so indicator four under the audit, you might find in your workforce data that you have a snapshot of a number of formal complaints that's very low but while your employee experience data might actually paint quite a different picture. It might tell you that there is a low level of reported safety to challenge inappropriate behaviour or gendered perceptions of how your organisation encourages or discourages respectful behaviours. So in that way, what the story that comes through from your employee experience data really starts to provide you with a full picture of cultural experience of inequality. So there are few options available to Victorian public sector entities for collecting employee experience data required in 2021. Most public sector entities will complete the People Matters survey. And the question set for 2021 for People Matters has been amended to include questions which look at workplace gender equality, to be able to support those entities to analyse and complete the reporting requirements under the Gender Equality Act for the Workplace Gender Audit. The People Matters survey runs through May and June. And your data set for analysis will come back to you from the Victorian Public Sector Commission earliest end of July. For local government, so local government don't complete People Matters survey, there has, the option has been provided this year for the Victorian Public Sector Commission to run the Employee Experience survey. So just those questions that relate to workplace gender equality, not the four People Matters survey. The VPSC can run that for local government through May and June, similar timing to the People Matters survey. And we'll provide the data set again to local government entities towards the end of July. The third option available is for those entities not completing the People Matters survey and for those who aren't local governments or who aren't engaging the VPSC, you can engage a third party provider to administer your employee experience survey. There are a few rules around that administration, primarily being that the third-party does need to run the survey using the questions in the commission survey tool in the exact order with the exact response options to enable that comparative nature of analysis once all the data from all the entities is pulled together. We'll have a little bit more of a look now at the types of guidance that are available to support the administration of the survey. So there are a few key guidance materials that you should be looking at, reviewing and becoming familiar with as you start to work on your employee experience survey data collection and analysis. The first piece of guidance, the regulation. So the workplace gender audit guide, which we also discussed when we looked at workforce data, does provide some limited guidance around employee experience data, but it's really just some brief notes and explanation of where that data sits in the context of the workforce data that you're already collecting under the audit. I would say that two primary pieces of guidance or the two primary guidance materials for you to look at are firstly, the survey tool, and secondly, the practise note provided by the commission. So looking first at the survey tool, you really got two different options for reviewing the questions that are asked, in firstly, People Matters, if you're running People Matters, and secondly, in the commission survey tool, which is for those who are not looking at People Matters. So looking first at People Matters, if you want to download your full question set for 2021, you can go to the VPSC's website, download the questions set for People Matters. And within that full question set, you can see highlighted the 82 questions that relate to workplace gender equality. And you can take a look at the questions and the response options and a few additional explanatory notes and materials. For those of you who are local government, so using the Victorian Public Sector Commission to administer your employee experience survey, or are engaging a third party provider, the best place for you to go to look at your survey tool for employee experience data is the commission's audit webpage. And on that page, you can download an Excel document, which lists the 82 questions that are in the employee experience survey, the explanatory notes around those questions and also you can see those questions mapped back to specific indicators under the workplace gender audit. The third piece of guidance there, the practise note, that's not legislation or regulations. It's really just a guidance note prepared and provided by the commission to assist you to read through and understand and become familiar with some of the different questions you'll be asking as you prepare your organisation to complete the survey, as you prepare your organisation around the privacy protocols that relate to administration of the survey and a few other additional pieces of information that you will really need to be sharing with your third party provider, if you're engaging a third party provider to run your survey. Just a quick note. So, as I mentioned, when pointing out the survey tool that I did note that in that survey tool on the commission's web page, you can see which specific questions are mapped back to which indicator under the Workplace Gender Audit requirements and the data that's collected this year in your employee experience survey is mapped back to four of our seven indicators. So indicator four, sexual harassment incidents, indicator five, recruitment and promotion practises, indicator six, uptake of flexible work and leave provisions and indicator seven, workplace segregation. What we're actually going to look at now for the remainder of this section is just a few of the other priority concerns or things that you really need to think about as you are supporting your workplace to complete the Employee Experience survey in 2021 and in subsequent years. I will note that the practise note that's available on the commission's audit page also does provide additional information on each of these priority key concerns. As we do know that a large majority of entities are either completing the People Matters survey or outsourcing your survey provisions to the Victorian Public Sector Commission, we don't spend a lot of time in this section talking about things like data collection statements or privacy protocols, because those, a lot of those concerns are absorbed by the VPSC in their administration of the survey. We will talk a little bit about privacy and confidentiality though, and what your wraparound concerns might be as you drive the survey, engagement with the survey in your organisation. We'll also just briefly look at distress protocols and provide a summary of some of the key notes that came up in our sessions around what entities are doing to maximise response rates. So a quick note, really on privacy and confidentiality, primarily for those of you who are engaging a third party. So not those of you doing the People Matters survey and not those of you who are local government entities who are engaging the VPSC to run your survey. But for others who are engaging a third party, I really do strongly encourage you to read through and become very familiar with the privacy content in the practise note that I mentioned earlier, that the commission has prepared and make sure that you are including those notes on privacy in your conversations and contracting processes with your third party. So that's really looking at things around data collection processes and protocols around provision of data sets. So making sure that data collection complies with Australian privacy principles and making sure that your third party does follow the protocols set out in the practise note around the provision of data sets back to you, ready for your analysis. And it will be really, it is your entity's responsibility to ensure that your third party does adhere to any privacy protocols or privacy legislation and requirements. And your additional responsibility will be making sure that any personal information is removed from any data sets that are provided to the commission as an annex to your gender equality action plans later in the year, in October, 2021. The other note I really wanted to make was around distress protocols. So some of the questions being asked in the survey, for example, questions around sexual harassment or bullying might be upsetting to the employees who are responding. And the survey introduction will note this, and this will be noted again at specific points in the survey that are considered higher risk. But we do also recommend that you as an entity, as you're driving engagement with the survey, continuing to provide information about other support services that you provide to all respondents in public places where you might be, for example, providing a QR code to assist participants to respond to the surveys or in any wrap-around email conversations or email communications that are going out to your staff, encouraging them to complete the survey. And the support services you might highlight might include your EAP provider, broad based services, like 1-800-RESPECT, Beyond Blue or centres against sexual assault, but also make sure that you do include some of your localised support services or support services for specific cohorts of your staff. So LGBTIQ peer support and referral, for example from QLife, Safe Steps for family violence, sexual assault crisis lines in Victoria for sexual assault, VCAT for sexual harassment complaints, VREAQ also for sexual harassment complaints. So there's really, there really is a really extensive list of support services available. So it will be about you in your entity, deciding what you're going to include in your comms and how are you going to publicise support numbers. And make sure also that anyone who's responsible for driving the survey is really comfortable responding to questions from employees about support services that are available, or why particular questions are being asked of them particularly this year when there are additional questions around personal identity. So additional demographic questions which are coming through in People Matters survey or in the Employee Experience survey to make sure that you're improving your data collection and reporting capabilities around those intersectional factors that we discussed earlier in our training session. So at this point in our discussions, in the sessions, we also looked at maximising response rates and asking session participants to talk about what specific challenges they had envisaged or they had in their organisation and how they might prefer the survey and build trust through commitment to taking action on the results. So some of the discussion in the sessions looked at making sure that entities thought about their different workforces. So the indoor outdoor staff areas that were heavily rostered for example, and making sure that there were different tactics, I guess, for engagement for each of those different workforces. So making sure, for example, that for rostered staff, time was provided for individuals to complete the survey in different ways. So providing space or time at points where staff came together for regular meetings and making sure that leaders supported and endorsed this time being used to complete the survey for those staff who wish to complete the survey. Other options discussed also looked at adding paid time to the beginning or end of shifts for casual staff, on rostered staff. Looking at all staff in general, also using a variety of comms to engage different staff members. So some entities were using QR codes on posters, pushing out the survey link via SMS, producing video appeals from staff and or CEO and leadership, and also physical presence for those who are back in physical workplaces. So tables set up with flyers at entrances to work places or in corridors where there was traffic and walking around the workplace. Another thing people talked about was the importance or value of engaging people's competitive spirit. So using raffles, obviously an honour system, because the survey is anonymous. So trusting that people would let you know that they had completed the survey, offering incentives for completion. And one final thing was really focused on looking at how to make sure you could build trust and engagement with the survey. So looking at making sure people were told what action had been taken in response to past findings, but also what the process might be or would be for this year for sharing results of this survey in 2021. So lots of different ideas and really also a really broad spectrum of current engagement. So some entities looking at having a 30% engagement with People Matters through to other entities who have in recent years looked at or been building to up to 90% or more engagement. But in all of these discussions, really an overwhelming challenge probably was that challenge around survey fatigue. Particularly in lots of entities where there had been a lot of wellbeing surveys through COVID and supporting the well-being of staff and making sure that leadership knew how their staff were going. So really trying to make sure that this year there might be some new and innovative ways for engagement drawing on the value of the knowledge that might come through on these additional gender, workplace gender equality questions, and focusing on what the entity plan to do with that additional information that was talked about really as a positive point for lots of entities in our sessions. And that's the end of our discussions as presented in the sessions around Employee Experience surveys. If you do have any questions about the materials presented, you are very welcome to contact the commission at enquiries@genderequalitycommission.vic.gov.au. We do also invite you and encourage you to stay in touch with GenderWorks via LinkedIn or our website. And if you do have any questions of us regarding the session, materials presented, please do contact us at auditing@genderworks.com.au.
Updated