Equal Pay Awards to target small business

 

The YWCA Equal Pay Awards recently announced its 2015 winners, amongst a climate of change for gender equality in the New Zealand labour market. ANZ Bank, IAG, Bell Gull, Education Review Office, New Zealand Defence Force, SKYCITY and AMP all shared in the spoils.

Monica Briggs, YWCA Auckland CEO, was delighted with the campaign’s second annual event, which essentially allows winner case studies to be shared with to the wider business community, positioning these organisations as influencers and thought leaders in workplace gender equality.

“The calibre of entries has been outstanding and yet again, we have some inspirational equal pay stories to share among New Zealand employers,” says Monica.

Moving forward, however, the YWCA Auckland intends to make small to medium sized businesses an additional focus of the Awards.

“We introduced a dedicated SMB Award this year, but the category was under-represented so we were unable to recognise those blazing the trail for gender equality among this sector in 2015,” says Monica.

“This simply says to us we need to make SMBs more of a priority for future campaigns,” she adds.

While Monica concedes smaller business may not have the resource and infrastructure of larger organisations, she believes they have as much ability to lead in this area as larger corporates and, in fact, potentially more so, because they have direct line of sight to employee practice.

“New Zealand has a fascinating SMB sector, full of challenger brands and innovators. We’re determined to draw out some of those clever, agile SMBs who have adopted their own creative strategies around gender equality, heralding them as shining examples among their peers and helping solve the issue through thought leadership.”