Study on non-legislative initiatives for companies to promote gender ...

Gender equality initiatives 101
Digression: Personal reasons of the employer – a small enterprise case
The small enterprise Deakon Degen GmbH can serve as an example of what can
happen, when a company does not show interest in the retention of a talented workforce:
Ms. Degen lost her job after having given birth to her second child. Her former
employer considered her as a risk factor for she might have taken nursing leaves. She
set up the company Deakon Degen GmbH that has grown steadily and has become a
recognised apprenticeship enterprise and competitor. Due to the experiences of the
management, special attention is paid to the specific needs of female employees at
Deakon Degen GmbH and the success of the company has convinced Ms. Degen that
responsible treatment of employees pays off.
3.3 Recruitment
Throughout Europe, in general, companies have to formulate their job advertisements
in a way to attract both genders. Where practical requirements of the job dictate the
need of an employee of a particular sex, this must be supported by valid reasons.
Unless there are such practical requirements, it appears to be common practice among
the companies analysed in the course of this research project to formulate job
advertisements in a way that equally attracts male and female applicants.
Many of the enterprises considered in this research project have implemented procedures
to attract and employ more women in order to achieve a better balanced
employee structure and benefit from the diverse talents and skills. The initiatives and
measures go beyond quotas and range from simple to rather sophisticated
procedures.
There are measures for every phase of the recruitment procedure, starting from
actively encouraging applications by women in the job advertisement or presenting
female role models at job fairs in the first phase when the company presents itself. In
the application process, the utilisation of anonymous application forms or CVs that do
not reveal information about the gender of the applicant facilitate neutral procedures.
To take into account different points of view in the selection process, male and female
assessors can be engaged for assessment centres; simulation based hiring procedures
may be used to assess talents and capabilities and shortlists that foresee a certain
percentage of women. Another interesting approach is the attempt to reproduce the
quotas of male and female alumni of a certain study subject among the managers.
Some details of these approaches are given in the following.
To ensure non-discriminative recruiting, some companies have implemented
recruitment procedures that (at least in the first steps of the procedure, i. e. until the
personal job interview) do not disclose information on gender or age of the applicant.
IKEA, e. g. has implemented an e-recruiting system that allows for applications without
providing information on gender and/or age. The utilisation of anonymous CVs (i. e.
without information on the gender of the applicant) is also common practice at PSA
Peugeot Citroën SA.
In industries, where there is a very low share of women (such as electronics & IT,
automobile construction or oil & gas), for technical jobs or for departments/ hierarchical
levels within a company where men appear to be overrepresented, practices to
positively discriminate applications by women have been implemented by a range of
companies.