Select Committee on Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 55-59)

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES COMMISSION (EOC)

25 APRIL 2007

  Q55 Chairman: Welcome. We are very pleased to see you. My apologies for the slight delay in starting but we are very pleased to welcome you here. The Women and Work Commission report is a very important report and we are very keen to make sure that there is progress as a result. You are obviously one of the key organisations we wish to see, both in terms of your input to it and in terms of what happens next and where we go from here. Maybe you could start by introducing yourselves.

  Ms Ariss: I am Amanda Arris and I am Head of Policy and Research at the Equal Opportunities Commission.

  Ms Wild: I am Sheila Wild. I am Director of Employment Policy at the Equal Opportunities Commission.

  Q56 Chairman: Let us start off straightforwardly with the report. It made 40 recommendations. Which do you think are the most significant for tackling gender inequality in the workplace, and why?

  Ms Ariss: We feel that they are really important as a package. We have tried to resist cherry-picking the things that we think are the best because in order to tackle the pay gap issues action is needed on so many fronts and, as the Commission concluded, the problem is very complex and the causes of the pay gap are interrelated, therefore you need a number of actors—government, employers, trade unions and others, and indeed, a number of parts of government—to act together. We have come to resist saying there are particular bits we think are more important than others in general but there are some parts that we would like to highlight. One is the recommendations about tackling access to quality part-time working. The Women and Work Commission's conclusions there very much chime with the EOC's conclusions that the lack of access to quality part-time working is a really fundamental obstacle to progress because the overwhelming majority of part-time workers are women and they are mostly opting for that part-time work in order to balance family and work responsibilities and, with some exceptions, it is still extremely difficult to get part-time work that matches people's skills. We have identified that there are about 6.5 million people who are currently working below their skill level in the economy and in many cases that is because they cannot get part-time or flexible work that matches their skill level and that is obviously a huge problem for those individuals in that they are not able to progress, they are earning less than they otherwise would, but it is a big problem for the economy and for employers because people have skills, investment has been made in those skills by government and by employers, and those skills are not feeding through to people working in jobs that are commensurate with them. So we highlight the recommendations about access to quality part-time working. We would also highlight the recommendations around the Low Pay Commission and the National Minimum Wage, which have played a very important role in the progress that has been made in the last five to ten years in closing the pay gap and it is really important to build on that. Lastly, we would also highlight the recommendations around the public sector, in particular how the new duty on public bodies to eliminate discrimination and promote gender equality might impact on the pay gap. Since the Women and Work Commission made those recommendations the Government have brought forward more detailed regulations about how the Gender Equality Duty will work and although it is the Government that sets the framework for that, it is the EOC that is responsible for promoting that and ultimately monitoring and enforcing it. We think if that framework that has been put in place works, if public bodies respond to the challenge, that could be very powerful because of what the Gender Equality Duty requires public bodies to do. They should be setting a specific objective to tackle the causes of the pay gap, not just pay discrimination but all the causes of the pay gap, and it requires them, if they need to do that, to set an objective and then to take action to achieve that objective. They have got to take that action; they cannot just public an action plan and say, "We are not going to do it because we have changed our minds." Once people have committed themselves to action, the legal framework of the Gender Equality Duty does require them to take that action. It is quite a strong lever for change that has been created there and we would say that is a particularly important area to be followed up.

  Q57  Chairman: Thank you very much. I think we might come back to the Gender Equality Duty later on because it clearly is important. On the first point you made about the access to quality part-time jobs, do you have one or two specific things you think could really make an "in" on that that you would particularly like to highlight out of the report or your own experience?

  Ms Ariss: The Commission recommended a very substantial initiative. The Women and Work Commission recommended that there should be an initiative with a budget of £5 million to develop models of how part-time working at middle management and senior levels could be expanded. We very strongly support that and we were disappointed to see that the initiative that has been brought forward so far is on a much reduced scale, I think £500,000, so only a tenth of what was recommended is being invested. That approach of developing very practical ideas about how to make it work and doing that with employers is a good approach, but we do not think it is being done on a sufficient scale.

  Ms Wild: I think extending the right to request flexible working to all employees is absolutely central to opening this up. It gets women off the "mummy track". What has been done around the right to request is absolutely superb. It is beginning to change things but at the same time it has highlighted how strong the appetite for further change is and it is so much more helpful, not just for employees but also for employers. If everyone is flexible, it is easier to meet the needs of a business, and opening it up in that way we think would certainly help to open up more senior levels.

  Q58  Chairman: You have said it is an overall package and we also know that the whole area all of gender equality is incredibly difficult because it requires massive cultural change tying into the practical issues. I do not know if you would like to comment on that and also in terms of making some impact into that cultural change. You have mentioned some items but are there any that you might be able to see as potentially easy wins to get us going and make people think we are motoring ahead?

  Ms Ariss: I think you are absolutely right that that long-term cultural change is essential. It is difficult; we would not want to suggest for a minute that this is an easy thing to do. In terms of what could drive that long-term cultural change, I think we would identify five elements, not all of which we think are really properly in place at the moment. All of them could be. The first element is really strong and strategically well-thought-through leadership. This is something that really has to be led strongly by government but also, when the EOC hands over its responsibilities to the new Commission on Equality and Human Rights, we will need to see them taking a very strong role as well in support of this agenda. So leadership is the first thing we would identify as absolutely essential to success for long-term cultural change. The second element is employers really taking the initiative. We recommended to the Women and Work Commission that there should be some new requirements on employers. They did not in the end go with that recommendation but they have thrown the gauntlet down to employers to take action voluntarily, and that is absolutely essential if there is going to be change. There is so much that employers can do and indeed, that good employers are already doing but there are far too many who are either doing little or nothing and are thus failing themselves to reap the benefits. So there is a leadership challenge for employers and employers' organisations as well. The third element we would identify is about management training and education. In every investigation that the EOC has carried out into workplace issues in the last three or four years we keep finding the same issue, which is that managers, particularly middle managers, lack the training, the education and the awareness to manage in the way that will be needed for organisations to be successful in the future; that our middle managers are under-skilled compared with our competitors and compared with what is needed. Management training and education is a rather unglamorous issue but it is fundamental to making real, sustained, long-term change that would benefit not just in this area around equality but much more broadly in the workplace. So management education is the third area. The fourth thing that we see as really important for long-term cultural change is getting the law right. There is a lot that does not work about the Equal Pay Act at the moment. It is cumbersome; it is focused around individuals and not systemic change. What we would like to see is a new legal framework where we have a single Equality Act that brings together all the existing legislation, that is much easier to use, where the intended outcomes are much clearer and which has a much stronger focus on institutions taking actions to tackle problems rather than waiting for individuals to complain after something has gone wrong. So updating and organising the law is the fourth area. The fifth is actually about the broader support there is for long-term cultural change. We have been very encouraged that there has been quite a lot of warmth towards the Women and Work Commission recommendations from different parties, from employers, from unions and there is some degree of cross-party support and encouragement of change in this area. We think that is really important for long-term change. That will not happen if it is so closely associated with individual politicians or individual parties that political change reduces that momentum. That is what we think is needed in terms of long-term cultural change. That was rather a long answer, and you did ask us about quick wins as well.

  Q59  Chairman: If you have any quick wins, you can give them to us as we are going through the evidence.

  Ms Ariss: Sheila, would you like to pick up on any of that?

  Ms Wild: Some of the quick wins? Yes, I have already mentioned one of them, which is extending the right to request to all workers. Supporting women entrepreneurs, which I know the Government is just doing—Margaret Hodge's initiative on that is very welcome. That is important not only in its own right but that is also going to increase the number of women in decision-making in business. That can only help to speed things up. Thirdly, providing HR support for small businesses, which relates to the point Amanda was making about the need for management training. We have found in several of our investigations that there is really a need for one-to-one HR support for small businesses but looked at from the perspective of their business. So if you have someone who is pregnant and it is the first time you have ever had to manage a pregnant employee, having someone to turn to that you can talk to, someone who will help you take a longer term perspective and talk you through in business terms is going to be very helpful. Even in medium-sized businesses one has to recognise that human resource issues, people management, are being devolved down to the line managers and line managers do not necessarily actually have the experience in people management. So if we want them to start managing diversity issues, we have to increase the people management component of management training. I think that can be a quick win. There are ways of doing that.



 
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