Tag: workplace

Despite widely held opinion that companies benefit from access to the different but complementary leadership skills, gender inequality persists in Nigeria. The workplace is still largely skewed in favour of men, leaving women oppressed and marginalised, but Lafarge Africa Plc and World Bank are leading the campaign to bridge the gap. TOBA AGBOOLA reports.

The gospel of gender inclusion is gathering steam. This time, Lafarge Africa Plc isleading the renewed campaign particularly in the workplace. The objective is to allow companies benefit from access to the different, but complementary leadership skills, wider talent pool, and insights women bring to management.

Towards the end of last year, the company’s senior executives from various countries, gathered at the Assemblée Nationale (French National Assembly) at the Palais Bourbon in Paris, for the Gender Equality European/International Standard (GEEIS) Awards. Four Lafarge country operations – Nigeria, Spain, Brazil and France – were honoured in recognition for their work on diversity and inclusion.

Lafarge Country Organisation and Human Resources (HR) Director, Fidelia Osime, who represented Nigeria at the ceremony said: “For us in Lafarge Africa Plc, it is indeed,` a significant achievement as we are the first company in Africa to be so recognised having been audited on a number of criteria. The question, of course, is how individual companies make a conscious effort to raise gender diversity in senior management. To this end, Lafarge Africa Plc has in line with its sustainability ambitions 2020, responded to these challenges in a way that looks optimistic to the future.”

Lafarge, in its articulation of the sustainability ambitions, called for 20 per cent of senior executive management roles to be filled by women by 2014-2015. The company’s inclusive culture is defined as supporting a work environment that values diversity, where all employees are encouraged to share new ideas and innovations, and where equal opportunities exist for professional growth and development.

Osime explained that the tenets of these ambitions include the belief that diversity in employees, teams and management is an essential factor in achieving a high level of performance and innovation.

“This specific focus on employee diversity and skills development, regardless of gender, nationality, colour or religion, ensures that Lafarge as a group, uses every asset at its disposal to achieve set targets,” she said, adding that the company has expanded this culture of diversity through its recruitment initiatives, partnering with a number of diversity-focused companies and associations to ensure that it tapped the largest possible pool of candidates.

Other initiatives introduced by the firm in Nigeria to support diversity, tnclude the activation of Women’s networking groups, flexible work hours in the corporate head office, supporting nursing mothers with crèche allowance, provision of paternity leave, and exclusion of maternity leave from annual leave entitlement.

A Diversity & Inclusion Committee, comprising representatives from Human Resources, Operations and Communications, meets monthly, developing strategies and action plans to ensure that these goals are met in a fair  manner, thus ensuring that only credible candidates are chosen to fill these roles while making sure that the sustainability of the business is the main focus.

Also, leadership and gender workshops were held across the various business units and locations.The outcome was the  introduction of diversity concepts and examination of  gender differences and their effects on business relationships. Communication and decision making are organised to make participants generate specific local actions to improve diversity. The belief is that on-going diversity training would  help drive employee engagement and create a work environment that visibly values and leverages diversity.

The Nation learnt that out of the 12 members of Lafarge Africa Plc’s top management team, four are women. One of them, Adepeju Adebajo, was recently appointed Managing Director of WAPCO Operations. Others include Fidelia Osime – Country Organisation & Human Resources Director, Edith Onwuchekwa – Country Legal Counsel and Viola Graham Douglas – Country Communication Director. The combined wealth of experience and exposure wielded by these amazons is without doubt an  asset to the Lafarge family and a justification of the corporate policy of diversity and inclusion.

Yet, this representation does not stop at the directorial level of the company. It permeates across board and in key middle management roles where women feature prominently and contribute actively to the overall success rating of the company.

Also speaking on the award, and the efforts of the company to close the gender gap, Senior Vice-President, Talent Management, Lafarge Group, Sonia D’Emilio, stressed that it is something all the recipients should be proud of as it was obtained through committed efforts to engage on the gender balance topic.

She said: “We should all be proud of this development as your commitment and efforts made it happen. We have made significant investments in our diversity and inclusion programmes across all our business units and have recorded positive results. This award will serve to further encourage us in our plans to execute more initiatives focused on gender equality in our business.”

The Nation learnt that increasing the number of women in senior management positions to 35 per cent by 2020 is a corporate target of Lafarge. As at 2013/14, it reached 18.6 per cent of top management, through the acceleration of the identification of women capable of engaging in career development and occupying leadership positions. At group level, support is given to programmes and initiatives that seek the development of employee skills and key positions and are covered by certification programmes and individual development programmes and training.

The World Bank is also involved in the effort to address gender inequality in workplaces. The bank in its latest reports, identified improved job opportunities for women and girls at all levels of productive engagements as key to ongoing efforts aimed at alleviating poverty, increasing Gross Domestic Growth (GDP) in national economies and bridging the gender gap between men and women across the world.

The bank noted that policy makers, private sector and other job providers would be contributing to the global socio-economic agenda targeted at closing the gender-inequality gap, if they showed commitment to removing all barriers to women and girls employment and by implication, adding significantly to the global development values.

The report stated: “Jobs boost self-esteem and pull families out of poverty. Yet, gender disparities persist in the world of work. Closing these gaps, while working to stimulate job creation more broadly, it is a prerequisite for ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The report described gender equality in the work place as a win-win on many fronts’’.

The report revealed that improved female employment had the potential of increasing GDP by 34 per cent in Egypt, 12 per cent in the United Arab Emirates, 10 per cent in South Africa and nine per cent in Japan, taking into account losses in economy-wide labour productivity that could occur as new workers entered the labour force.

Commenting on the Gender at Work Report, the World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly, said in view of recent revelations about the gender inequality in Nigeria’s workplace, the bank was doing a gender review of its development programmes with a view to ensuring that more women and girls were provided opportunities for productive engagements.

When this is done, the hope is that it would reverse the current trend in Nigeria where women in top leadership positions have not attained the desired representation in business and government establishments. It should be noted that despite the large proportion of female graduates and the significant number of women who join various companies at entry level, very few reach the top.

Areas of inequality

(1) Labour and employment – Women do not generally earn the same wages as men for the same work especially casual or unorganised labour which is where most women are employed. Those in public service are discriminated against in the area of maternity, sexual harassment and employment practices.

(2) Access to finances and credit – Most banks and finance homes do not give loans to women and most times women have to be guaranteed by men before they can access credit for economic activities.

(3) Politics and Participation – Women are not equipped to participate effectively in politics because of low esteem and inability to jump the hurdles set by the men. Women do not have the financial resources to compete in the high financial game of politics in Nigeria. They are therefore given positions which the men do not find lucrative or challenging enough. Thus politically, women’s rights are denied because of poor representation at the levels where decisions and policies are made.

(4) Education and Health Care – Inadequate education and inadequate facilities for health care hinders women’s quest for equality. Unhealthy and uneducated women cannot produce healthy children or engage effectively in social activities. Available data shows high levels of maternal and infant mortality.

(5) Harmful Traditional Practices – Traditional practices like female genital mutilation, widowhood practices, male preference, domestic violence lend weight to discrimination against women. The heavy workload of women within the household and lack of house decision making powers contribute to deprive women of their rights and life. Information on family planning where they exist sometimes produce harmful side effects . Male preference leads to abuse and low self esteem for the female child even from birth and thus she does not develop her full potentials to enable her contribute effectively to the nation.

(6) Violence Against Women – Women are still victims of rape, sexual assault, harrassmentt and battery, widowhood practices, forced labour, trafficking, incest, and other forms of gender assaults and abuses. Domestic violence is still regarded as a private affair requiring no legal or official intervention.

(7) Access to Justice – Women are politically, economically, socially, culturally, educationally, and legally disadvantaged. They cannot take advantage of facilities and opportunities available to them to achieve and enforce their human rights. They are mostly ignorant of their fundamental rights and freedoms. In many police stations, women are still not allowed to take people on bail.

These imbalances and inequalities in gender relations must be redressed if Nigeria must join the league of civilised nations as a country with respect for human rights.