Leading The Way: The Times Top 50 Employers For Women 2021
The Times Top 50 Employers for Women is a highly respected list of organisations that are working to achieve true gender equality at work.
Leading The Way: The Times Top 50 Employers For Women 2021 celebrates the successes of the organisations who made this year’s list. It discusses how they responded and adapted to support female employees with the additional challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report shares the lessons learned from those actions taken in a time of crisis, and outlines how to apply them to building a more gender equal future.
How the events of the past year shaped The Times Top 50 Employers For Women 2021
The Times Top 50 Employers for Women list celebrates outstanding progress and examples of best practice, impact, innovation, and individual achievement. The 2021 listing comes at a pivotal time for gender equality at work. Although the full extent of the COVID-19 pandemic is still to be realised, it is clear that women have been disproportionately impacted1.
This year’s applications opened in October 2020, some six months after the UK’s first lockdown and at a time of rising awareness of wider equality issues following anti-racism protests. The report considers in detail how organisations sought to defend and progress gender equality in the context of COVID-19, and also considers to what extent employers take a truly intersectional approach to championing gender diversity.
Six key trends emerging from The Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2021
Analysis of the largest and most comprehensive assessment of UK employers’ approach to championing gender equality at work, found six key trends in employer’s efforts to in the context of COVID-19:
- Supporting employees with caring responsibilities.
- Addressing domestic abuse.
- Championing mental health and wellbeing.
- Maintaining and building an inclusive community at a time of disruption.
- A changed approach to performance management.
- Learning lessons for the future.
Three key areas of challenge
- Ensuring those with caring responsibilities are able to flourish at work.
- Making flexible working a part of the mainstream.
- Taking a transparent and robust approach to setting pay and reward.
Download Leading The Way: The Times Top 50 Employers For Women 2021 to learn more about these trends and challenges.
About Business in the Community’s work on gender
Achieving a truly gender-balanced workforce means employers must recruit and progress the best talent, irrespective of gender. The commercial imperative for realising women’s potential in the workplace is clear: gender equality enhances employee engagement, boosts productivity, meets the diverse needs of customers and suppliers, and improves brand reputation.
Read more about how BITC can support you to build a more gender equal workplace.
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References
- Women and Equalities Committee (9 February 2021), Unequal Impact? Coronavirus and the gendered economic impact, UK Parliament.
- Women and Equalities Committee (15 December 2020), Unequal impact? Coronavirus and BAME people UK Parliament.