A few words from our CEO Alistair Field
As Women’s History Month draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on the International Women’s Day 2021 theme: #choosetochallenge. I love this theme, because it perfectly underscores how men can be allies and what women do each and every day – especially in our business and industry.
It’s very unfortunate that we still need an International Women’s Day, but until the challenges that currently exist for women today are eradicated we need to keep amplifying their voices, contributions and accomplishments. Thankfully, we do not have to relegate challenging the status quo to a day – or even a month. We can each take small actions every day that will bring us closer to gender parity.
At Sims Limited, we use our Women Working @ Sims initiative to inform our approach to attracting and retaining qualified women in our industry. Our work with this group has already been the catalyst for our work with closing the gender gap across the company. This past fiscal year, the percentage of women across our organization increased to 21%, and we reached a female applicant rate of 30% – exceeding our goal. In fact, one of our most recent senior level hires was an extremely qualified female candidate, Jessica Conner, VP Human Resources for North America.
Our entire executive team is committed to this approach, and in accordance with one of our pillars of purpose – accept and expect accountability – we established concrete targets for gender equity and parity, because ambiguity is the enemy of accountability. Take a look at how the executive team and I got into the spirit for International Women’s Day earlier this month.
These are just some of the things we are pledging to do to support women and create actionable change. How do you choose to challenge?