When Adam Carpenter took over as manager at Kimberly-Clark Australia’s Millicent mill in South Australia in 2019, he knew they were in trouble.
At the time, there were just 12 women working on the floor of the mill out of a workforce of 300. The mill, which is about 45 minutes from Mount Gambier, produces Kleenex toilet paper and Viva hand towels and is the main employer for the region.
Carpenter conducted a review and found that in 2018 the mill had not hired a single woman, and had also not had a single female applicant for any job.
“The reality was, if the trend continued, we would end up with a 100% male-dominated workforce,” he said. “So we really dug into, well, why is this occurring?”
On Tuesday, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency released the pay gaps at every employer in the country for the first time. The data painted a confronting picture, with more than 60% of companies having pay gaps in favour of men, and some of the country’s most recognisable employers, including banks and airlines, posting gender pay gaps of 30-40%.
While improving the gender pay gap within a company can be complex, WGEA chief executive Mary Wooldridge says that “creative employers” are taking steps to address the inequity at their companies, and that this process should start, as Kimberly-Clark’s did, with an audit of the company, to see where the blocks were to female participation and promotion.
At the mill, Carpenter found that their hiring practices were working against women – many new hires were coming from employee referrals, and employees were only referring people they had previously worked with, who were all men. When the company did advertise jobs, the job ads had a strong focus on technical and trade skills.
“So we stripped the ads back,” he said. “We keep the ads fairly simple and behavioural … I mean, technical skills are easy to teach compared to behaviours, which are often pretty ingrained in people when they become adults.”
They also conducted a media campaign in the local area to make sure the community knew they were actively seeking female applicants for jobs.
“We immediately got an uplift in women applying; it went from nothing to 10-20% of applicants being women,” he said.
Since 2019, the number of female employees at the mill has increased fivefold, from 12 to 60 out of 300. Though at 20% of the workforce, this is still below gender parity.
Carpenter acknowledges that getting women into the workforce is only part of the challenge.
“We didn’t get it 100% right to begin with,” he said. Initially, management rostered women on to shifts without regard for gender, meaning there might be just one woman working on a particular shift or in a particular part of the mill. They changed this, and started rostering women in groups, to reduce the risk of isolation.
“We also embarked on a lot of respectful workplace training,” he said, particularly in light of some pushback from older men at the mill.
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Kimberly-Clark Australia still has a pay gap in favour of men of 11.6%, which is not within the target range of 5% considered as a “neutral” pay gap by WGEA, but is considerably lower than the national pay gap at 19% and the average for the manufacturing sector of 18.1%.
“We would be the first to acknowledge that we’re on a journey of continuous improvement around gender equity and inclusion and diversity, and there is still much we can do,” said Belinda Driscoll, managing director for Kimberly-Clark Australia.
But the impacts at the Millicent mill are already being felt.
“Interestingly we now have husband and wife employees, father and daughter employees here at the mill. It really has changed the feel of the workplace, and we’ve seen the culture change in a positive sense to a far more respectful, friendly, accepting workplace,” says Carpenter.
And it has helped business too. “We are the largest employer in a regional area. By employing women as equally as men, you increase the size of your labour pool. I think when we were looking at, particularly through the tighter times in the last 12-18 months around getting labour, that has been something that’s really served us well.”
Carpenter’s advice to other businesses looking to reduce gender disparity is that it is possible, but needs to be deliberate.
“Approach it with a clear plan. It’s not going to happen without some active engagement in solving this issue.”