"Heuristic, as an adjective, means 'serving to discover'.
The aim of heuristics is to study the methods and rules of discovery and invention."
G Polya "How to solve it", 1945
Other Employment Sectors
The MacPherson Report (1999, Stephen Lawerence Inquiry) made recommendations to ensure that organisations which perform a public function reflect the diversity of society. This need is captured by the specific duties of the Equality Act, 2006.
The Equality Act 2006 amended the Sex Discrimmination Act 1975 to place a statutory duty on all public authorities eg; The NHS, Police, Law Society of Scotland, to have due regard to 'General Duties'. The duties are not passive and require the public authorities to take action.
The steps that an organisation is expected to go through in preparing to meet the Gender Equality Duties are;
- Gathering and analysing data
- Consulting Staeholders
- carrying out impact assessments
- prioritising and implementing gender equality objectives
- reporting and reviewing
The action taken by the Law Society of Scotland who identified;
"Gender as prehaps the key challenge facing the society and the solicitors profession in Scotland."
is well documented in their Gender Equality Scheme report.
In order to ensure they had a "valid and robust evidence base" they conducted independent research into the issues facing "Women in the Legal profession". Further work was undertaken through a "Profiling the Profession" project to collect more data on areas identified in the initial research and to understand the more complex issues created by the interplay of all the 'strands' of equality.
In the private sector the need to manage diversity is buisness rather than legally driven. Shell's published paper on "Diversity and Inclusion as a Buisness Enabler" is evidence that the buisness case in the Oil and Gas industry is well established. However, while the buisness case has been established, are the complex issues involved fully understood? Is it reasonable to commit sustained investment into Diversity management if the complex issues aren't understood?
has found that data describing the demographics of the Engineering Profession in the Oil and Gas industry are elusive. If the demographics of Women in the Engineering Profession of the Oil and Gas industry aren't known how can the issues they maybe facing be explored. Is it not reasonable to follow the lead of The Law Society of Scotland and Profile the Profession to create a "valid and robust evidence base" in order to affect meaningful, substantive and sustainable change?
Major corporations may well be undertaking this type of profiling internally. Given the competitive nature of the business case; the need to attract the most talented people, their willingness to share their learnings, in sufficent detail, is likely to be muted.
suggests a Joint Industry 'Profiling the Professionals' project. Not as a philanthropic venture but on the sound comercial basis of shared costs benefit and being collaborative on Data Acquistion and competive on Strategy.
If you organisation is interested in this JIP suggestion contact by email;