Career Revive case study - City of Mitcham

City of Mitcham

Enhancing recruitment and retention of women

Mitcham Council’s Executive Leadership Team places importance on equity, diversity and inclusion.

The Workforce Australia - Career Revive program has provided Mitcham Council with personalised advice to improve its approach to recruitment, onboarding of talent and supporting working parents.

Strategies implemented by Mitcham Council include:

• updating job advertisement templates to highlight their Employee Value Proposition, removing gendered language and focusing on workplace flexibility and diversity
• improving the selection process to ensure, where possible, an even number of female and male applicants are interviewed
• piloting de-identifying applicants prior to providing their resumes to the recruitment panel
• forming a working group to identify what the future of work looks like for different roles across the Council. The focus is on employee wellbeing, flexible work arrangements and the physical workplace
• exploring opportunities and benefits of a buddy system, to provide peer support for parents returning to work
• improving practices by developing a checklist for parental leave and providing advice about:
  • the process of commencing and returning from parental leave,
  • how to communicate with parents while they are on leave and
  • entitlements that are available.

Positive feedback had been received from managers and parents on the design of the Parental Leave Checklist. The checklist has helped managers to better support their team members who are going on parental leave.

Because of the changes to the recruitment process the Council have seen an increase in women applying for a range of positions and progressing to interview.