The overall goal is to make use of the entire pool of talent and hereby attract more skilled employees and students. At the same time a more diverse environment will also result in a better workplace and a better student environment.
TEK focuses on a diverse and inclusive work environment. A process has been initiated to make management, teachers and additional staff aware of unconscious bias – the unconscious prejudice and patterns we all have.
Some of the specific initiatives are consistent onboarding for all, systematic use of Performance Development Reviews (PDR) and 1 on 1 meeting between management and employees.
The overall goal at TEK is a recruitment that reflects the basis for recruitment. To attain this goal, we need to increase the share of female applicants and employees.
One of the specific initiatives is to make the management level aware of the importance of having both men and women in the assessment committees and hiring committees. To support this, a list of all possible internal female assessors has been made out. Additionally there is a continues focus on adjusting job advertisements to ensure that they are directed all possible applicants regardless of gender and background. The recruitment process has also been made more transparent to secure equality for all possible applicants.
The Faculty of Engineering focuses on individual career progression. The aim is to avoid “the leaky pipeline” - referring to women leaving academia on the way up the career latter. At PhD level there is a fair distribution of men and women as opposed to professor level where there are only few are women. By addressing the individual career progression as opposed to having a standard programme individual needs can be meet. As a result, we hope to retrain talented staff.
We are also looking into what possible measures should be taken to help ensure that women choose a career in academia after finishing a PhD.
To ensure a healthy work environment for everyone regardless of gender and background there is a continues focus on meetings, decision making, allocation of funding and task, responsibilities etc. to secure all employees equal opportunities.
TEK has received DKK 500.000 from William Demant, DKK 155.000 from Rambøll Fonden and DKK 450.000 from Fabrikant Mads Clausens Fond in funding covering a three-year period (2019-2022) for project on Bias awareness in teaching.
The purpose of the projects are to increase the share of female students at The Faculty of Engineering to help meet the demand for talented staff. Moreover, it will benefit both academia and the student environment to have a more equal share of men and women. The main activities are campaigns with role models, study activities and working on the bias that effects young people’s choice of education.
The target group is external counsellors at high schools and counselling venues, our student ambassadors, our teachers and administrative staff in contact with students.
It is vital to the work for equality that it is based on correct and up to date data. Thus, data on recruitment, resignations, career progression etc. is of vital importance in order to monitor the results of the equality work and to ensure the right focus areas.
In addition, benchmarking will be an important part of equality work in the time to come.