Recently several women who work at NZAS travelled to Brisbane to attend a ‘Women in Leadership’ workshop. You might ask why, when women make up only 6.5% of NZAS’ workforce, do employees need to attend a women’s workshop - well that is exactly the reason why we needed to have the workshop.
Rio Tinto has recognised it needs to lift its game in terms of the diversity of its workforce and this includes all the Pacific Aluminium sites. Unfortunately our stats are not great – but NZAS has by far the greatest opportunity trailing behind Bell Bay with 12% and 11.5% at BSL.
The bottom line is that companies make more money when they have greater diversity in their workforce. McKinsey studied 366 companies and found that those businesses in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to have financial returns above the average for their industry.
Brian Cooper, Chief Operating Officer, is leading the charge on this work, “We are in a tough business and