Advocates with expertise in sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) have come together to address the critical need for strong workplace gender policies focused on eliminating sexual harassment.
This collective commitment comes as a response to the pervasive yet often underreported nature of workplace harassment, emphasising the urgent need for organisations to prioritise comprehensive gender policies to cultivate safe and inclusive work environments.
They were speaking during the recently held national conference organised by OXFAM and the Institute of Directors, Ghana (IoD-GH) on the topic, “The Draft Model; Gender Workplace Policy” as part of the agenda to address SGBV in the workplace.
Keynote speaker: strategic direction and harmony in corporate leadership for long-term profitable enterprises
The president of the Institute of Directors and Chairman of the Council, Angela Carmen Appiah, emphasised purposeful action by directors, highlighting the ecosystemic nature of enterprises and emphasising the need for harmony for long-term profitability.
“It must be of critical importance, the idea being that we live in an ecosystem of different players or actors and we need a certain harmony or balance for survival and for growth, so now if the dynamics are not right, it doesn’t matter how well one arm performs; you will find out that it will always fall short because another arm is not developing. This being a critical and important thing to us as directors means that as directors, we must not just know or be aware; we must be delibrate and intentional in what we do.
“Not just to know but to also prevent or salvage, so directors have a responsibility of providing strategic directions. Providing a strategic direction means using information or data so you are not just identifying risks but managing them,” she said.
Appiah further stated that responsible directors are required to establish suitable steps to combat sexual harassment and ensure that rules are followed.
“You need a competent director to be mindful of some of these so that they can prescribe, as we are setting policies to address the needs of society. As directors, we don’t want just to know; we want to know how, and this is why we have these conversations so we can elicit specific responses. Its like a phenomenon we are studying, so you elicit responses so that you can put in appropriate interventions to curtail, manage, address, modify, and review whatever we want to do. Once it becomes a policy, we also ensure that we are monitoring and tracking its implementation so that it doesn’t just sit in a book.”
