Ms O'CONNOR - This was not a gotcha at all. We just wanted some clarity on the numbers. Thank you, Ms Cooper.
The 2020 21 annual report shows that 18 per cent of the Metro workforce are women. Previous annual reports provide some graphs, but do not provide a percentage. Do you know, minister, or can you refer this to Ms Cooper, how this figure compares to previous years, and what is being done to create a more gender-balanced workforce?
Ms COOPER - I probably cannot talk about the history of where that compares, but I can certainly talk about what we are doing in the current space. It is not just about gender diversity, I think, in our workforce. If you look at it from a board and senior leadership level, we have a 50 50 per cent ratio.
Where we are finding it more challenging is at the bus operator level, and certainly in our engineering space. At the moment we have one woman in our engineering area. She is fantastic, but it would be nice to have more than one.
It is about, what is the value we are trying to offer, and how do we actually try to attract more women into the workforce? Our attraction strategy is about more than just gender. It is also about cultural diversity, and bringing in a whole lot of other different types of people to really try to make a wholesome - I'm trying to pick the words carefully, because it is quite politically sensitive - but we are trying to bring in a really diverse workforce across a number of areas.
Our attraction strategy at the moment includes looking at the shifts that people can actually operate. There are some roles in our business that can be really family friendly or really flexible for people who are parents, be they male or female. There are some roles where that is really challenging to do. Driving a bus remotely is not as easy as doing some accounts payable from home. There are different options in that space. So, our attraction strategies, we're cognisant of it when we look at it. We're well-positioned on a number of levels, but we haven't quite got it across the diversity of the workforce yet.