The ECCT's Family Friendly Alliance (FFA) arranged a lunch featuring guest speaker Huang Chia-Lun, Director of Talent Sustainability for CommonWealth Magazine (天下學習事業群 黃嘉倫人才永續總監). The speaker gave a presentation that explored the gap between Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) expectations and reality based on surveys and research conducted by CommonWealth in Taiwan.

Huang stated at the outset that the concept of DEI is not native to Taiwan. To date it has usually been seen as something imposed from abroad that local companies have adopted in order to satisfy their customers or government requirements.

CommonWealth set up its Talent Sustainability platform to study the impact of important trends shaping the talent environment in Taiwan, including the low birth rate, the education system (especially the gap between what the system provides and the expectations of companies as well as the problem for educational institutions of falling numbers of students due to the falling birth over the past 20+ years), an ageing workforce and foreign talent issues, among others, and what can be done to address these issues. The objective for CommonWealth is to provide quality analysis of the issues and suggest possible standards to follow and other practical solutions that would elevate Taiwan's talent sustainability competitiveness.

Based on surveys conducted in the past two years, Huang noted that both companies and employees are paying greater attention to DEI issues, which has also raised the expectations of employees. The fact that employees gave worse ratings for companies' DEI performance in this year's survey than the previous year, indicates rising levels of dissatisfaction of the performance of corporations on DEI issues. She noted that despite rising awareness of pay equity, women in Taiwan, on average, are paid about 15% less than men for the same work. There is now also greater awareness and expectations to address mental health issues (one in five respondents to a survey said that they had experienced mental health issues).

Taiwan has a lower retirement age compared with other advanced countries and there appears to be a degree of ageism towards older employees, which is a problem given Taiwan's shrinking workforce.

While employers are taking action to improve their DEI performance, their actions may not always be aligned with the expectations of their employees. For example, corporations may be working to improve gender and pay equity and reduce discrimination, but employees often care more about flexible working, job advancement and mental health wellbeing.

According to a CommonWealth survey, 59% of respondents reported unconscious bias in the workplace, particularly among more senior employees (indicating ageism). Another serious problem is prejudice against women who decide to take time off to have children. 55.9% of respondents to a survey said that they had experienced a "motherhood penalty" in the workplace. Even though the law in Taiwan protects women from termination for taking maternity leave, many women are afraid to ask for maternity leave for fear of it damaging their career prospects. Some employers still ask women if they plan to have children in interviews and won't hire them if they say they do. There are also still incidents of women dismissed or demoted if they decide to have children. CommonWealth has even quantified the actual cost to women from having children, namely a 4% cut in salary for the first child, 10% cut for the second child and 21% for the third.

In her book, Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey Toward Equity, award-winning Harvard economic historian and labour economist Claudia Goldin introduces the concept of "greedy work", which causes inequality and explains why many women will forgo a good job or promotion or shift to a firm with less demanding hours. Greedy work is defined as a job that pays disproportionately more on a per-hour basis when someone works a greater number of hours or has less control over those hours. As long as this concept of work remains prevalent, it is exceedingly difficult for women to both raise children and succeed in their careers. This can only be addressed by changing the work culture, which is extremely challenging and requires much more than increasing leave allowances and flexible working arrangements.

The speaker went on to talk about some of the best practices that Taiwanese firms are implementing to improve the family friendliness of their workplaces. On the issue of age discrimination, she noted that more companies are allowing employees to delay retirement and some are no longer insisting that employees retire at the age of 65. Family Mart, the convenience store chain, is reportedly hiring more senior staff, although, since younger and older employees don't always get along, in some stores, it only employs seniors.

While Taiwanese firms are making progress towards increasing the number of women on boards of listed companies, the overall percentage in Taiwan (15.6%) is lower than the global average (25.8%). Progress has also been made in terms of paternity leave granted to fathers in Taiwanese firms. More local firms are now surveying their employees on DEI issues and taking action based on the results. For example, some are providing training on unconscious bias as well as spending more on professional training of employees. Others are increasing allowances for having children, leave allowances and even offering additional pay to colleagues of women who take maternity leave to compensate them for additional work.

The speaker concluded that no single government or corporate policy will be enough to persuade women to have children. A whole host of policies and support measures are needed, including sufficient leave allowances (for both parents), flexible working options and the provision of childcare (more corporations are now providing onsite childcare facilities, which is a major benefit and convenience for parents that struggle to find and afford decent childcare in Taiwan). But ultimately, a change of mindset and corporate culture is needed to create a truly family friendly workplace.