9:13am Saturday 5th July 2008
By Harry Hogger
DORSET County Council is trying to encourage more women into top management positions.
A report about the number of women in the top five per cent of council earners claims the authority needs to do more to attract women into the top jobs.
As of March this year, 35.31 per cent of the top earners were female, exceeding the council's target of 34.47 per cent, according to a report by head of human resources and exchequer services Rowland Hartle.
However, Mr Hartle says that the authority will need to employ a further 8.45 women per year in top positions to meet targets in the future.
Suggestions to increase the number of female employees include introducing more flexibility in senior positions to enable women to combine management roles with family commitments.
Other moves put forward include a review of IT res-ources to enable home working, developing training and similar numbers of men and women on interview panels.
Mrs Taylor says one measure brought into place on April 1 this year was to include wording which encourages women and other under-represented groups' to apply for senior positions when advertising.
The council is also running a development programme for 15 women employed by the authority who have yet to undertake management roles.
The moves to redress the gender imbalance have been praised by public services union Unison, which is promising to support the council.
A spokesman for the organisation said: "Unison welcomes this move to redress the imbalance of women in the top five per cent of employees in the DCC work force and will be happy to work with the county council and use the resources of the specialist Unison advisors to help achieve these ends."
The report will be considered at a meeting of Dorset County Council's staffing committee on Monday.
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