Over the last few months, I’ve been speaking with Chief People Officers as they work through the gender equality targets they’ll need to select and submit to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).
From 2026, employers that directly employ 500 or more people in Australia are required to select three gender equality targets from WGEA’s menu, including at least one numeric target, and then meet or demonstrate improvement against each target over a three-year cycle.
For both private sector and Commonwealth public sector employers selecting targets in 2026, this happens as part of the reporting process between 1 April and 31 May 2026.
The target areas coming up most often are women in manager roles, women’s promotion rates, reducing the gender pay gap, parental leave and uptake, flexible working, and respect at work-related initiatives.
For employers still working through their choices, here are the patterns I’m seeing, alongside insights from WORK180’s 2026 What Women Want Report, which draws on feedback from more than 1,100 women.
What employers are prioritising
Women in manager roles and promotion pathways
Promotion targets are gaining traction because employers see them as more actionable than organisation-wide flexibility.
But if women’s promotion rates are the goal, flexibility cannot sit outside the solution. That is reflected in WORK180’s 2026 What Women Want Report, where 55% of women say the lack of flexible or part-time senior roles limits progression.
In practice, that means employers are likely to need clearer senior pathways, stronger sponsorship, and more credible flexibility at manager level and above.
Reducing the gender pay gap
Pay gap targets attract strong interest, but they also create hesitation once employers get into the detail.
Common blockers include data maturity, tension between global and local reporting, and low manager confidence in pay conversations. This is one of the clearest examples of where the technical work and the communications challenge carry equal weight.
Employers need to be ready for the possibility that a metric worsens before it improves, and to explain that in a way that is clear, credible, and not evasive.
That matters internally, with 91% of women wanting to understand how pay is determined to ensure fairness. It matters externally too, with 84% saying transparency around gender pay gaps and gender equality progress is important when choosing an employer.
Parental leave and uptake, including men’s uptake
This tends to come up where the policy is already in place, but behaviour has not caught up.
The challenge is usually not policy design, but uptake: reducing perceived career risk, increasing manager support, and making sure the policy is not quietly undermined in practice.
Employers also need to measure whether stronger uptake is improving retention and progression, rather than treating uptake itself as the outcome.
Flexible working implementation
Flexible working remains one of the most appealing target areas, but also one of the hardest to deliver consistently.
Office-based employers generally have more scope to implement it well, although success still depends on leadership behaviour and policy design. Where most core measures are already in place, the challenge is usually execution.
For frontline, site-based, or safety-critical workforces, it becomes harder again, with role design, coverage, safety, and fairness all affecting what is possible.
This matters because flexibility cannot really be treated as a meaningful equity lever if it only works for office-based teams.
On positive note, we’re seeing more interest in pilots and flex-readiness work in these environments, as employers test what is workable and create a more realistic path to flexibility in frontline roles.
Employee consultation and credibility-building actions
Some employers are leaning into consultation because they want to build legitimacy before committing to ambitious targets, especially where leaders are concerned about backlash or sceptical about what is realistic.
This usually leads to demand for more decision-ready insight, not just feedback collection.
Things like hotspot analysis, retention patterns, offer decline data, and simple board-ready reporting become more important once leaders want evidence rather than principle.
Respect at work and safety-related actions
These are often being folded into broader Positive Duty or safety-related work.
That makes sense, but there is a risk that employers treat this as mainly a compliance stream.
The stronger versions are the ones that connect it back to leadership accountability, manager behaviour, and day-to-day employee experience.
Apprenticeships and early career pipelines
These are attractive where employers want to influence future representation, especially in harder-to-shift workforce segments.
The challenge is that short-term metrics can look worse before they look better.
Employers need to be ready to explain that clearly, especially if progress in one area creates pressure somewhere else, such as the pay gap.
What this means in practice
The pattern is clear: employers are gravitating towards targets that feel measurable, defensible, and achievable in their context.
But the real value comes from what happens next: building the capability, governance, and confidence to turn those targets into meaningful progress.
Next steps
To support implementation, we’re taking these conversations nationally through a series of executive roundtables focused on practical action, shared challenges, and what it actually takes to redesign systems for better outcomes.
If you’d like to be part of one of those conversations, please reach out to me directly.
Whether you’ve already set your WGEA targets, are still working through them, or are not required to set them but want to take a more structured approach, you can learn more about how WORK180 supports employers here.
