As part of its company review process, NESsT conducts annual/biannual focus group discussions with employees. In July 2019, NESsT piloted an employee focus group structured around eight main questions (see Appendix 5) to specifically explore workplace gender policies and practices. This focus group brought together 14 women-employees constituting 30% of all employees working in a textile company in Peru where 91% of workers are women. These findings corroborate with the online survey of the entrepreneur and DE surveys with individual employees.
It took a while for the focus group members to warm up to sharing their opinions and initially one member of the group dominated the discussion. But as time went by, the other group members increased their participation in sharing their views and opinions in terms of sexual harassment, anti-discrimination and safety guidelines and policies.
The issue of sexual harassment had not previously been raised as a workplace issue since the majority of workers are women. However, the group members agreed that a formal sexual harassment policy would be useful especially as the company grows in size.
The focus group members stated that there was no formal anti-discrimination policy in place but it would be beneficial to establish a policy in the future.
In terms of work safety guidelines, there was a consensus among group members that there is no training, nor information on safety guidelines in the areas where they work.
In response to transportation needs to and from work, the focus group members stated the company recently moved to a more remote location and many of the workers had difficulty getting to and from work. They suggested a transportation service be arranged between 8:00 am and 6:30 pm.
Overall, the focus group pilot was a useful exercise for gaining additional insight to gender-equitable and -inclusive practices and policies as well as gendered dynamics from the viewpoint of the female employees.
The experience of this focus group also provided suggestions for improvements:
Include group dynamic exercises or Ice-breakers at the beginning of the focus group to increase group participation;
Consider the group dynamics of the proposed focus group participants taking into account power, position or status issues that may interfere with equal participation from all the group members;
Begin the group discussion with a few basic issues that are easier to discuss before moving to more serious issues such as discrimination and workplace sexual harassment;
Use less formal, colloquial language and include explicit examples to increase participation taking into account that group members may not feel comfortable to ask for clarification of formal terminology that they may not fully understand;
Equip the focus group facilitator with strategies to address skewed group dynamics (when only one or two individuals dominate the discussion) and techniques to rephrase questions and offer examples when few or no responses are given.