GEI Targets Made Simple: How to Select the Right Gender Equality Targets for Your Organisation
For many organisations, gender equality targets may feel like another layer of compliance. But if you take a closer look, they’re far more than that. They’re a chance to align leadership, culture, and strategy. They’re a chance to stand out as an employer of choice. And ultimately, they’re a chance to turn what could be seen as a challenge into a real competitive edge.
On paper, this sounds simple: pick your targets, set them, and track progress. But in reality, choosing the right GEIs can feel daunting. Set them too generically and they risk being meaningless. Set them too ambitiously and you risk missing the mark.
The key is to treat GEI selection not as a box-ticking exercise, but as a strategic opportunity to drive equity and business performance. To help you do this, we've built a free diagnostic survey that will create your personalised GEI report. Combined with our six-step framework below, this will empower your organisation to move beyond compliance and use these targets as a driver of performance, innovation, and trust.
Step 1: Know your Baseline
Action: Run a workforce diagnostic before setting any targets.
Analyse pay gaps (both unadjusted and adjusted)
Review gender representation at different levels across the business
Look at hiring, promotion, and turnover rates by gender
Assess parental leave uptake and return-to-work outcomes
Review your policies to understand the baseline – particularly on sexual harassment, family and domestic violence, and flexible work.
This data will reveal where your inequities sit. For example, you might discover pay is relatively balanced, but promotion rates are skewed. Or perhaps leadership is heavily male-dominated while entry-level roles are gender-balanced.
Tip: Use equidi's free trial to get a clear, data-driven baseline so you know exactly where to focus.
Step 2: Align with your Business Strategy
Action: Map GEIs against your organisation’s biggest strategic priorities.
If you’re facing skills shortages, consider a focus on gender representation targets
If culture is a focus, build targets around consultation, transparency, and equal access to promotions, training, or leadership pathways.
If addressing your pay gap is a priority, invest in analytics, transparent pay structures, and equitable remuneration practices.
When GEI targets align with business goals, they’re easier to resource, easier to measure, and far more likely to get leadership buy-in. And remember: your CEO must sign off on all GEIs.
Step 3: Balance Ambition with Achievability
Action: Set realistic, staged milestones.
Research from WGEA and McKinsey shows that organisations are far more likely to close gaps when they set ambitious but achievable targets. Unrealistic stretch goals often stall momentum, while steady progress builds trust and accountability. So,
Don’t expect to jump from 20% to 50% women in leadership overnight - aim for staged improvements.
Break down big goals into smaller, achievable targets.
Combine quick wins (e.g. policy reviews) with longer-term systemic changes (e.g. building leadership pipelines).
Consider:
Is the target achievable within 3 years?
Does it stretch the organisation beyond “business as usual”?
Can you track progress with reliable data?
Will achieving it lay the foundation for longer-term change?
Step 4: Check Alignment with Systems and Culture:
Ask: What will it take to meet this target? Does it align with what we have today - and where we’re heading?
Pay gap targets may require financial investment or changes to salary reviews, hiring, and performance processes.
Flexibility targets may call for new policies, job redesign, and manager capability building.
Representation targets may need refreshed attraction strategies, stronger recruitment pipelines, and succession planning.
Safety and wellbeing targets (e.g. sexual harassment or family & domestic violence) may require stronger policies and manager training.
Understanding the cultural and systemic shifts needed helps you avoid “paper targets” and ensures your targets lead to real, lasting change.
Step 5: Engage Leaders and Employees Early
Action: Co-create your targets with the people who will drive them.
Workshop potential targets with your CEO, executives, and People leaders to build alignment from the top.
Invite employee perspectives through surveys, focus groups, or ERGs to capture lived experience.
Combine qualitative insights with hard data to shape meaningful, balanced priorities.
When leaders and employees feel they’ve shaped the goals, they’re far more likely to champion the actions - and own the outcomes.
Step 6: Make Targets Visible and Keep Them Alive
Action: Keep Targets front-of-mind across your organisation.
Don’t let your chosen GEIs sit in a report - integrate them into management dashboards and regular business updates.
Share progress openly with employees to build trust and engagement.
Highlight wins along the way to show momentum and maintain focus.
Link targets to leaders’ KPIs or team scorecards to reinforce accountability.
Remember: Visibility drives action. When targets are embedded into everyday conversations and decision-making, they become more than numbers - they become part of how your organisation measures success.
Where To Start...
Selecting the right GEI Targets isn’t just about ticking a compliance box. Done well, they become a roadmap for meaningful change - helping you close gaps, strengthen culture, and unlock business performance.
By grounding your targets in data, aligning them with strategy, balancing ambition with realism, and embedding accountability, you can set GEIs that drive both equity and impact. That all sounds great - but where do we start? Right here.
This question is exactly why we built equidi’s GEI Centre - to help organisations cut through the noise. The GEI Centre is simple, intuitive, and does the heavy lifting for you when setting and achieving your GEI Targets. Our GEI Centre will provide you with:
Clear guidance on every GEI and what’s required
Built-in tools and templates to support action planning and execution
Automated board-ready reporting
Real-time progress tracking so you always know where you stand
The legislation might feel like a challenge, but with the right approach - and the right tools - it can become one of your organisation’s biggest opportunities.
equidi is reshaping the future of fair pay. Our platform puts pay equity at the centre of business strategy - giving you real-time visibility into pay gaps and workforce representation across every part of your organisation. With tailored insights and guided actions, equidi helps you set goals, track progress, and drive meaningful change every day.
And when it comes to compliance, we’ve got you covered - automating your WGEA reporting and keeping you aligned with the latest GEI Targets, effortlessly.
