Case Study: Glen Eira City Council

Leading What We Learned: Leadership Re-Designed at Glen Eira

Glen Eira's CEO-led Listen, Learn and Lead program demonstrates how deliberate executive listening and enabling part-time leadership can remove long-standing progression barriers and deliver measurable, gender-equitable leadership outcomes.

"The CEO Listen, Learn and Lead program was delivered in May 2023 to advance Glen Eira’s Gender Equality Action Plan 2022–2025 and to better understand barriers to leadership progression for women and gender diverse employees. While women comprised the majority of the workforce, they were increasingly under-represented at senior levels, reflecting organisational settings that were not enabling equitable progression.

"Partnering with Women’s Health in the South East, the CEO facilitated three structured focus groups: one with the Senior Leadership Group and two with aspiring women and gender diverse leaders, engaging 60 employees in total. Senior leaders reflected on what had supported their career progression, the barriers they had observed or experienced, and their role as visible role models. Across all groups, the message was resounding: the lack of part time options for leadership roles was a critical barrier to advancement.

"In response, Glen Eira introduced part time options for all new and vacated leadership roles from 2023, explicitly redesigning leadership to support flexibility.

"Audit data from 2025 demonstrates the impact of this change. Part time leadership representation has grown significantly, with 17% of Coordinators and 25% of Team Leaders now working part time, representing an increase from 6 to 29 part time leaders between 2023 and 2025. This growth signals the successful removal of a long-standing structural barrier and confirms how intentional executive listening can translate insight into systemic, measurable change.

"We encourage councils to start by listening—creating safe, CEO led forums where senior leaders and aspiring employees can share openly what supports progression and what creates barriers. Use these insights to challenge traditional leadership design, particularly the expectation of full-time availability.

"Test making part-time and flexible leadership the default. Embed flexibility in recruitment and job design and track progress through workforce audits. When listening leads to redesign and accountability, councils can remove structural barriers and achieve measurable, gender equitable outcomes for their communities and organisations."

Melanie Hollows, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Advisor: mhollows@gleneira.vic.gov.au