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How Mahlab brought conversations around sexual harassment to board level

By Awards Analyst, writer

December 5, 2022 | 5 min read

Mahlab won at The Drum Awards for B2B 2022 in the B2B Internal Communications/Employee Education effort award for its Chief Executive Women campaign. Here's why:

The campaign seeks to tackle the universal issue of sexual harassment at board level / Jo Johnston

Chief Executive Women (CEW) is a non-profit organization made up of 800 of the most powerful women in Australia. Its members oversee 1.3 million employees and a total market capitalization of $1.14 trillion. But in spite of that size and reach, it too has to grapple with issues of sexual harassment.

The brief

Workplace sexual harassment is a big issue in Australia. According to the Human Rights Commission, 72% have experienced it, with 23% of women and 16% of men reporting incidents at work in the past 12 months. Crucially, however, only 17% of those affected felt able to report it. One in three workers at Australia’s Federal Parliament has been sexually harassed. As a result, Mahlab’s discussions with CEW members uncovered a significant gap in the resources available for those looking to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace.

The idea

CEW approached Mahlab to devise an internal communications strategy to assist its members to start "courageous conversations" about sexual harassment at a board level. Beyond that, the idea was to offer tools and techniques to turn those conversations into action, ensuring that tangible results would come from any conversation. The Mahlab team liaised with a working group of CEW members to gain insights, understand lived experiences, create an integrated internal comms plan and, ultimately, execute it with a comprehensive toolkit - the Respect is Everyone’s Business (RIEB).

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The results

The website and framework delivered upon the original eight goals Mahlab and CEW formulated. The email campaign in particular saw a 60.4% open rate and a 15.16% click-through rate - 461% higher than the average CTR for nonprofit electronic direct mail campaigns and 551% above average for all email campaigns). Since November 2021, the campaign has also seen 3,320 users, 4,900 sessions, and 11,304 pageviews, demonstrating the universal nature of the campaign.

This campaign was a winner at The Drum B2B Awards 2022. The full list of winners can be found here.

The Drum Awards for Marketing are currently open for entry. Find out how you can enter now.