Changes to the demographic make-up of your organisation can have profound impacts on organisational culture – both in a positive and negative way, depending on whether you create the conditions that allow for cohesion.

A high-performing, multi-generational workforce requires a selection of specific behaviours and cultural elements, namely inclusive learning cultures that “celebrate differences and embrace mistakes” and encourage different communication styles, according to a research team from the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing at Griffith University.

Boards and senior HR management teams need to ensure they understand how changes in demographic trends might require a refresh of certain organisational practices, says demographer and social commentator Bernard Salt AM.

For example, we’ve seen a rise in Australian life expectancies, which jumped from 69 in 1950 to a current 83 for men and 85 for women, he says.

“Before, people worked up to the age of 65, got a gold watch and retired,” says Salt, who is speaking at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. 

But the nature of work has changed. 

“In the 1950s or 1960s, many of the jobs were in manufacturing, or labouring in areas like building and construction,” says Salt.

“If you were a blue-collar worker and made it to 65, you usually couldn’t work anymore because of the physical consequences of having worked with your body from the age of 15. You needed to take the pension and retire.

“Today, a greater proportion of the workforce is involved in knowledge work. Medical advancements are also improving our quality of life and life expectancies, providing people with more opportunities to continue work beyond the age of 65.”

On top of this, the current cost-of-living crisis means many people are less prepared for their retirement years and have had to go back to work, he adds. This is a concept known as ‘The Great Unretirement’.

“By default, we’ll end up with a greater proportion of our workforce over the age of 50 and, proportionately, around the age of 70,” says Salt.

Hear more about the future team member of 2030 from Bernard Salt AM at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition on 20-22 August. Secure your spot today.

The Bunnings approach

A company that is already preparing for this demographic shift is Bunnings, which claims age is never a barrier at any of its stores. 

Around 30 per cent of its store team members are aged 50+ while around 14 per cent are aged 60+. Its oldest employee is 93 years old.

“We learnt a long time ago that older and more experienced team members are an integral part of creating a great place to work and providing our customers with the best experience. They have significant life and industry experience, making them a wealth of knowledge for our customers and wider team,” says Damian Zahra, Bunnings’ Chief People Officer. 

“Every organisation is different and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to engaging older people in the workplace.”

Having said that, he adds that Bunnings believes creating a supportive environment for older workers starts with flexibility. 

“We do this by first and foremost offering casual, part-time and full-time working options because we know it’s an important way to keep your team engaged and supported in their wellbeing and performance. 

“Fewer people aged 15 through to 25 are funnelling into the workplace. A shallower pool of youth coming through means there will be a skills shortage for decades.” – Bernard Salt AM, demographer and social commentator

“Then there’s the extras like our popular ‘Travelling Team Member’ program where people can pick up casual shifts at different Bunnings stores while they travel across Australia and New Zealand.

“A team member can map out their desired travel journey and proactively contact stores in the areas they’re visiting to see if any casual shifts are available. They have the flexibility to work as much as they like based on their travel schedules and preferences.”

Zahra says Bunnings’ ‘Retiring Well’ program helps older employees implement a tailored pathway to their retirement. It includes the option of reducing their hours over time to support a gradual transition into retirement, and a dedicated program that provides advice on how they can enjoy financial, emotional and physical wellbeing in their retirement.

Safety is also a priority. 

“We have extensive training and guidelines in place to make sure all our team return home safely each day and feel equipped to perform their roles. 

“This includes ongoing professional development so our team members always feel confident and engaged at work, regardless of their age. 

“We often find our older team value training just as much as our younger cohort.”

Not only is Bunnings creating environments to support its current older workforce to thrive, it’s also actively looking to bring more age diversity into its business.

“We maintain a really flexible recruitment process and use as many channels as possible to reach the communities we serve,” says Zahra. “For example, we place posters around our stores that highlight the great careers of some of our older team members to demonstrate the value mature-aged people can bring to our business.

“We always try to use neutral language in all our recruitment materials, and avoid specific words or phrases that target younger generations. We also accept walk-in resumes to ensure we consider applicants who may not be tech-savvy.”

Read HRM’s article on how to create an age-inclusive culture for the multi-stage career. 

Counting the benefits 

Demographic diversity is a key component of a thriving workplace culture, but when there are no intentional processes around leveraging a multigenerational workforce, it can cause friction points to surface. 

For example, communication barriers can form or differing work styles could lead to conflict within a team. To remedy this, specific programs that cultivate empathy and understanding can help. 

For instance, you could consider:

• Storytelling sessions to give employees the chance to share their career stories with each other, including what they’ve learned, their challenges and their greatest successes.
• Keeping age diversity in mind when building project teams.
• Setting up shadowing programs allowing employees to shadow colleagues from different generations to gain a better understanding of their roles and expertise.

Companies that employ older workers benefit from their corporate knowledge, networks and ability to train and mentor younger workers, says Salt. 

This is an approach that Bunnings has embraced.

“By sharing their knowledge, skills and life experiences, our older team members often become mentors to their younger teammates, which goes a really long way in helping form strong connections and creating a positive working environment,” says Zahra.

“Mentoring can work both ways, and our younger team members can support older workers too.”

There are also opportunities to promote shared learning via reverse mentoring programs whereby junior employees train seasoned employees in relevant areas, such as how to reach a younger audience on social media. 

You could also consider facilitating a skills-sharing workshop where employees of all ages come together to share their knowledge in specific areas.

Griffith University’s research found that valuing co-creation, a strong focus on job satisfaction and tailored HR programs were key characteristics of a thriving multigenerational workforce.

For example, a specific HR program focused on retaining older workers in critical skill areas could help solve Australia’s skills shortages, which Salt believes will be a long-term challenge for employers. 

“Fewer people aged 15 through to 25 are funnelling into the workplace. A shallower pool of youth coming through means there will be a skills shortage for decades.”

If your workforce isn’t yet set up to support employees in the latter portion of their careers, now is a great time to learn from those who already have robust strategies in place. 

This article first appeared in the June-July 2024 edition of HRM Magazine.

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In an increasingly divided world, fostering inclusive workplaces is more challenging and more crucial than ever before. 

According to Edelman’s 2023 Trust Barometer, which surveyed more than 1150 Australians, Australia is currently considered “moderately polarised” and on the brink of “severe polarisation”. Nearly half of Australians (45 per cent) feel the nation is more divided now than at any other time in history.

When this polarisation creeps into our workplaces, it can create a plethora of psychosocial risks, including interpersonal conflict, negative stereotyping and poor communication. 

“The risk is that people form themselves into these binary oppositional groups, and there’s this mentality of, ‘If you’re if you’re not with me, then you’re against me,’” says Dr. Juliet Bourke, Professor of Practice at UNSW Business School and upcoming speaker at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August.

“But that’s not what the world is really like. There’s a broad spectrum of views. And part of the skill is not getting sucked into that narrative, but to stand back and understand the individuals on a broader spectrum.”

Bourke, who has researched and written extensively on inclusive leadership practices, spoke with HRM to discuss the most effective strategies for leaders to foster inclusive workplaces within a seemingly polarised society.

1. Recognise the spectrum of attitudes towards DEI

An essential step in ensuring that polarisation does not damage organisational culture is engaging employees in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. However, Bourke stresses that there is no one right way to engage employees in these conversations, given that employees can hold vastly different attitudes and opinions on the subject. 

To help leaders decide the right way to communicate with employees about DEI, Bourke has broken down employees’ typical attitudes towards DEI into a spectrum of six archetypes.

“At one end, there is an oppositional response. That person brings a level of anger or negative emotion to the topic. At the other end is the person who’s really passionate and positively disruptive,” she says.

The archetypes she has formulated are as follows:

• Oppositional: These employees are strongly against DEI, often expressing anger or negative emotions towards it. They might feel that they are losing privilege or being left behind.
• Disengaged: This archetype is indifferent to DEI. Their eyes may glaze over when DEI is discussed, and they’re unlikely to attend events or workshops. They may say DEI is not “their thing”.
• Ambivalent (two types): In Bourke’s view, there are two forms of ambivalence to DEI. The first type is somewhat supportive of DEI, but fears making a misstep and therefore remains silent. The other is fatigued – while they may once have been committed, they now lack the energy to engage.
• Supportive, but not leading: These employees have a fairly positive attitude to DEI and are willing to follow others in their efforts, but don’t take the initiative themselves.
• Champions: This archetype is passionate about DEI, actively contributes to the organisation’s inclusion efforts and pushes boundaries in a positive way.

The goal for leaders, says Bourke, is to meet people where they’re at and move them up the engagement curve. Understanding the spectrum above is crucial to matching the message to the person, since different archetypes will require a different approach. 

She also notes that while employees on the champion side of the spectrum are already fully engaged in DEI efforts, this does not mean leaders can ‘set and forget’ this cohort; they still need to ensure the efforts of these employees are in fact contributing to a more inclusive workplace.

“Sometimes when people are champions, they can also be tone deaf. And they can be like bulldozers. I don’t think that that’s helpful either,” she says. “So leaders have a role to play in keeping champions connected and curious.”

On an individual level, employees are also influenced in different ways by different means of communication. 

Bourke suggests thinking of information in terms of content that engages the head, heart or hands. For example, some employees will be more affected by hard facts and data, while others will be swayed by heartfelt stories with real emotions. Others learn from doing and want to be guided on the actions they should take. The trick to influencing others to be more engaged in DEI is understanding the person’s archetype and the type of information that is most suited to the person.

She also says that leaders should ask themselves whether they are the best person to deliver that message, or if there is another person who is more suited, perhaps because they have a closer, stronger and more trusted relationship.

“I would say to leaders, step back from the black and white and see [your people] through a lens of colour,” says Bourke. “See the person in front of you with a bit more nuance, think about who influences them and [the way] you’re trying to influence them, and experiment with that.”

2. Facilitate open dialogue

Once leaders have established the most effective ways to communicate with their teams about DEI, a crucial next step is to ensure employees feel safe to express their perspectives at work.

Of course, facilitating open dialogue in a workplace where employees have polarised views creates the potential for conflict, meaning leaders may be reluctant to initiate these difficult conversations. However, allowing polarisation to simmer unaddressed is not conducive to a psychosocially safe work environment.

“I would say to leaders, step back from the black and white and see [your people] through a lens of colour.” – Dr. Juliet Bourke, Professor of Practice at UNSW Business School

In facilitating conversations between employees with differing views, one strategy Bourke has found particularly effective is to try and establish common ground between the parties involved to help them understand each other’s perspectives.

“This strategy is about bringing together those two people who are opposed and saying, ‘Well, what do we agree upon?’ And it is unlikely that you won’t find some commonality.”

For example, she says, while there may be polarised views on current geopolitical issues when it comes to religion or political ideology, employees on both sides are likely to agree that family is important and that peace is the end goal. 

Finding this common ground not only helps prevent conflict, but can also help bust misconceptions employees might hold about their colleagues.

“If we have an open conversation and get an empathetic understanding of the other person, it’s harder to hold onto the stereotypical view you went into the conversation with because you realise that person is a person, a whole person, not a cardboard cutout picture.” 

3. Demonstrate curiosity

When facilitating open dialogue among their teams, it’s important for leaders to model the curious mindset that will help employees understand each other’s points of view.

To demonstrate this curiosity, Bourke suggests leaders take part in regular ‘perspective taking’. Within the workplace, this might look like talking directly with employees about their unique experiences, showing genuine interest in their perspectives and asking thoughtful questions to gain insight and build stronger connections.

Leaders can also immerse themselves in other cultures and communities outside of the workplace to gain a better understanding of a particular cohort’s perspective, she adds. This could be as simple as exploring books and films from other cultures or attending community events.

It’s also important for leaders to demonstrate healthy curiosity about themselves.

“The skill of self-reflection [is important],” says Bourke. “As a starting point, [ask yourself], ‘How am I coming across? How am I influencing this conversation, [maybe] in ways that I didn’t intend?’”

Given that it can be hard for anyone to view their strengths and weaknesses objectively, Bourke suggests leaders get input from trusted people in their circles on where their communication styles might show room for improvement.

“You can also look at other people whom you admire,” she says. “If you look at someone and think, ‘I want to be like that person,’ then ask, ‘What is it they are doing that I want [to mimic]?’”

4. Prioritise self-care

Dealing with a polarised workforce in a turbulent business environment can take its toll on HR’s, managers’ and leaders’ wellbeing. 

These difficulties are reflected in multiple research reports from the past two years showing that managers and leaders are experiencing higher levels of burnout than their junior counterparts.

This is an important issue to address since, according to Bourke, inclusive leadership is only possible when leaders have the space and balance in their own lives to approach this complex issue with energy and curiosity.

“For me, when I come across those challenges, I make sure I balance it in my life with situations and people who give me energy because sometimes dealing with entrenched resistance is very draining.

“Giving yourself time to regenerate and [participating in] positive activities is a way to support yourself to be an inclusive leader.”

Dr. Juliet Bourke will be speaking on inclusive coworker behaviours at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. Sign up today to hear from Juliet and other experts, including Seth Godin, Dr Pippa Grange and more.

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Head of Culture and Inclusion at Coles Group Katie Wyatt says it’s a fascinating time to work in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In some ways, it’s getting easier, but in other ways harder.

The proud Noongar Yamatji woman, from Whadjuk Noongar country around Perth, found the failure of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum “incredibly tough”.

“It really made me stop and think about the challenge we have as a business in balancing the nuances of social pressures, customer expectations and investor demands.”

It’s a balance she’s managed remarkably well. Wyatt is the recent recipient of AHRI’s 2023 DEI Champion of the Year Award, which she describes as a welcome recognition of the DEI commitments she and her team have helped to achieve over the past four years.

“Winning has been a real high, almost like the certificate to say, ‘You did it.’ Of course there is nothing individual about DEI achievements, and this is a reflection of collective effort across our business.”

She’s immensely passionate about DEI, which is just as well because it can be “an uphill battle” at times.

“DEI practitioners often don’t own big teams or budgets, so they have to strategise, influence, convince and persuade, which comes with highs and lows. So it’s absolutely awesome to have that recognised with this award,” she says.

Wyatt believes her fierce drive for social justice “has been there from birth”.

“My dad was a stolen child; he was taken from his mum as a baby. And my mum was a teacher and librarian. It was bred into me to be progressive and socially conscious.

“Whether it was my volunteer work, or my time in the not-for-profit and social enterprise sector, it was always there.”

Wyatt has more than 17 years’ experience as a senior leader across private, public and for-purpose sectors. Her corporate work includes seven years in professional services and a stint at Australia Post. After her years in the not-for-profit social enterprise space, she was elated to join Coles in 2019.

“This role has brought me back to large corporate life, which I really love.”

Now based in Melbourne, she’s relishing the chance to “create meaningful impact in a huge business that employs and serves so many Australians”.

Big corporates, big thinking

The expectations on organisations to support social change have never been higher, says Wyatt, especially those that employ a huge part of the community.

These expectations arise from the public, investors passionate about environmental, social and governance (ESG) and diversity, and employees keen to connect with their employer’s purpose, whether that be caring for the environment or profiling diverse women in senior leadership roles. 

These are expectations she upholds and believes are intrinsically linked to business success. 

“Every business, especially large businesses that operate nationally like we do, is going to struggle in a modern world without diversity of thinking and new ideas.

“People often say it’s the right thing to do. But actually, it’s also very much the smart thing to do. And as a business that serves most of Australia, the more diverse we are, the better we’re able to serve our customers. For example, we can think about what our customers might want in particular locations, such as in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne where customers [require] a wider range of foods, including Kosher, Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian and so on. 

“It’s the best of both worlds. I’m working with great people, getting great opportunities, and I feel like I’m making an impact.”

“If people feel like they can be themselves, that drives engagement, which drives performance, and therefore revenue and profit. Diversity is absolutely a smart business decision.” – Katie Wyatt, Head of Culture and Inclusion, Coles Group

Strategies to boost women’s representation in leadership  

Some of Wyatt’s most important work at Coles has been in the gender space. 

In 2019, women accounted for 33 per cent of leadership roles, which jumped to 41.5 per cent by 2023. 

She played a pivotal role in launching the Store Manager Accelerator Program in 2022, which brings women with diverse backgrounds into store leadership roles, supported by development, which focuses on the skills needed in the role over experience.

Since then, 20 women have come through the program, with applications open for the next cohort. There are now 800 women who are store managers around Australia. The women are of all diversity groups, including First Nations and culturally diverse women.

To create positive change, Wyatt looks to research and evidence-based systems for guidance. To inspire her gender inclusion strategies at Coles, she used the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s Employer of Choice for Gender Equality framework, as it’s based on global best-practice research.

“We know that offering flexibility, making sure your talent management processes are as free from bias as they can be, and putting targets on senior leadership roles, all makes a difference,” she says. “You can say, ‘We want more women at the table.’ But unless you are actually creating change in your organisation to make it more appealing and accessible for women, nothing’s going to stick. We now have a really healthy leadership population and pipeline [for women].”

The organisation is also making life easier for transgender people among its 100,000 store workers who have to log on to a roster that displays the legal name they were assigned at birth.

“If they’ve affirmed their gender and now go by a different name, this can be incredibly impactful, and not in a good way. It’s also unnecessary,” says Wyatt. “So we’re reconfiguring our systems to build a solution that shows someone’s name of choice on the roster. While most people won’t notice, for some individuals, it’s going to be massive.”

Owning and driving diversity and inclusion

While it can be hard to quantify the impact of diversity strategies on an organisation’s bottom line, Wyatt measures Coles’ success in terms of engagement and representation.

Impressively, engagement of all diverse groups has increased, largely thanks to Coles’ five key diversity pillars: Gender Equity, Pride, Accessibility, Belonging and Indigenous Engagement. 

Each pillar is led by business leaders with cross-business representation, which Wyatt’s team supports by driving conversation, planning initiatives and helping those in each pillar to think more strategically.

LGBTQI+ engagement, for example, has jumped from 61 per cent in 2021 to 66 per cent in 2023. 

To promote LGBTIQ+ inclusion, Wyatt found another “evidence-based roadmap” to follow: the Australian Workplace Equality Index for LGBTQ+ inclusion, which has since awarded Coles with Gold Employer status. 

It shows that rather than having one champion in the business, all the systems, processes and training must also be inclusive. 

“If the business doesn’t own and drive DEI, then it’s never going to sustain itself.”

And she does mean the entire business – DEI is not just an HR responsibility.

“If people feel like they can be themselves, that drives engagement, which drives performance, and therefore revenue and profit. Diversity is absolutely a smart business decision,” she says. 

“Watching people get involved in these diversity teams and witnessing their individual transformations is what keeps me going.”

“I’m working with great people, getting great opportunities, and I feel like I’m making an impact.” – Katie Wyatt, Head of Culture and Inclusion, Coles Group

Setbacks and catalysts on the path to inclusion

Over the past four years, Coles has been on a “maturity journey”, says Wyatt.

“We’ve gone from being passionate about our DEI cause, perhaps because of people we know, to integrating it into how we do business. Now it’s the way we hire people and the way we develop people. Our leadership population is much more diverse, and that’s not just gender. That’s cultural diversity, First Nations, LGBTIQ+ and people with disability. 

“And that’s not just because my team is running around making things happen. It’s because we’ve hardwired it into who we are as a business.”

Over the coming years, Wyatt plans to continue her work in DEI, “learning and adapting along the way”.

As an Australian company with a huge profile, determining how much to wade into public discourse around social issues remains a “tricky” subject for Coles, she says. The company is strongly committed to reconciliation, but didn’t feel it was its role to tell the public or its team how they should vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum.

“While I personally was hoping to see a Yes vote, organisations don’t vote and it wasn’t our role to tell anyone how to do so.

“It’s a tricky line to walk, but businesses need to make those decisions for themselves, in line with their values and with the information they have at the time. And those decisions have to make sense, both for your people strategy and for your business commercially.”

While promoting the inclusion agenda is certainly getting easier, the road can feel “bendy and jolty”, she says. But that only fuels her passion and drive.

“In the uncertain economy and global world we’re operating in, DEI feels even more important, but even less predictable.

“Sometimes there are moments that can feel like a real setback in the work we do. But in other ways, they can also feel like a catalyst to do more.”

A version of this article was originally published in the April/May 2024 edition of HRM Magazine.

Know someone who has made award-worthy contributions to their organisation or the HR profession? Applications are now open for the 2024 AHRI Awards. Read more and apply here.

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When Natasha Cuthbert MAHRI explained to her children what she did at work, she used to say, “I help people be happy in their jobs.” 

It’s a simplistic description that echoes her professional purpose: to create a workplace where everyone can be their best self.

“It’s important to be our authentic self at work rather than having a work persona and a home persona,” she says. “Creating a diverse and inclusive environment is what really drives me.”

Happy employees are also good for business, she adds, which is why Cuthbert feels frustrated when people label HR a “soft profession”.

“HR people have to have a really strong backbone and commercial background. It’s about getting the best out of people to get the right commercial outcomes, but doing the right thing by them while you do it. I think making that connection is the most powerful thing you can do as an HR professional.”

Cuthbert’s achievements as Chief People and Culture Officer at Viva Energy Australia led to her winning AHRI’s 2023 HR Leader of the Year Award, a recognition she describes as “very humbling”.

“It’s a very positive endorsement of the great job we’re doing in terms of looking after our people, making the employee experience amazing and delivering our business strategy through a really great people strategy.” 

Of Cuthbert’s win, the AHRI judges said she “clearly understands the importance of listening… in developing HR activities”.

“Her capacity to truly ‘hear’ the voice of her workforce has led to the design of a meaningful EVP framework, leadership framework and D&I framework, which has created true business impact,” they said.

While Cuthbert has no doubt the award will benefit her career, she confesses she had to be “coaxed” into the nomination. 

“While I’m always very keen to make sure that our Viva Energy LinkedIn profile highlights the great things we’re doing on gender equality, flexibility or family, for example, I’m not really someone who personally works ‘out loud’,” she says.

An unexpected passion for inclusion

Though it could appear Cuthbert was always destined for a career in HR, it wasn’t her first ambition.

“My initial degree was in Zoology. I wanted to care for endangered species. I was very passionate about the environment and conservation,” she says.

But then a working holiday role in the UK after university gave her a taste of HR. She dipped her toes into performance management and wrote disciplinary reviews, which she found surprisingly interesting. 

“It’s in those challenging environments where you can really make a difference as an HR professional.” – Natasha Cuthbert MAHRI, Chief People and Culture Officer, Viva Energy Australia

Returning to Australia, she worked for a consulting firm that guided organisations on their strategic vision and values, before working on graduate and mid-level leadership programs.

“I became fascinated by organisational dynamics, team culture and how to get the best out of people at work – so human behaviour, as opposed to animal behaviour.”

Three years later, an offer from Coles Myer gave her the chance to work within the heart of a business, and she revelled in new opportunities to manage operational HR through the supermarkets business and then move onto more corporate programs, such as improving Indigenous employment across supermarkets, early work on the gender pay gap, and starting to think about how to embrace LGBTQIA+ Pride.

But after 15 years at the retail giant, she was hankering for “a really big challenge”.

When an opportunity came up at Viva Energy in 2020, it was the perfect marriage of her environmental passion and desire to make a real difference to people’s lives.

“Oil and gas has to change; we won’t be putting petrol in cars forever,” she says. “And the only way a business like Viva Energy is going to thrive in the future is to have a really strong transformation plan. 

“[The company] has a very clear vision of how it needs to change and I wanted to be part of driving that transformation. For the first time, I have the whole HR department reporting to me. That has been instrumental in reshaping how the people and culture agenda impacts the company. To be given that opportunity has been pretty special.”

Challenging assumptions about gender equality

Passionate about diversity and gender inclusion, Cuthbert also knew that in such a “male-dominated industry that has a bit of a blokey culture”, she could have a real impact. While there was already a push underway to recruit more women, there was a long way to go.

“In our 2020 employee engagement survey, there were comments like, ‘Why do you have to be a female to get a job around here? Men do a better job. They’re better qualified.’ I could see it wasn’t great and that there was plenty of work to do on changing attitudes.”

Fast-forward four years and it’s a completely different picture.

By challenging the assumption that these roles need to be performed on a full-time basis and that prior industry experience is necessary, the representation of women in frontline shift-based roles at Viva Energy’s Geelong refinery has increased from nine per cent in 2018 to 26 per cent in 2023 – an increase that impressed the AHRI judges.

Furthermore, Cuthbert has broadened its diversity pillars from Gender and First Nations to also include Culture, Families, Abilities and Pride.

Among other initiatives that helped secure her the title of AHRI’s HR Leader of the Year, she introduced the ‘Say it Again’ campaign, designed to give employees a safe phrase to use if they experience casual sexism or racism; extra domestic and family violence leave, which is paid time off for employees to find safe and secure housing; and culture and ceremonial leave, which enables team members to observe a religious or cultural day of significance.

“HR people have to have a really strong backbone and commercial background. It’s about getting the best out of people to get the right commercial outcomes, but doing the right thing by them while you do it.” – Natasha Cuthbert MAHRI, Chief People and Culture Officer, Viva Energy Australia

“If people see that our organisation supports MidSumma Pride March, that we’re working with specialist autism services, that we love to see people dressed up in traditional Indian clothes for Diwali, inclusivity feels real and genuine,” she says.

“In our employee engagement survey we no longer see comments about why you’d hire a female over a male. Instead, we see comments like, ‘I have a gay daughter and it’s amazing that I feel that I can talk about her freely at work.’”

While Cuthbert says there’s “always work to be done”, she’s very proud of Viva Energy’s progress.

“It’s in those challenging environments where you can really make a difference as an HR professional. That’s rewarding.”

A values-based approach to transformation

Cuthbert has further challenges on the horizon in terms of Viva Energy’s transformation journey. The company took over Coles Express in May, which brought the number of people across the business from 1500 to 7500. With its more recent acquisition of convenience store operator On the Run, the number of employees will swell to 15,000 later this year.

Cuthbert’s team will be tasked with uniting the three different businesses.

“Each business unit will have a unique culture – the convenience and mobility unit will be different to the culture in our infrastructure business, and that’s okay.”

As the world moves into more sustainable fuels, Cuthbert is aware that business will need to evolve.

“How we morph into a different organisational shape in terms of purpose and vision is very much on our minds.”

She’s confident her Smart with Heart concept will help to cultivate Viva Energy’s leaders of the future. This is a framework defining the competencies that enable its leaders to be successful, and includes things such as: safety first, strategic vision, customer centricity, collaboration, performance and accountability.

“We have a lot of clever people here, but if you’re smart without the heart, you’re not going to get cut-through. We want people to be business leaders and people leaders. So we built a set of smart competencies and heart competencies that frame our leadership program.”

Cuthbert believes a good HR strategy is not only about attracting and retaining top talent, but also about asking the right questions. 

“Getting the complete picture is crucial whether it’s a personal or an organisational matter,” she says. “That’s how we find solutions and create a positive impact.”

A longer version of this article first appeared in the February/March 2024 edition of HRM Magazine.

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As a long-time neurodiversity advocate, and someone who’s spent time with HR managers and executive leaders from almost every industry, I’ve seen countless organisations place neurodiverse recruitment in the ‘too hard’ or ‘not for us’ basket based on simple misconceptions.

In reality, the evidence is stacking up on the benefits of cognitively diverse teams. Studies indicate diverse teams see higher productivity, make better business decisions, and are more innovative. Add to this, data estimates around 15-20 per cent of the world’s population exhibits some form of neurodivergence, meaning those hesitant to hire neurodivergent candidates are also missing out on a significant chunk of the potential workforce.

Major global companies such as Microsoft, Goldman Sachs and IBM are already leading the way with neurodiversity hiring initiatives, but common myths continue to derail the broader conversation when it comes to bringing neurodivergent talent into the workplace. 

Below, we debunk five of the most common myths about neurodivergent employees.

Myth 1: Accommodating for neurodiversity in hiring practices is creating an unfair advantage

Traditional hiring practices – including job descriptions with strict ‘must-have’ requirements and formal interview formats – can be challenging for some neurodivergent candidates to navigate. But simple accommodations, such as sending interview questions to a candidate beforehand, can enable neurodivergent individuals to arrive better prepared and demonstrate the full suite of their expertise. 

This is  a way to provide equity to neurodivergent candidates who face far higher unemployment rates than neurotypical individuals. By adopting a more inclusive hiring process, you’re creating a fairer starting point for these candidates and ensuring a level playing field. 

Myth 2: Accommodating neurodivergent employees is costly and disruptive

Many employers believe that making accommodations for neurodivergent candidates in the workplace will be expensive and disruptive to other employees. In reality, many accommodations are simple, cost-effective, and can be of benefit to all employees. 

For example, flexible working hours, quiet workspaces, providing written meeting notes and agendas, and the option to work remotely can enhance productivity and job satisfaction for everyone. In fact, investing in these accommodations has been associated with improved employee wellbeing and reduced exhaustion, burnout and fatigue. 

Accommodating differences in the workplace isn’t something specific to neurodivergent individuals – it’s just good people management. 

Myth 3: Neurodivergent people are only suited to tech roles

While I have a vested interest in encouraging neurodivergent people to consider roles in tech because of my role at WithYouWithMe, this certainly isn’t the only field their skills and abilities are suited for. 

Neurodiversity covers such a broad spectrum of experiences and abilities that there are neurodivergent candidates well-suited to every type of role. In fact, chances are, you already have several neurodivergent team members succeeding across all your business functions. 

“Instead of thinking about why you shouldn’t hire neurodivergent candidates, consider what your business could gain if you did.” – Ian Handley, VP of Oceania at WithYouWithMe

Myth 4: “We just don’t have any neurodivergent candidates coming through our pipeline”

This is something I hear a lot from hiring managers, and while it can be true in some instances, there are several factors that may explain why:

1. You do have neurodivergent candidates, you just don’t know it. As with any form of socio-cultural differences or disabilities, individuals don’t have to self-declare, and many don’t want to for fear of stereotyping. Others simply don’t see it as a defining factor of who they are.
2. Your job advertisements outline rigid ‘must-have’ role requirements such as educational credentials, past job titles and years of experience. Some neurodivergent people tend to think in black and white – meaning if there’s one requirement of the role they don’t specifically meet, they won’t apply.
3. You have a lack of visibility around your inclusivity efforts. Unless you clearly communicate that you welcome neurodivergent candidates and are eager for them to apply, people may assume the working environment is not welcoming, supportive or able to accommodate their needs. Sometimes you need to invite people to take a seat at the table. 

Myth 5: Hiring neurodivergent individuals will lead to cultural misalignment in the team

Many people are apprehensive about broaching certain topics like neurodiversity or disability in the workplace and worry about saying the ‘wrong’ thing. While this apprehension is well-meaning, it doesn’t foster a culture of inclusivity. Rather, it leads to hesitancy around embracing differences and a perception that those differences will somehow change the culture of an existing team and lead to misalignment between old and new members. 

In reality, building a strong organisational culture is not about increasing uniformity, but instead about embracing the variations and fostering an environment where all team members feel valued, supported and encouraged to share their ideas. Especially in the fast-paced business environment we find ourselves in today, innovation and outside-the-box thinking is critical, and history has shown it doesn’t come from maintaining conformity. 

As businesses strive to navigate a competitive recruitment landscape and a growing lack of digital skills in the market, it’s time for a shift in mindset away from screening people out for their differences and instead seeing those differences as opportunities. 

So instead of thinking about why you shouldn’t hire neurodivergent candidates, consider  what your business could gain if you did. 

Ian Handley is Vice President of Oceania at WithYouWithMe, an Australian social impact tech organisation. In his role, he works alongside leading Australian organisations in defence, government and industry to implement skills-based hiring, enable internal talent mobility, and diversify workforces.

Ian is a neurodiversity advocate and change management leader with a technical background in training management, design and delivery, across 15 years in the defence, government and technology sectors.

Need support enhancing your HR capabilities? Take AHRI’s capabilities analysis test to learn where you can enhance your skill set and receive a personalised report outlining what your AHRI learning journey could look like. Learn more here.

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The last few years have seen diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) climb to new heights on HR’s list of priorities. Recent research indicates that HR professionals are more attuned to the importance of DEI to organisational success than ever before.

According to AHRI’s The State of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Australian Workplaces 2023, the vast majority (84 per cent) of HR professionals say DEI is critical to the future success of their organisation. This increased focus on DEI has been significantly influenced by social movements, heightened expectations from employees and stakeholders and greater engagement in DEI conversations. 

However, the research also reveals a clear gap between intent and execution. Just 50 per cent of HR professionals say their leaders see DEI as a priority for their organisation, and a similar proportion (49 per cent) say their organisation is not placing enough focus on DEI.

To help HR narrow this gap and drive sustainable progress, AHRI’s DEI Advisory Panel has created a paper to guide organisations, DEI specialists and HR professionals in fostering more inclusive work environments. 

Below, three members of the panel offer their insights on ways that HR professionals can respond to some of the most pressing DEI challenges facing Australian organisations. 

Invest in DEI leadership

By Barbara Sheehy MAHRI, National Indigenous Manager, Australia Post

We know when organisations engage in diversity, equity and inclusion strategic practices, the return on investment in enabling diverse thinking and collective voice is impactful. However, these benefits are not linear.

A deliberate lens to invest in leadership capability and diversity appointment, in my view, is the advancement that corporate Australia, industry and government should seek to demonstrate when navigating the DEI landscape.

The AHRI DEI Futures Paper provides HR practitioners and members with valuable insights and evidence-based examples to shift workplace culture from participation towards a maturing capacity through the AHRI Diversity and Inclusion Maturity Model.  

This inclusion framework identifies three key levels of maturity: compliance, changing mindsets and embedding DEI into an organisation’s DNA. This transformative roadmap distinguishes and measures an organisation’s commitment to creating thriving workplace cultures of belonging and impactful, sustainable change.

Another benefit to understanding and embedding the Diversity and Inclusion Maturity Model is that it can be adapted across organisations, regardless of industry, size or complexity. Each organisation’s adoption will be bespoke, however, the learnings, investment and sustainable impact will positively contribute to the ever-challenging yet rewarding landscape of Australia’s DEI conversations.

Read HRM’s article on the importance of intersectional leadership here.

How can HR leverage lived experiences in a respectful and effective way to inform their DEI frameworks?

By Mathew Paine FCPHR, Executive General Manager, People & Culture, Australian Financial Complaints Authority

It’s important that HR can effectively leverage lived experiences to inform their DEI frameworks to ensure they suit a broad range of employees and actually deliver on their needs.

HR can do this by implementing strategies such as:

• Organising listening sessions (for example, inviting marginalised groups to speak at leadership team meetings about their lived experience).
• Sponsoring and funding employee resource groups.
• Collecting feedback through surveys.
• Providing inclusive training.
• Collaborating with external organisations.
• Conducting regular inclusive policy reviews to ensure fairness and equity.
• Encouraging leadership engagement and attendance to D&I events.
• Consulting and gathering feedback on HR initiatives from specific employee cohorts.
• Establishing accountability measures. 

By integrating real-life experiences into these initiatives, HR can gain valuable insights to develop comprehensive DEI frameworks that address systemic barriers, promote inclusivity and foster a culture of belonging.

Collecting diversity data

By Roman Ružbacký MAHRI, Principal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Consultant, Roman Ruzbacky & Associates

Diversity data literacy is becoming an essential skill for HR and DEI professionals – including ensuring Human Resources Information Systems house fully inclusive data sets, and skilled personnel can critically interpret their data, provide insights and develop evidence-based approaches and actions that can be measured. 

It’s important to have clear success metrics in place so you actually understand what action has resulted in moving the dial, whether it’s representative target, or a percentage agreement rate for inclusion in the organisation, or knowing who feels included.

The correlation between data sets is critical to understand the full impact of data. For example, how gender pay gaps are connected to representation, job segregation, recruitment and promotion. Intersectional analysis can also provide a more granular analysis and insights into the employee experience. 

In order to translate these insights into action, HR professionals must hone their ability to find the human stories behind their data sets. Finding strong headline data which is irrefutable can help connect with leaders and inspire greater commitment to DEI.

For example, the number of women who have experienced violence by an intimate partner, the 53 per cent workforce participation rate of people with disability, or the gender pay gap; these are figures you can’t dispute. And they’re the kind of figures that should be prompting people into action.

Check out AHRI’s full Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Futures Paper for more valuable insights on navigating Australia’s DEI landscape and driving sustainable change.

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The outcomes of wellbeing and inclusion initiatives, such as improved morale and psychosocial safety, often seem like nebulous, intangible concepts that are difficult for HR to quantify. 

However, as HR practitioners adjust to new challenges to wellbeing at work and new responsibilities to address them, they would be wise to adopt the mantra of management guru Peter Drucker: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

“The measurement issue is a real challenge for all of us,” said Simon Brown-Greaves, Chief Mental Health Officer at Australia Post, during a panel session at AHRI’s virtual diversity, equity and inclusion conference last week. 

“We’ve got to focus on honing our measurements so we’re measuring the right things in the right way – so that people feel they’re able to provide meaningful feedback about the things we’re trying to support them with.”

Those who signed up for AHRI’s DEI event can watch this session on demand.

Current trends in reporting wellbeing at work

During the panel discussion, Jono Nicholas, Managing Director of The Wellbeing Outfit and Chief Mental Health Advisor for EY Oceania, highlighted a number of recent trends influencing the way we should be measuring and reporting on wellbeing at work.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, flexible work has increased the need for a more strategic approach to measuring wellbeing, he says, given that it is harder to gauge the overall mental health of employees who are working offsite. 

2023 has also been a busy year for industrial relations changes, many of which relate to mental health. One of the most significant updates in this space was the recent introduction of a Code of Practice to manage psychosocial hazards in the workplace. 

Formal legal frameworks like this are putting increasing pressure on employers to measure and report on the wellbeing of their people in a compliant manner. 

“This is particularly challenging if you run a national organisation, because the states aren’t necessarily all moving at the same speed,” says Nicholas.

Interestingly, he’s noted that organisations in blue-collar industries, who had OHS teams and infrastructure in place long before mental health codes of practice came into play, have adjusted better to their new responsibilities than employers of white-collar workforces. With this in mind, white-collar employers may well benefit from adopting measures used by the blue-collar industry, such as safety checks at the start of every meeting.

4 ways to measure wellbeing at work 

To aid organisations in overcoming the challenge of effectively measuring employee wellness and inclusion, the panellists offered a number of useful insights. 

1. Consider both tangible and intangible factors

Naturally, the easiest metrics to measure and assess in gathering wellness and inclusion data will be tangible factors such as employees’ ranking of their wellbeing provided via engagement surveys. 

However, according to Brown-Greaves, the best mental health and DEI strategies take a holistic approach, meaning some of their outcomes will manifest in indirect, less obvious ways.

“An example of an intangible indicator for us at Australian Post might be measuring our people’s pride in the brand and in the organisation that they work for,” he says. 

“Pride is correlated with meaning, which in turn is correlated with good mental health and diversity and inclusion outcomes.”

“A long, once-a-year survey that tries to do everything is not the way forward. That type of survey [sometimes] becomes a bit gamified, and we’re not really getting the data we need to make good, sound decisions about mental health and wellbeing.” – Simon Brown-Greaves, Chief Mental Health Officer, Australia Post

2. Tackle hazards with both reactive and preventive strategies

Particularly when reporting to leaders and executives on the levels of wellness and inclusion among the workforce, Brown-Greaves stresses the importance of balancing a reactive approach based on past and existing trends and a preventive approach based on projected trends.

“Thinking about indicators that are both current [lag] as well as indicators that might be predictive of where you’re trending [lead], and finding a blend of lagging and leading indicators is really quite important,” he says.

A dual reactive and preventive strategy is especially useful in handling distress, says Nicholas.

“Distress is often caused [either] by external factors or factors that are baked into the nature of the work,” he says. 

“[For example], in my work with KFC group, we continue to see that customer misbehaviour, or customer abuse, is very high across a range of industries – airline industries, customer service industries, quick-service restaurants – and that’s a factor built into the business [which] can cause a lot of distress.”

Instances like this require a preventive approach that aims to tackle the issue at hand – in this case, this might look like more detailed guidance on responding to customer abuse. Meanwhile, external factors that are outside the employer’s control can be dealt with only via a reactive strategy.

3. Gather the right information in the right way

While generic and infrequent surveys were once the extent of many organisations’ efforts to measure wellness and inclusion, our growing understanding of the multifaceted nature of these concepts calls for a more targeted approach.

Australia Post’s strategy centres around short, sharp and regular pulse surveys to gather feedback from specific groups about specific issues facing their teams, says Brown-Greaves.

“A long, once-a-year survey that tries to do everything is not the way forward. That type of survey [sometimes] becomes a bit gamified, and we’re not really getting the data we need to make good, sound decisions about mental health and wellbeing.

“[You need to] ask your people and ask them in a range of ways, so they’re able to share what they really think about how you’re going on diversity and inclusion.”

4. Balance consistency with individuality

Panellist Dr Ruth Vine, Australia’s first Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Mental Health, explored some of the recent and upcoming government initiatives to ensure a consistent approach to workplace mental health – most significantly, the National Workplace Initiative, an $11.5 million strategy to create an evidence-based framework for workplace mental health and direct employers and workers to find suitable initiatives and resources.

While the goal of the initiative is consistency, this does not mean the initiative is a one-size-fits-all approach, she says.

“It’s important that there are different resources for different groups of people. [For example], we know the health industry is one where there’s particularly high levels of psychological distress and psychological harm, so there have been some specific resources developed for that, one of those being the essential network developed by Black Dog [Institute].”

For the same reason, organisational wellness and inclusion strategies must also acknowledge the unique needs of different cohorts within workforces. 

This was a sentiment that came up again and again throughout the session; the newfound focus on psychosocial hazards has strengthened the link between diversity and inclusion and wellbeing, since psychosocial safety is a key objective in both these areas. 

By ensuring wellbeing is looked at through the lens of DEI, and vice versa, organisations can craft a well-rounded approach that allows wellness and inclusion to be accurately measured and strategically enhanced.

Want to measure your company’s inclusion level? AHRI’s Diversity and Inclusion Maturity Model is a great place to start. Benchmark your efforts and drive lasting change in your workplace.

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Hundreds of HR professionals across Australia logged on for AHRI’s virtual diversity, equity and inclusion conference in October 2023, proudly sponsored by Dynamic Leadership Programs Australia (DLPA), to hear from a range of expert DEI practitioners.

It covered a range of important topics, such as rainbow washing, collecting and measuring diversity metrics and how to talk about politically charged issues in the workplace. Here are three highlights, including some interesting takeaways for HR professionals, managers and leaders.

It’s time to ditch the ‘merit’ argument

In her keynote address, political journalist Annabel Crabb explored the various social and economic barriers many women face at work through the lens of ‘merit’.

“The word itself sounds very solid and reassuring,” she says. “‘We appoint people strictly on merit.’ It sounds like a concept with which no reasonably minded person could quibble.

“[But] I’ve worked in and around politics for about a quarter of a century now, in an age where all parties claim to preselect candidates based purely on merit. And yet, tragically, the landscape is littered with candidates and MPs and, sadly, even ministers who stand in irrefutable fleshy evidence to the contrary.”

This reality is not necessarily driven by those intending to hold women back, she says; even if we have the best of intentions, our brains aren’t as good at assessing merit objectively as we might think they are.

She refers to a social experiment conducted in the 1990s by researcher Monica Biernat at the University of Kansas, where university students were shown photographs of men and women and asked to estimate their height. The subjects posed next to door frames or desks for context.

“Some of the photographs were of men and women of exactly the same height. Photographed next to exactly the same items,” she says. “But the students consistently overestimated the height of the men and underestimated the height of the women. 

“They were affected, even [through] objective assessment, by their knowledge that men are, on average, taller than women. That ingrained knowledge was so strong that it overrode the hard evidence reported by the optic nerve – the participants literally did not believe their eyes.”

Our brains are not wired to be objective, she says. Instead, we instinctively base our decisions on previous experience and long-held beliefs. This helps us to make judgements quickly, but also means prejudice can become embedded in our psyches.

“So, it’s no surprise that when this lamentably fallible collection of electric impulses and cells we call the human brain is entrusted with a decision on something far more complicated – like deciding which person is better for a job – we also lapse into subjectivity.”

“You can’t solve an issue for a particular demographic unless they are front and centre in that discussion.” – Keri Le Page, Inclusion and Diversity Lead, Australia and New Zealand, Mars Incorporated

To ‘override’ our natural inclination toward subjectivity, we need to work harder to provide ourselves and others with hard evidence of women’s potential, says Crabb.

Australia has recently made positive strides in this space through the efforts of the Women’s Gender Equality Agency (WGEA). The agency’s newly granted powers to collect mandatory information from large enterprises about the gender balance of their workforces has created a data set unmatched by any equivalent organisation worldwide.

“It was an incredibly rare opportunity to test what has often been theorised – that gender diversity is actually good for business,” says Crabb. 

“They got a couple of extremely smart economists to build an analytic model as to whether there was a causal connection between gender diversity and profitability. And guess what: there was.”

The WGEA’s research established that companies who appointed a female CEO increased their market value by five per cent – equivalent to nearly $80 million for an average ASX200 company, she says. 

Meanwhile, increasing the number of women in other key leadership positions by 10 per cent or more increased the company’s value by 6.6 per cent.

“The study doesn’t prove that women make better CEOs than men, but it does provide powerful evidence that diverse groups make better decisions than homogeneous ones,” she says.

“We’re so accustomed to thinking of hiring appointments, especially for big jobs, to be all about individual attributes: the ‘first past the post’ system of merit. But smart leaders are realising that ten guys with MBAs do not necessarily make the most meritorious group, no matter how brilliant they individually are. Who you work with is incredibly important. 

“Once you get past our cult-like obsession with individual merit, you start to make better decisions.”

When should corporate companies take a stand?

Research from Gartner shows 65 per cent of people want to work for a company that takes a strong stand on social and environmental issues. Gartner goes on to say that HR leaders need to “advocate” for this as part of the employee value proposition.

But this is often easier said than done. 

This was a topic that Tamara Pararajasingham, General Manager of Impact and Innovation at Uniting, Rhonda Brighton-Hall FCPHR and James Hancock, co-founders of Making Work Absolutely Human, dove into during their session on the corporate role in DEI.

Brighton-Hall, who also sits on AHRI’s DEI advisory committee, set the scene by referring to Eldeman’s latest trust barometer, which surveyed 32,000 people globally, and showed that Australia is on the verge of being “severely polarised”; 45 per cent of people think that our nation is more divided today than at any point in history.

“There’s a really good piece of research from Associate Professor Ruchi Sinha from the university of South Australia [which says that] subgroups divide trust, break collaboration and hamper decision making. If we can’t have conversations where people are able to join and share different views, that becomes something that will hurt teams and teamwork in every organisation,” says Brighton-Hall.

She went on to ask her fellow panellists a meaty question: ‘Do organisations have a role in participating, or even leading, social and political debates and agendas in Australia?’

Pararajasingham says this should be “no different to any other business decision”.

“You should lead with your strategy, lead with your values and reflect with your people when you make those decisions,” she says.

Hancock believes organisations could do more to make space for these types of conversations at work.

“If not, then what happens is you go home… and you’ve got three people to talk to about it, rather than the 500 or 1000 [people in your workplace]. That means we’re isolating the topics and not driving any change,” he says.

But that doesn’t mean organisations should start spouting opinions about every social issue that crops up. It requires a more strategic approach than that. Brighton-Hall suggests four options to consider:

1. You are a powerful organisation that is powerful and important in society. You have an important role in speaking up and therefore should form a view on these topics.
2. You have a strong corporate social responsibility agenda, but you don’t need to have a strong view on everything. For example, you’re a company that cares deeply about the environment as it aligns with your business goals and values.
3. Your approach is dictated from an ESG and compliance perspective. Your investors and leaders believe that organisations need a solid ESG reporting approach to operate sustainably over time.
4. Your organisation should only focus on its business purpose, meaning social issues should be dealt with outside of the work environment.

In many instances, organisations will choose an option that aligns with their appetite for social change. But they may have to choose the option that aligns best with their resources, says Pararajasingham. 

“They have limited efforts and time that they can put into things. So it’s about deciding where you will lean in,” she says.

A framework that Pararajasingham uses at Uniting is whether they will lead, support, follow or not act.

“We will lead where it’s aligned with strategy values and the resources we have available at the time. We will support publicly where it [aligns with our strategy and values] but perhaps we don’t have the legitimacy or voice to add anything at this point. And sometimes we will simply follow or not act.

“But something that’s not an option is not to have the conversation about it. Not picking a position is also saying something,” says Pararajasingham.

“The study doesn’t prove that women make better CEOs than men, but it does provide powerful evidence that diverse groups make better decisions than homogeneous ones.” – Annabel Crabb, political journalist

Brighton-Hall capped off the conversation with an important point about collecting a wide range of views to ensure you’re able to come to these often-divisive workplace conversations with an understanding of all sides of the argument – consciously removing yourself from your bubble, so to speak.

“One of the first things people can do to navigate what society looks like right now is making sure you have three or four different subscriptions to newspapers,” she says. “You start to get the perspective that there isn’t a right or wrong answer. The world is complicated and we have to respect that people have vastly different experiences of everything.”

Hancock says this helps to find that important middle ground that’s often missing in these emotionally charged conversations.

“We assume too much, we over-preach and, sometimes, we talk more than we listen. Even when you don’t like what you’re hearing, you need to try and find a way to move things forward.”

The power of lived experience

One of the non-negotiable aspects of an impactful DEI strategy is input from diverse employees, according to Keri Le Page, Inclusion and Diversity Lead for Australia and New Zealand at Mars Incorporated.

“It all comes back to this idea of, ‘Nothing about me without me,’” she says. “You can’t solve an issue for a particular demographic unless they are front and centre in that discussion.”

In a panel session on the value of lived experience, Le Page shared an example of the power of lived experience to not only to make diverse employees feel more included, but also to get an entire organisation on board with DEI.

“We ran a Wear It Purple event [at Mars], and we had pride and diversity people come in and talk about statistics around youth suicide in the LGBTQI+ community, for example – which is really powerful, but it’s also academic,” she says.

“But then, we had four associates, one of whom is one of the most senior people in our organisation, talk about the fact that they were parents of rainbow children and their absolute fierce love for them and their anguish at the barriers they face for being who they are.

“I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. It was the most moving thing because it was people we know; it was the people that sat next to us, talking about the love they have for their children despite these battles. I don’t think I’ve seen people impacted so deeply as [they were] listening to those personal stories.” 

The sensitive nature of topics like this is what makes them so powerful from the listener’s perspective. However, employers should also consider the impact that sharing them might have on the speaker, says fellow panellist Shruti Chandhok, Manager of Organisation Inclusion Culture at the Victorian Department of Transport and Planning.

“[We need] to ensure when people speak about their lived experience – which often can be quite traumatic – that we’ve got the appropriate cultural support in place,” she says. “So, [for example], employee assistance programs that are culturally appropriate for our priority cohorts.”

Want to measure your company’s diversity and inclusion level? AHRI’s Diversity and Inclusion Maturity Model is a great place to start. Benchmark your efforts and drive lasting change in your workplace.

When employees contribute their perspectives at work, the panellists also stress the importance of acknowledging their input and taking swift action to address any concerns they may have. Failing to do this can lead to the very employees you’re trying to help becoming disengaged and disillusioned with the organisation’s mission. 

To avoid this, Sugandha Chapman, Senior Manager of Client Delivery at Inkling Group, recommends gathering lived experience input through official, established networks such as employee resource groups or employee advocacy groups.

“It’s [about] having a platform for those voices to be heard in a regular, structured dialogue,” she says.

“So, [there need to be] clear communication channels to those who have authority and the power to actually make decisions and culture changes, so they are heard in ways that [lead to] action.”

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Since the introduction of new employer responsibilities to foster psychosocial safety at work, the concept of workplace wellbeing has taken on new dimensions.

Employers and their people are increasingly aware that workplace mental health initiatives cannot be confined to once-a-year workshops; instead, they must be woven into every aspect of organisational strategy, from change management to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) – and that needs to start from the top.

In response to greater emphasis placed on managing psychosocial risks in the workplace, some organisations have opened the doors of the C-Suite to a new role: the Chief Mental Health Officer (CMHO).

One such organisation is Australia Post (AusPost). Last year, the company appointed its inaugural CMHO, Simon Brown-Greaves, who has since facilitated a wide range of wellbeing frameworks to support the diverse needs of AusPost’s 60,000+ employees.

“I was very fortunate to come in when the team had [already] done a huge amount of work on the mental health strategy,” says Brown-Greaves. “I was really pleased to see so many initiatives around the business. I [also] could not have asked for a better and more supportive leadership group.”

Brown-Greaves will be speaking at AHRI’s upcoming Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Conference on 31 October about the mechanics of a top-down mental health strategy and its intersections with diversity and inclusion.

Enhancing psychosocial safety from the top down 

While few employers would dispute the importance of workplace mental health in driving success, research suggests wellbeing may still be too far down on most leaders’ to-do lists; according to a report from Job Access, mental health inaction is costing Australian businesses almost $11 billion per year.

“We know there are high levels of psychological distress in the community, especially in young people and particular population groups,” says Ruth Vine, Australia’s first Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Mental Health, who will be speaking alongside Brown-Greaves at AHRI’s DEI conference.

“We also know the impacts of COVID-19 are still being felt, and workplaces have changed for many. Understanding and responding to these issues is critical.”

Navigating organisational transformation in the aftermath of the pandemic has been one of the central objectives of Australia Post’s mental health strategy in the past few years. After serious disruption to its workforce triggered by COVID-19, bushfires and floods, AusPost saw an opportunity to implement a holistic risk management strategy to support its frontline staff. 

“It’s all about providing meaningful work for people, however they identify and [whatever] their inclusion needs are.” – Simon Brown-Greaves, Chief Mental Health Officer at Australia Post

The initiative launched to address this challenge, the WorkEsteem program, involved the establishment of a people and culture psychological health and safety working group, bringing individuals together from HR, wellbeing and OH&S teams – a strategy recognising the value of an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to psychosocial safety. 

These teams worked collaboratively to identify lead workplace indicators that might predict psychosocial risks. They then followed a staged approach to manage these risks through proactive and reactive surveying, action plan development and evaluation mechanisms.

“This program is a very evidence-based approach to helping local areas understand what their requirements are and what they need to do to make themselves as psychologically safe as they can possibly be,” says Brown-Greaves.

The success of the program ultimately led to Australia Post receiving the Workplace Mental Health Award at last year’s AHRI Awards. The program is still in place today, and the response from those involved has been overwhelmingly positive, he says.

“People just relish the opportunity to stop, reflect, analyse and really think about what they need to do collectively to improve the quality of workplace relationships and get on top of things that might be having a negative impact on the wellbeing of the team.”

The intersection of mental health and DEI

When it comes to psychological safety, Brown-Greaves points out mental health initiatives have many of the same objectives as DEI strategies.

“It’s all about providing meaningful work for people, however they identify and [whatever] their inclusion needs are. And that dovetails beautifully into the idea that inclusive workplaces, where people feel confident to express their views and be themselves, tend to be psychologically safe workplaces.”

Because of this, it’s crucial for organisations to consider their mental health strategies in the context of their DEI strategies, and vice versa.

“We have a mental health council at Australia Post which consists of internal and external key stakeholders, and our diversity and inclusion team are part of that mental health council, which means we’re in each other’s pockets on a day-to-day basis,” he says.

One of the benefits of entwining DEI and mental health is the possibility of merging employee data sets for a more well-rounded perspective on issues facing the workforce.

“Integrating all of those data sets into an overarching performance metric is really important. We also do a quite substantial engagement and opinion [survey] on a regular basis… We ask specific questions about people’s sense of inclusion, participation and engagement. 

“That informs where our gaps might be, or where we’ve got parts of the business that need different levels of attention or support when it comes to issues around both mental health and diversity and inclusion.

“If we, for example, had a downturn in a workplace in terms of their feelings of psychological safety, or their feelings of inclusion, you can be reasonably sure that will be correlated with other needs or other issues that will need attention.”

Dr Vine has also noted a trend towards organisations taking a more holistic approach like this to mental health.

“In general, I think there is recognition of the value add of including a range of views and perspectives into the workplace at all levels,” she says. 

She suggests organisations break down the various facets of DEI before they consider their correlation to mental health.

“Diversity, equity and inclusion are all important considerations. My advice would be to consider them separately. They each encompass different aspects of our expectations of workplaces and indeed of our broader expectations of the society in which we live.”

For instance, a workforce comprising individuals from different ethnic backgrounds, age groups and genders (diversity) can be a driver of high psychological safety, but this might not be the case if certain employees are facing obstacles in career advancement and fair compensation (equity) or feel excluded or unheard in decision-making processes (inclusion). 

By analysing these distinct areas, employers can more easily identify pain points that could be hindering employees’ sense of psychological safety.

According to Brown-Greaves, the outcomes of both mental health and DEI initiatives are often dictated by the extent to which employees can relate to them.

“The key to success is [getting] the engagement of the broader workforce and, secondly, making sure the focus is on real jobs, meaningful work, and treating and enabling people to be part of the team,” he says.

“We’ve got so many workplaces where our team members are so proud of both the brand and the work they do, and the way in which they’re inclusive of people who may struggle to find meaningful work in other environments. We have a great deal of pride around the business in enabling that.”

There’s still time to register for AHRI’s virtual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion conference on 31 October and hear from Simon Brown-Greaves, Ruth Vine and more. Register today.

The post The role of diversity, equity and inclusion in psychosocial safety appeared first on HRM online.

Earlier this year, millions of Australians rallied around their team of choice in support of the Women’s World Cup. 

The Matildas were a uniting force in our community, with even the non-sports fans among us glued to our TV screens with bated breath. Their semi-final game against England broke ratings records, amassing 11.15 million viewers over the course of the 90-minute game.

The significance of this can’t be understated. For the first time, women’s sport – which, historically, has been underfunded and pushed into the shadows – was in the spotlight for all the right reasons. But despite the outpour of positivity and enthusiasm, the narrative ended on a negative note.

Instead of the media continuing conversations about elevating women’s sports and the outstanding talent displayed on the field, we were left with headlines such as: ‘How an unwanted kiss in Sydney sparked a revolution in Spanish football’ and ‘Non-consensual soccer kiss controversy continues.’

These are scenarios that, unfortunately, feel all too familiar. By now, many people have become desensitised to the slew of negative statistics around women at work: that they are paid less, less likely to be promoted and more likely to experience sexual harassment in their personal and professional lives. 

Speaking about the unwanted kiss in an article for ABC News, political journalist Annabel Crabb wrote that women not only have to experience sexual harassment in the workplace, be that a soccer field or a board room, but also have to deal with often unsupportive and sometimes retraumatising processes in the wake of incidents like this.

“If you don’t report it, you feel guilty for not standing up for yourself, or for failing to protect other women. If you do, you run the risk of being slimed as a raging man-hater and troublemaker,” Crabb wrote.

So what measures need to be put in place to create safer workplaces for women?

Creating safer workplaces

The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) recently released guidelines on employers’ new positive duty to eliminate sexual harassment in workplaces.

This positive duty has been in effect since December 2022, but these new guidelines have been released ahead of the AHRC gaining new enforcement and investigative powers, announced as part of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill, from 12 December this year. 

Essentially, this means the AHRC will have the power to investigate non-compliance with the guidelines, and if organisations are caught out, they will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by a court or tribunal.  

Ahead of this, it’s important that HR professionals and workplace leaders understand their obligations under the new guidelines, including:

• An onus on senior leaders to understand the guidelines and what constitutes unlawful behaviour. 
• The establishment of appropriate avenues to report sexual harassment that minimise harm to victims. 
• The collection of data around any unlawful behaviour that takes place.
• New responsibilities for employers and PCBUs to provide workers who experience or witness unlawful behaviour in workplaces with appropriate support. That support should be accessible and readily available, whether or not the conduct has been reported. 
  

You can read the full list of guidelines here.

Speaking to HRM, Crabb says, “Discretion and empowerment for the person affected is the most important thing.”

Referring back to the Spanish soccer captain’s kiss, she says, “You’ll notice that that whole situation was very quickly taken out of Jenni Hermoso’s [the Spanish soccer player’s] hands. First she was pressured to laugh it off, and then she was pressured to speak up. 

“It should always be about the shortest and healthiest route for the woman to get back to a position of feeling confident and respected at her workplace… It’s about feeling like you’ve been respected,” says Crabb, who is an upcoming speaker at AHRI’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Conference. 

Creating fairer workplaces

As well as trying to create safer workplaces for women, many employers are also engaging in efforts to make their work environments fairer. 

Ahead of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency publishing the gender pay gaps of all organisations with over 100 employees in 2024, many organisations are likely considering conducting a pay analysis to do their part to bridge Australia’s 13 per cent pay gap.

On top of this, many employers are on track to increase the number of women hired and promoted. Accenture, for example, is aiming to have a gender-balanced workforce by 2025, and construction company Laing O’Rourke has recently introduced a sponsorship program to get more women into leadership.

“Diverse groups of people make better decisions. There’s no doubt about that any more.” – Annabelle Crabb

However, some organisations can face resistance when they launch programs like this. For example, mentions of the concept of meritocracy often follow any suggestion of the introduction of gender quotas – or quotas for any diversity group, for that matter.

“I often hear the concept of merit-based appointment chucked around as an argument against targets or quotas. And it sounds great. But often the actual measure of merit is very vague,” says Crabb.

“Like in politics, where there really aren’t any measurable KPIs to speak of. What merit often quietly means, in this situation, is ‘Someone who looks like the guy who did the job before.'” 

The truth is, we’ve embraced quotas in other respects for a long time. She refers to the political arena again to illustrate this.

“There are really clear formalised quotas. When parties preselect candidates, there has to be x number of safe seats for the Right, x amount for the Left, x amount of ministerial positions for the National Party, you name it. It’s only when quotas for women get raised that people start to get all itchy.”

The problem with the merit argument, says Crabb in the ABC article, is that there’s a “double fiction” at play.

“First, [there’s the idea] that men have always gained their successes on merit, and second, that merit in women will be recognised and rewarded the same way as it is in genuinely talented men,” writes Crabb. 

Whether gender quotas are the solution remains up for debate. However, it does raise an important conversation about the difference between equality and equity. As demonstrated by the oft-cited image below, simply giving everyone the same resources and opportunities (equality) does not always level the playing field. 

In order to provide equity, where everyone has access to the same opportunities, individuals or groups of people often need certain accommodations made.

Image: By Angus Maguire via Interaction Institute for Social Change.

In a previous article for HRMOnline, former Disability Commissioner Graeme Innes says he’s made a “complete shift” on the use of quotas, which he prefers to call ‘targets’.

“I’ve come to the conclusion, after working in this space for 20 or 30 years, that targets are the only thing that work,” he said.

“The only way that I’ve seen [disability employment] move is by the introduction of targets. As any business [leader] knows, what you don’t count doesn’t count. And by introducing [diversity] targets, in the same way a car company has production targets or that a bank has client acquisition targets, you then work out ways to deliver on those targets.”

In this same article, Sam Turner, Chief People Officer at Allens, said a lot of underrepresented people want to get appointed and promoted based on their own efforts.

“But that assumes we start on a level playing field, and we really don’t. From my perspective, the only time [targets] hinder is when we don’t equip leaders, managers and hiring managers with the right tools and coaching to achieve those targets.

“It’s just as much about how you implement the target as having the target in the first place. No one ever gets cast aside. That’s not what targets are about. It’s always about the right person for the job. It’s just about removing some of the hurdles and barriers,” said Turner.

In their shoes

Of course, fixing what’s broken in a company’s culture shouldn’t sit with HR alone, but Crabb says it’s important to remember the influence HR yields and the change they can encourage.

“HR professionals have such a key role in thinking laterally about how people’s skills can best be put to use, by eliminating barriers that make it hard for them to work in an existing system or set of assumptions.  

“It’s why, too, the best leaders I see these days are the ones who are confident enough in their own skin to understand where their blind spots are and seek advice and ask questions of the people who have different life experiences. Diverse groups of people make better decisions. There’s no doubt about that any more.”

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