In 2017, Diversity Partners undertook 20 diagnostic and strategy engagements to set the course for action to achieve more diverse and inclusive workplaces in Australia and New Zealand. These engagements have been for a range of organisations, including top ASX firms, local subsidiaries of global firms, public sector agencies, and emergency services providers.
Setting the course for diversity and inclusion progress needs a methodical approach.
We’ve also reviewed the talent management policies for a number of organisations to reduce the potential for unconscious bias and diversify talent pools.
Here we share five insights from our experiences in co-developing strategies with clients this year.
Five Insights
- Developing a diversity and inclusion strategy is an opportunity to clearly articulate how the selected actions will advance organisational priorities, align with values and behaviours, meet customer needs, and help create the cultural change we all want to see in workplaces.
- Among leading organisations, the outcomes typically go beyond achieving certain demographic targets (e.g. percentage of women in leadership) to meaningful measures correlating levels of inclusion with innovation and productivity metrics. For example, resources giant BHP has quantified the benefits, finding that ‘our most diverse sites outperform the company average on many measures, such as lower injury rates, and greater adherence to work plans and production targets,’ according to CEO Andrew Mackenzie.
- A robust D & I strategy is not an easily templated strategy. It’s a carefully considered plan that addresses specific organisational challenges and biases, demographic gaps, and policy shortfalls.
- Governance matters. It might seem simplistic, but it’s really important to spell out who has responsibility for what, including the role of a diversity steering committee if one exists.
- Being realistic about plans for year one, two, and three keeps the momentum going.
- Linking internal efforts with external efforts (e.g. corporate social responsibility initiatives) helps stakeholders to make deeper connections about the value of diversity and inclusion.
One of our longer-term strategy engagements this year was with the Bureau of Meteorology, resulting in the launch of their Gender Equality Plan in October. Chief Scientist and Group Executive Science & Innovation, Dr Sue Barrell, recently shared her feedback on the partnership:
“We started our journey by engaging Diversity Partners to research challenges and opportunities for us. Their research was extremely thorough, drawing on inputs from hundreds of team members and a range of data points relating to recruitment, retention, flexibility usage, and promotion. From this, we worked with Diversity Partners to develop a comprehensive action plan.
This has been an exemplary partnership and we acknowledge the commitment, professionalism and passion of the team who worked closely with us, our ‘friends’ on this journey.”
With the ever-growing focus on diversity and inclusion in the community and in workplaces comes a responsibility to set well-crafted, commercially-savvy strategies with tangible actions and accountability to drive progress. That’s a responsibility we take very seriously at Diversity Partners.
Please contact us at info@diversitypartners.com.au if you’d like to discuss ways we can work with you to advance your organisation’s diversity and inclusion efforts in 2018.
