When organisations first contact us, some have a clear idea of the challenges they’re trying to address, such as a lack of cultural diversity or gender balance at leadership levels, or concerning levels of inclusion reported through engagement surveys.
What are less clear are the reasons behind these challenges, and how best to drive progress.
That’s why we recommend a ‘discovery’ process that identifies the cultural and structural barriers getting in the way of diversity progress and overall firm performance.
Organisations can then push forward confidently with a bespoke diversity and inclusion strategy and action plans.
The research we undertake for many clients includes a detailed analysis of existing policies, current demographics, external benchmarking, together with employee views captured through interviews and focus groups. We draw on global benchmarks and local industry knowledge to recommend appropriate solutions.
Recent diagnostics have taken us from mine sites to boardrooms around Australia. We’ve interviewed CEO’s, senior managers, paramedics, IT specialists, engineers, meteorologists, digital media entrepreneurs, among others, to provide an assessment of diversity challenges and opportunities.
Uncovering new opportunities
It’s particularly interesting when diversity opportunities aren’t immediately obvious to our clients. Here’s a few examples where opportunities highlighted had an immediate impact on service delivery, product design and employee engagement.
- A global financial services firm realised their marketing programs didn’t adequately reflect the needs of their increasingly diverse consumer segments.
- Another diagnostic highlighted an overwhelming need from employees for education about engaging with different cultural groups in the community so they could provide more targeted and culturally-sensitive services.
- One organisation discovered that managers wanted much greater guidance and tools to effectively lead flexible teams.
- In another firm, the diagnostic showed a significant difference between employee perceptions of biases and leadership views of how the firm was tracking on diversity. Employees were strongly concerned about perceived in-action by leadership.
A global financial services firm recognised their marketing programs didn’t adequately reflect the needs of diverse consumer segments. Photo license: Getty Images.
If you’re wondering what initiatives will best progress your diversity and inclusion objectives, going back to the fundamentals of ‘what are we trying to achieve’ and ‘what problems are we trying to address’ is often the best step to achieve targeted and effective solutions.
What we’re working on
The team at Diversity Partners has been working on several client engagements in the first quarter of 2017. Here’s a sample:
- Diversity diagnostics for emergency services organisations, resources firms, water utilities and government agencies;
- ‘Inclusive Leadership: challenging unconscious bias’ programs for organisations in the transport, rail, mining, manufacturing, legal, and financial services sectors;
- Flexibility programs and toolkits for financial services firms and Australian Government departments;
- Facilitating D & I Councils for a media/advertising firm and rail operator;
- Strategic partnership with a global mining company to advance the targeted objectives and metrics for a major division;
- Cultural intelligence programs to build the cross-cultural communications and capability of employees in the transport sector.
