Introduction

Urban water utilities in Australia have significantly lifted their focus on inclusion and diversity in recent years, in response to growing recognition that diverse workforces make better decisions, improve innovation, and deliver better outcomes for the community.

This has also been driven in part by state government initiatives to improve diversity across public sector agencies, particularly at board level.

The impact of this focus is already evident. Many water businesses have achieved gender balance on their boards and significantly increased the representation of women in executive and senior management teams.

There has also been a notable expansion of focus areas. While water businesses are continuing to focus on gender equity, they are increasingly scaling up efforts to support broader diversity dimensions (culture, age and life-stage, people with disability, LGBTI employees, and indigenous employees).

Inclusive leadership capability that nurtures diversity of thinking to enhance decision-making is also a growing focus of strategies being developed and refreshed.

The strong link of diversity with inclusion is a feature of the industry.

Reflecting extensive research showing that diverse teams thrive in an inclusive operating environment, most water businesses now have an explicit focus on inclusion and diversity.

Inclusive cultures benefit everyone – employees, customers, and local communities.

Inclusion and diversity is now positioned among leading water businesses as an integral component of broader cultural transformation efforts to develop high-performance and constructive workplace cultures.

The objective of this Paper is to describe approaches to inclusion and diversity in the urban water sector. It highlights an increasingly comprehensive approach to setting inclusion and diversity strategies, building governance frameworks, dedicated resourcing, and executive oversight to progress goals.

The Paper is intended to demonstrate the breadth and depth of initiatives for industry stakeholders as well as encouraging collaboration within the industry through sharing leading practices.