How a diversity manager can re-shape your organisation

If your aim is to create a dynamic, diverse workforce it makes sense to employ someone to pioneer that change.

A Diversity and Inclusion role specifically helps foster a space where your workforce can feel motivated, happy and engaged.

But it’s not just thinking about the people who currently work for your organisation. This role sets your company up to attract your future workforce.

Dr Theresa Smith Ruig is a Diversity and Inclusion specialist for Ignis Consulting. She gives you practical tips on policies, strategies and initiatives you can implement to ensure your diverse workforce is thriving.

Find out why you need this game-changing role within your organisation.

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Getting It Right is a Jobsbank podcast, produced by Deadset Studios and hosted by Rae Johnston.

Find your downloadable Getting It Right Guide here; plus plenty more handy resources to help you on inclusive hiring at the Jobsbank Resource Centre.

CREDITS

Host: Rae Johnston

Deadset Studios executive producers: Kellie Riordan, Ann Chesterman, Rachel Fountain

Deadset Studios producer: Luci McAfee

Sound design: Scott Stronach

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land on which this show was made.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Employer (00:05):
Hi, I just saw you put some time in my
diary for a chat. Is everything ok. Oh, yes. Yes.
Come on in more than ok. Fantastic. In fact, because
I have just discovered our latest rock star spoiler alert.

Employee (00:22):
It's you. So you, you saw my report? I, I
worked really hard on that actually. Oh, no, no, no, no, no,
not that even better. I see here you actually meet
four out of five of our diversity goal categories and
all in one person. Do you know how fantastic this is,
what a coup for the company? You're right there hiding

(00:45):
in plain sight.

Employer (00:47):
Uh Thank you. Look, just checking if there's any possibility
that there might be some, you know, fluidity in your
gender spectrum. No, no, no, no, no, no, that's ok.
That's fine. That's look, it's perfectly fine. Just be sure
to let me know if that change is ok. We'll

(01:08):
leave it at four for now. So clearly you are
the perfect person for our synergy through diversity initiative. Actually.
That would be fantastic. I feel like there's actually a
lot of work to be done and, and I've got
a lot of ideas maybe we should start with the framework.

Employee (01:29):
So uh who would I be reporting to? Oh, no,
you are taking the lead on this. We will call
you the diversity officer. Wow. So I'd have a whole
team working with me.

Employer (01:44):
Look in the future we could potentially, I mean, look, it, it,
it depends who you bring into the business really because
this would be a fantastic opportunity for you to really
get yourself out there yet. Rep the organization on panels conferences,
you talk about all the really good things that we're
doing for diversity and inclusion within the company. Yeah, great.

(02:08):
Um So what are we planning on doing the world?
Is your oyster? You come to me when you've got
a plan in place, we'll present to the leadership team
and we'll see what sticks take it from there.

Employee (02:22):
Would I get time out of my everyday work to
do that? Like, what support would I receive?

Employer (02:28):
Well, it is really important to us to have trail
blazers like you in this organization, you know, volunteering your
time leading the way and we will support you emotionally.

Rae Johnston (02:48):
Ah, yes, the unsung work of the diversity manager, a
title and a bunch of work that might be your
job just because you're the diverse one. But a properly
appointed diversity and inclusion manager does so much more than
whip out the bikkies and cupcakes for NAIDOC Week. It's an

(03:12):
increasingly common and valued role if it's structured Well, from
Jobsbank , this is Getting It Right. And I'm Rae Johnston.
In season two, we're helping you unearth the untapped job market
to attract a more diverse pool of employees across your organization.

Dr Theresa Smith Ruig (03:32):
The number one thing is making sure there's psychological safety
in a team and the way you do that is
to make sure that everyone feels included.

Rae Johnston (03:41):
This is Doctor Theresa Smith Ruig. She's a diversity and
inclusion specialist with Ignis consulting. Theresa has lived experience of disability,
having been blind since the age of 10. She's consulted
for mining company Oz Minerals and has worked closely with
vision Australia.
Now, if a business wants to make their workplace a

(04:03):
more diverse and inclusive space, it does make sense to
hire someone that's championing that. But what exactly does a
diversity and inclusion manager do

Dr Theresa Smith Ruig (04:15):
quite a range of things depending on the size of
the organization or the scope of work that they have
to perform.
But essentially their responsibility is to design and deliver strategies
and initiatives to make the workforce more diverse. And also
to ensure that the workforce feels included, have a sense
of belonging, feel that sense of welcome in the workplace.

(04:36):
So there's a lot of project management in terms of
delivering on those initiatives and making sure that they meet
the right audience, there's a lot of stakeholder engagement. So
dealing with various parts of the organization, maybe external bodies
that are specialist in particular diverse areas and making sure
that you've got the ability to connect all of those

(04:56):
people to achieve your diversity and inclusion goals. You also
need to be someone that's good at perhaps analyzing and
collecting data and making sense of that. So for example,
you might run surveys in the workforce to determine the
extent of diversity and inclusion and use that data to
help inform what strategies you might try and develop or

(05:16):
deliver for an organization. You need really good communication skills
as well. So someone that can both written and verbal,
speak to different audience, different stakeholders, both inside and outside
the organization and work with different departments to help build
that diverse and inclusive workforce that you're trying to achieve.

Rae Johnston (05:36):
Would it be fair to say that a diversity and
inclusion manager can really shape an organization?

Dr Theresa Smith Ruig (05:42):
Absolutely. Like any people related role, people are a large
part of your success as an organization. Obviously, we often
think about the financials when it comes to sustainability of business.
But unless you get the people quotient right, then you're
not gonna have the workforce motivated, engaged and satisfied to
perform at the level you need them to do to
achieve your business goals. So making sure that people experience

(06:06):
as we like to call it, making sure that's optimal
to ensure that your workforce is happy, motivated, engaged is
really important. And so a diversity and inclusion manager, like
other HR roles play a really important role in that
we know Google a number of years ago did massive
research on trying to understand what are the key things
that make teams perform at a high level. And the

(06:27):
number one thing is making sure there's psychological safety in
a team and the way you do that is to
make sure that everyone feels included. And so that's where
a diversity and inclusion manager can really play an important role.

Rae Johnston (06:40):
if a company doesn't have a genuinely welcoming culture is
the potential that the diversity and inclusion manager could be
seen as a band aid fix.

Dr Theresa Smith Ruig (06:53):
Yes, absolutely. But their role is to come and address
and understand why. So what's going on that's not creating
that sense of inclusion. Perhaps it's a an opportunity to
provide training and awareness to people across the organization around
how you create inclusion. So what you want to do
is to make sure employees feel like they can come
to work and you know, show their best selves in

(07:15):
order to create more creativity, innovation, sharing of ideas, problem solving,
people need to feel safe to do that. And if
you create an inclusive work environment, that's when they will
feel safe to do that and therefore be performing at
their best.

Rae Johnston (07:29):
I'd love to talk a little about your diversity and
inclusion consulting work within the mining industry. Were there any
particular scenarios where you were able to implement really helpful policies?

Dr Theresa Smith Ruig (07:42):
So the organization was quite well advanced in terms of
articulating what they wanted to achieve from a diversity and
inclusion perspective. My role was to see how we could
roll that out at a particular mine site. And for
that large workforce that was for both paid staff of
the organization plus a large contractor workforce. So you've got

(08:02):
two arms to the workforce. So how did we create
a diverse and inclusive workplace? So, developing a whole range
of strategies and initiatives to help build inclusion. So that
looked at everything from attraction, retention, development, reward training and development,
implementing things like reviewing policies and procedures to ensure that
they aligned with best practice when it came to diversity inclusion,

(08:26):
making sure we rolled out appropriate training and awareness around
what is inclusive behavior. What does it look like for
both managers and the workforce? So things around unconscious bias,
understanding how to be an ally in the workplace and
how do we, you know, eliminate things like gender based
discrimination or harassment or victimization in the workplace? So a

(08:47):
whole range of areas were part of that action plan
for the organization to look at and implement, to build
a more diverse and inclusive environment for staff and contractors.

Rae Johnston (08:58):
It's a lot of work, isn't it? More than most
people would think?

Dr Theresa Smith Ruig (09:02):
Look it is because when you think about your workforce,
it's not just your current workforce, it's your potential workforce.
So when you're trying to attract people into the organization,
what can you do to ensure that you bring diversity in.
So at the mining company, for example, it wasn't just
about diversity in terms of gender or Aboriginal and Torres
Strait islander or cultural diversity. They wanted diversity in terms

(09:23):
of people from outside of mining. They saw that as
a diversity plus. So not just recruiting people that had
always worked in the mining industry, they wanted non mining
people to come in and give them different insights and
different perspectives to help build that problem solving that sense
of creativity and innovation in the organization. Then once you
get a diverse workforce in, then you've got to make

(09:43):
sure that that sense of inclusion there. And that's where
you've got to ensure that end to end people experience
is inclusive. So everything from once you're on board, new
workforce members, right through to training, to development, to remuneration
to all those opportunities that you give them, making sure
that that has a lens of diversity inclusion on it.

(10:04):
And then there's also, you know, the legislative compliance that
you have to meet from a diversity inclusion manager. So
there's a lot you have to think about in terms
of are we meeting reporting requirements? So there's requirements for
large organizations to report around their gender statistics, particularly to
the workplace gender equality agency. So a diversity inclusion manager
is responsible for that sort of collecting of data, analyzing

(10:26):
it and reporting it to government. There's also new recent
legislation brought in around respect at work, which has required
a positive duty on employers now to ensure they're taking
all reasonable steps to make sure that there's no sexual harassment,
sex based harassment or conduct that would create a hostile
work environment or create victimization. So there's all these compliance

(10:48):
requirements that someone in a diversity inclusion manager role would
also have to perform in addition to the people related
functions as well.

Rae Johnston (11:00):
There are plenty of practical tips at Jobsbank 's resource center,
lots of resources, reports and guides. They're going to help
you with hiring and procurement. It does not matter if
you're a big company, a small business, a government department
or a not for profit. That resource center is full

(11:21):
of relevant tips to make your job of hiring and
buying with purpose a whole lot easier. You can find
it at jobsbank.org.au
Getting it Right is a podcast from Jobabsnk and it's produced
by Deadset studios. You can follow the podcast in the

(11:41):
podcast app of your choice. That way you never miss
an episode.
I'm Rae Johnston. This episode was recorded on the unceded lands of the sovereign Darug, Gandangara and Wiradjuri peoples produced and edited on the lands of the Turrbal and Jagera people. We wish to pay our deepest respects to their elders past and present. And we ask that you too acknowledge the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Lands on which you're listening from.