Hello and welcome to another UWA Podcast. My name is Jane I'll be your host for today as we discuss diversity and inclusion in the workforce. So we are joined by the wonderful Dee Adeyami. Now Dee is an inclusion and diversity strategist. She's experiencing delivering diversity and inclusion training, implementing inclusion focused initiatives and strategic planning in a complex organization. She's currently working in this capacity at the University of Western Australia. Welcome aboard and thank you for joining us Dee Adeyami. >> Thank you for having me Jane. It's my pleasure. >> So today we are looking at diversity and inclusion. Now, Dee diversity and inclusion hot topics at the moment though I think there probably have been for a little while but they seem [LAUGH] to be hot topics at the moment. What got you into this field? >> So for me I came to Australia about 12 13 years ago to do my Masters degree in human resource management, and I did an introduction to diversity management at Monash University. And that just made so much sense to me. It was so fascinating because I was coming from relatively divers but also homogeneous place where diversity was not such a thing. That's tricky to say because diversity was a thing but not in the way that it is here. So I mean I came here was very much culture shocked by the difference in my expectations and my experience. And so when I did the introduction to diversity management, I got really really fascinated by there wasn't much talk about inclusion back then obviously. So I took the course and I just thought I would like to work in this area. This is the area I'd like to specialize in after my Master's degree. And since then I have stayed very close to the topic. But recently I went back again to do an honest degree and did research specifically in that space and also got a job in the area at the same time. So I was very fortunate. And yeah, it's just a fascinating topic for me. I think it's very important. I think it's tied to social justice. I think it's really great for organization. So yeah, that's pretty much it for me. >> Great. And so you were saying that you were looking specifically at inclusion, was that the case? Can you explain the difference between the two concepts, between inclusion and diversity? >> Absolutely. So, I mean, there's a popular saying by the name Myers that diversity is been asked to the party while inclusion is being asked to dance. I know people say this a lot and I really like it. I think it's as basic as it gets. So you can understand what that looks like. I also then like to think of diversity at the surface level as the noun. So remember the definitions of noun, the definition of noun were little like animal, place of things or people. Diversity is basically the people and to me inclusion is the verb. A verb is an action word. >> Sure. >> Yes. >> The inclusion is the follow up of the diversity. >> That's right. So, I mean, like I thought I coined this in my head and I did a google search and I realized that somebody else had already thought of this before. >> [LAUGH] No. >> [LAUGH] What diversity can be intentional or unintentional. I mean in this podcast, we already have diversity and we didn't actually try to get that diversity, like we weren't going out of our way to do it. But inclusion has to be intentional. Inclusion is an action word it's a doing word. Inclusion encompasses the things that you do to make diversity work. So that's my definition. You must actively break down barriers. You have to do the work. You have to be proactive in preventing exclusion, essentially. >> And what would you say what does it mean to be an inclusive organization? >> Yes. So, I mean, an inclusive organization is one in which people actually want to come to work because they don't feel like there's anything really stopping them from doing their job properly or enjoying being in the workplace. At least they don't feel like there are actual barriers in their way of success. So an organization where one's gender, skin color, disability, religion, cultural background, sexual orientation, age in all of those differences and not impediments to success. That is what an inclusive organization is. And because that's for them, those differences do not become crutches. And in that organization then what matters would be what do these people bring to progressing our goals? An organization where all that really matters is what you can do what your ability to contribute to their progresses and not where you're from or what you look like. What matters is what you bring to the table. And if that organization is one in which people from diverse backgrounds working, then it's likely to be an inclusive organization. Because no visible or invisible difference matters. It's just about what does Dee bring to the table? What does Jane bring to the table? What is her experience? What can they do essentially? And that's what we're focusing on. It doesn't matter where they're from. Any other thing that could be a diversity factor shouldn't matter. That's what an inclusive organization is. To me, if anything in an inclusive organization, all those differences while they're not big deals, they should be celebrated. An inclusive organization is one where those things are celebrated because then we know that because of these life experience, there are things that we couldn't think of, that she would be able to think of and bring to our organization. So she's adding value. An inclusive organization is one in which differences are celebrated and they're not an impediment to success. >> Yeah, right. [LAUGH] It's insane to, I guess here, that description and be like, but isn't that just a good organization. But of course, [LAUGH] yeah, honestly. >> Jane, I do think that my job is very common sense. I think doing this is so common sense, but it's interesting to me that we have to keep doing so much research and so much work in this space for people to get in. So you're right. >> Okay, so let's talk about your research because you have research inclusion and teams. So, can I ask you what kind of things you found out? >> Yes, so, my research specifically focused on how building meaningful connections through relational efforts can enable workplace inclusion. So, I was really looking specifically at relational efforts. And relational efforts are basically those things, very common sense that and allow people to get to know one another. >> And that's inside organization. >> Yes, yes. Inside of an organization on an individual basis. So basically, I wanted to see how activities or initiatives or programs that the organization had that allowed people to meet one another, get to know one another on the basis of hi, I'm Jane, hi I'm Dee. And then we just get to have a conversation how those parts the feeling of inclusivity that people have in the workplace. And what I found was that those relational efforts. So I used the word efforts, but I found out in my research, some people are like, what does that mean the initiatives, activities, programs, anything that creates a space for interaction on a personal level, they do have an impact on inclusion. On teams, especially, so for example, having family events for your team has an impact because that's when people, break down the walls of like corporate behavior and get to know people. You get to make people's children and then you realize, I have kids too all your child is five years old, mines five years old, how are you finding them? And then just immediately on that level you can relate and then it doesn't matter that Dee is darker skin than you because we have similar lived experiences. And then you realize next week at work, I can actually do that project. It's not such a big deal. We have something in common. Do you know what I mean? Instead of you looking at me from afar, I'm thinking she's likely from a country in Africa and she probably didn't do anything like I did when I was a kid, so therefore I have no common ground. >> Yeah and also, what would we talk about, what would we have in common? >> Yeah. Yeah, that's right. >> Yeah, I guess that's that whole thing of like shared experiences being people close together. And so it's interesting that you say that your studies have shown that having, inclusive efforts of people getting to know each other should actually bring teams together. You're like, once again, surely. >> Common sense. >> Yeah. >> Are very common. >> But I mean it does also go beyond just like family day events and mornings are very important. But having even things like job rotations, research shows that, having job rotations where people get to move around the team's because then you're getting exposure right. You're getting to meet other people, things like that, like mentoring programs and those ones could be quite tricky. But having good mentoring programs as well, you're exposing people to one another. But I did find them or what enhanced the impact of the relational efforts was having inclusive leadership in place. So that the teams that had these activities and efforts also had inclusive leaders. >> Yeah. >> Games that don't have inclusive leaders were like, that didn't have inclusive leaders were likely not to have all of this, or if they did, it was just more of like a token, but it wasn't strategic. So yeah, that was very important in the findings that, relational efforts are quite important. And enabler of relational efforts in building inclusion is inclusive leadership. >> And what does an inclusive leader look like? Someone who has inclusivity and diversity at the forefront of their agendas and so therefore they are putting into place things that are going to foster a more inclusive environment, I guess. >> Pretty much, yes, but what I found that made a lot of inclusive leaders, because it's hard for somebody to just read up about inclusive leadership and then become inclusive. But what I found that made them is most of them had lived experiences that helped them to be open minded. So you'll find men who had had wives who had had, who had struggled getting back into the workplace after they had babies. And then so when they become leaders, they encourage part time work for their female employees, they respect, the good people's times for family friendly meeting times and things like that. So that's what I found as well with inclusive leadership, it's just there's a roll of lived experience in being able to be quite inclusive as well as a leader. >> Yeah, right, interesting. And I guess it's a similar thing where you hear stories about men who say because I want to create a workplace that my daughter would feel safe in that same thing I've lived experience. >> Absolutely. >> You get to a point where you're like, well, but it wouldn't it be nice if you could empathize with the human off the back of them just being a human instead of having to be a daughter. But I think that we've got to take whatever we can and lived experience is obviously an important influence. >> Absolutely, yes, you're right. I mean, it would be great if everybody could just think of that. >> [LAUGH] Okay, so if inclusion is so beneficial to organizations, why do you think it is difficult to achieve? >> That's a very good question. Like you already said, you we both think that this should be commonplace and common sense, but common sense is not very common. When you think about inclusion it is a journey. It's a journey it's not a do this and then there's inclusion, right? And I think that a lot of organizations don't understand that. >> Sure. >> You can't just hire three people from minoritized groups, wave a magic wand and then boom, inclusion happens. It takes time to remove systemic barriers that might have been in place. Because if if you think about it, if your organization was homogeneous, the things in that place worked for you as a homogeneous team. So, the minute you start to bring a little bit of diversity in, clearly, there are some things that would need to change. So you have to take time to remove the barriers that have been in place for a long time that works before, but will now not work anymore. And it takes it also takes courage, it takes courage to go beyond legislative compliance. I find that a lot of organizations, they use legislative compliance as a crutch. So they, this is what the government requires of us. We just need to have representation and that's it. Well, it takes courage to go beyond legislative compliance to best practice. And that's where you start to see really the fruits of inclusion. It takes courage to say the government only needs us to have one female and one male bathroom and they're wanted universally accessible bathroom in our building. We don't need to make them less a gender neutral or all genders, because that's not government requirements. So we've met our legislative obligation. We don't need to go beyond that. So that's the issue. So if you have the courage as an organization is the organization's leadership has the courage to go beyond legislative compliance and be like leaders in the space and do just a little bit more than other people are willing to do. Then you find that inclusion is actually not as elusive as people think. It just requires a lot of effort. Like anything that's worth doing it requires a lot of effort. I find that a lot of organizations once the benchmark and they see that, all these organizations are doing exactly the same as we're doing. So we're not too bad they just rest on their laurels. But then what happens is then the younger organizations come up and then overtake and then you realize that you're way behind in this journey as well. >> Of course. >> Yeah, I mean, the the organizations that are doing really good work in the space and they will acknowledge that it takes dedication, they will acknowledge that its commitment, perseverance, and a strong desire to do better for your employees to do what's right. To make sure that people really want to work with you. And then the good thing about it to inclusion for me is I know that it requires a lot of effort, but the benefits do outweigh the effort. I think if your organization wants to be sustainable in this DNA it's one of the best things you could do. And there's research, lots of research to support the fact that doing all of these things, when you have an inclusive organization, you're going to have left turn over. You're going to have really good ideas coming through, so many benefits to having inclusion the organization. So that work is going to be worth it. But you do have in the work. >> Absolutely. And I guess as you're saying, you have to put in the work and sustain the work as well, you can't just do it for six months and I'll be like, yeah, well, we did the thing. >> It is an ongoing, it has to be I think that another thing, the organizations don't understand this inclusion really needs to be part of the golden thread that runs through your organization. It has to be something that is a part of everything. It doesn't sit outside on its own. It's not, it's something that you can just have one person in one little corner doing all of this work. These people have to do work that they do has to be involved in everything. Everyone has to have an understanding of inclusion and how it impacts the role that they play in the organization inclusion is everybody's work. I do also find that a lot of organizations, when they say they're trying to work towards inclusion, then they have one person in that role doing all of this work, no matter how large the organization is. You don't have one person in nature, you don't have one person in finance, you don't have one person in any other place that you're prioritizing, so you need more than that one person, you need to be adequately resourced the work that you want to do. >> So what sort of things can an organization do to promote inclusion? >> The first thing I would recommend is prioritize the top down commitment. The research supports this my little bit of research supports it that inclusive leadership is so important. It has to be a top down approach as well as a bottom up approach. I think you have to be approaching inclusion from all directions, but more importantly, the people who make the decisions. >> So, if it's top down, I guess it means that the people who are appointing those tops like the boards and things like that need to have an inclusive attitude, so then they're appointing leaders who are going to be inclusive. >> Absolutely, yeah. So that's what I wrote. I was like, I was thinking to myself when I was doing my faces as well in writing my findings that you have to have your board, your governing bodies if it's not a board, whatever it is, that. Governs the organization of the senate, whatever it is, has to have inclusion at the forefront of their minds. And if you have that top down approach, you also have financial commitments because the bottom of approach, usually you'll find that in the work of inclusion is being done at the grassroots level in a lot of organizations. People are doing a lot especially the people from those diverse backgrounds and who relate with those diversity groups. They are doing a lot because they want to make sure that things improved, but they are not the ones who make budgets and they're not the ones who can determine the amount of resources that they can get. It comes from the top. So when you have the top down approach, then you also have the kind of resources that you need to make inclusion work. So that's one of the things that I will recommend in addition to inclusive leadership and that top down approach, you need to be transparent in communication. So inclusion is sort of like a relationship. And I think that's the part of it that makes it difficult for organizations because it sort of takes you away from that very strict idea of what an organization should look like. Inclusion, it requires that emotional intel intelligence, it requires that empathy. It requires you to be willing to communicate openly. So, if you if made a commitment and you communicate what you're planning to do with your employees or the whole organization and bring everybody along on the journey. You find it's very easy to make mistakes, but people are understanding of it. As you're going, we're all going on this journey together, this is what we're doing. These are the efforts we're making. We know we're not going to get it right, but we want to keep doing this. You are already showing people that you are our priority, right? And there's not that build psychological trust more than that. It's like this company, I don't want to leave. Even if you got a job that offered you a bit more, it's like flexibility, understanding opportunities, no real barriers I'd rather stay here, thank you very much. Those are the little things that you can do. one of the things that organizations can do is employ relational initiatives and storytelling. So storytelling, sharing lived experiences. There was one respect that was done in the US by these wonderful academics who had such a diverse classroom of like post graduate students and they didn't want to work together, very typical students. And they employed food stories. So people brought food from the different backgrounds and then discuss the food and how it was important to them. And automatically walls came down like people could relate and people were interested. So even if I haven't eaten what you've brought ever I'm interested in how this has impacted you. >> Yeah, because I guess everyone eats and everyone has a relationship to food, whatever that may be, so >> Absolutely >> Yeah, It's not like everyone was saying talk about how you grew up because that can be that has a lot of weight to it. That is a question that has a lot more vulnerability required. Or if it's just something as simple as food, it's like, okay, I can have an opinion on this. >> Yeah, this morning, so fine. I can tell you what I ate. But you would think again, that that's so common sense that research was so successful that the class won many awards for that particular exercise and they went on to make a recommendation that organizations can use. But interestingly after that paper, I struggle to find many other papers replicating that maybe it's too simple. But people always think that it has to be a bit more complicated. It's not, it's simple things like that, sharing lived experiences, storytelling and getting people to get to know one another, that's what it is. And in addition to that, when you made that commitment and you're open to the communication to carry people alone, you need to do like an audit and audit of your organization to determine where you are. So organizations will need to perform an audit to see where they are on the scale or on the journey to see delight has a really great majority model that organizations can use. They have like four levels. So you know where you're at the start, you know how you're progressing, the activities that you're doing that shows that you're making progress. So that's one thing that I think organizations can use is a very useful tool. I recommend that audit and when they have done the audience, they determine where they are where they want to go and what they need to do to get there. So you have like a current stage of future stage and the gap analysis. What do we need to do to get to level two on the maturity model? Okay so we've done this. What do we need to do? You have to be accountable as well? So you have to keep that going. You have to be continuously measuring and using the data as well serving your employees, that's part of the work that I said, it's a lot of work but it's always going to be worth it. So inclusive leadership or top down approach, inclusive leadership and bottom of approach. And then having a very transparent communication, having an audit of your organization reviewing your policies practices processes to make sure that there are no systemic barriers and if there are work actively to get them dismantled. And then just continue to work. I believe that if you have those three in place and you're really committed, you will make significant progress very quickly. >> So how optimistic are you that more organizations will achieve some level of inclusion? [LAUGH] I chuckled but as far as my optimism about more organizations like achieving some level of inclusion I am quite optimistic I am. I think it will take a bit of time. >> That's good, that's good to hear [LAUGH] because I was going to call it quits on this podcast. >> Otherwise I'll just send the letters Exactly. I'm sorry. There is hope there is light at the end of the tunnel. I'm quite optimistic about that there will be more inclusive organizations and they will become more commonplace because the new generation of companies, the tech disruptors and the startups, they are prioritizing this. I've seen some really cool things and some young organizations are doing. In fact, the way they write what the organization is doing is so relatable. But even I want to go work for them if I could, it's like, my goodness, this is it, those are the values it's so clear and they're prioritizing this. So it's going to be one of those things where very soon the archaic institutions that are not really embracing this, the ones that refused to adapt to being inclusive they're going to struggle to find employees. We've already heard it's everywhere but the mass, what's it called the employee migration people are leaving >> Mass resignation >> Mass resignation, thank you. People are living really good jobs left right center in drugs. So it's going to be one of those things where if you don't shape up, you're going to have to opt out. So the organizations might not be sustainable. So they have to either learn to conform and start looking at inclusion really seriously or they're just going to miss out completely and those organizations would be seen an expiry date. >> Yeah >> That's just what I see it because inclusion is good for everyone. I mean, what's the worst thing that could happen from the organization? I really would love to hear what organizations who are struggling what could happen to you if you become inclusive. People are happy. >> Yeah >> Or people are actually willing to come to work and give their best, people feel so comfortable that there's trust here, therefore I'm going to prioritize my tasks in this organization. If I'm working from home, I know that my leadership, trust me to be able to do my job even though they don't see me. So I will deliver. You find a lot of moms have gone back to work. They actually feel it needs to deliver, especially if they're able to work part time because they feel like I only have six hours and I have to deliver what they're very focused I've been in those shoes. You work for five hours, you know that you don't have time to waste in those fibers, you're productive because when you leave you also can't tap back in because you'll have other things to do. So being flexible, being accommodating, being open minded, what is the worst thing that you can do to you? >> Yeah, I absolutely think that there is hope. I think it's just taking so much longer. Then I think it should because like you and I have discussed already, this should be common sense and it should be commonplace. But there is such a pushback from some organizations that and I listened to the arguments and I'm confused like your opinions matter. Everybody's opinion matters. Even the people who are doing the including that said you have to be willing to change a little bit to evolve. That's just the nature of human human beings, we evolve. We can't keep doing the same thing the same way and hoping for different results. So, yeah, I think inclusion is good for everyone. I think that there are more organizations that are prioritizing it. And I think that organizations that don't want to prioritize its inclusion are going to be facing extinction very well. >> That's all we have time for today but thank you so much Dee. It was an absolute pleasure chatting with you. >> Thank you so much for having me Jane. I appreciate the work you're doing. I think it's very important that people hear this. It's important that people discuss this because the more you hear it, I guess the more normally becomes and that hope for having more inclusive organizations will happen with podcast like yours. >> Absolutely, the hope will grow [LAUGH] >> Thanks very much. >> That brings us to the end of our episode today as we discussed diversity and inclusion in the workforce. Thank you so much again to Dee Adeyami for her wonderful insights and research. We have a lot to take home with us today and thank you all for joining us for another UWA podcast. We look forward to seeing you at the next one. Thanks again. [MUSIC]
