Month: April 2022

Studies that support the social and emotional well-being of adults in the workplace from the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence

Introduction

This isn’t an essay. I found the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence after it was mentioned in passing in a podcast. I’d never heard of it. I am a huge fan of EI, so discovering there was a centre for it was a great thing.

When you open the website, you see:

Creating a healthier and more equitable, innovative, and compassionate society

Emotions Matter.

Emotions drive learning, decision-making, creativity, relationships, and health. The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence conducts research and teaches people of all ages how to develop their emotional intelligence.

Replace the word ‘society’ and above with ‘workplace’; and read the following excerpts from the website in that context.

Emotion Revolution in the Workplace

What do people feel at work? Why does this matter for individual well-being and important work outcomes? To address these questions, the project team conducted large scale nationally representative surveys of the U.S. workforce. These broad economy-wide surveys are to be followed by in depth studies within specific organizations in the healthcare industry.

The questions examined include:

1. What is the nature of passion at work (and why does it matter)? 
2. What are gender and power differences in how people feel at work? What impact do these differences have?  
3. How does emotionally intelligent behavior of supervisors create an emotional climate and predict creativity and innovation of employees?
4. What are the patterns of engagement and burnout at work? Who are the workers most likely to be engaged, burned out, and both engaged and exhausted? What demands and resources predict patterns of engagement and burnout, and what outcomes are associated with these patterns? 
5. What does it mean to be an emotionally intelligent organization? 

Creating Inclusive Workplaces: An Emotion Science Lens to Workplace Culture

This project aims to investigate the conditions necessary for active and positive employee engagement (which are the sense of trust, security, purpose and safety) through an emotion scientist vs. emotion judge lens (i.e., open and curious vs. closed and critical about emotion in the workplace) through collection and examination of actual employee experiences of positive and negative workplace events. Specifically, investigating organizational culture by examining employee experiences of the policies, practices, and behaviors associated with their organizations, their leaders and their colleagues. 

This includes:

• The extent to which organizations value and accept emotions and give their employees permission to express their thoughts and feelings
• The perceived relevance and importance of emotions at work as well as shared purpose, values, and beliefs between and among colleagues 
• Emotionally intelligent behavior such as the extent to which leaders model effective emotion regulation skills and approach support their employees in healthy emotion regulation. 
• Organizational inclusiveness on key decisions such as DEI, strategic and tactical planning, and disruptive instance strategy.

Conclusion

In the context of staff with disability, how would it be to ask and answer these questions in your organisation?

Introduction

Some months ago, I decided to look at all the agencies that responded to the 2021 People Matter Employee Survey (PMES) conducted by the NSW Public Service Commission.

I was curious to know whether the smaller agencies exhibited a ‘leadership edge’. The results were very interesting. Only two departments showed disability employment figures above the state average of 5%. They had 6%. There were 10 small entities with figures ranging from 7% to 12%.

Legal Aid NSW was the largest body, with staffing at just over 1340. It showed an impressive 10% of staff with disability, and its PMES response rate was 100%. That just had to be down to leadership. I was keen to have a chat with Brendan Thomas, who was Legal Aid’s CEO at the time.

By the time I got around to contacting him he had left Legal Aid to become Deputy Secretary, Transforming Aboriginal Outcomes at the Department of Communities and Justice.

This is a substantial essay. I have tried to keep it as trimmed as possible, but the truth is that a 3 or 4 pager on celebrating great leadership isn’t going to be all that informative or useful. What you have below is not dry theory. It is mostly Brendan talking about his experiences. I have tried to keep as close to the character of the original transcript as I could. But converting speech into prose demands modification – just to make it readable. These are rich insights into what it takes to be a genuine inclusive leader.

Who is Brendan Thomas?

There’s a Sydney Morning Herald article from 1 November 2021 that gives a useful backgrounder on Brendan, so I won’t repeat its content here.

He was CEO of Legal Aid NSW for 5 years, until late 2021. He is a Wiradjuri man, though Sydney born. He has a passion for what is just. 

What impressed me through our chat was that passion filtered through deep self-reflection and self-awareness, and a strong understanding of contemporary management/leadership methodologies. Brendan mentioned that he reads Harvard Business Review (HBR) regularly, noting that, “I went there for a little while.”

Passion, self-awareness and an educated approach to leadership and management is the perfect trifecta in my book. I first encountered HBR in 1987, when I was a lowly Employment Officer in the Commonwealth Employment Service. It is always a great thing to get to chat with HBR readers, who have never been all that numerous in the circles I participate in.

Appreciating those three attributes is the key to understanding Brendan’s approach to leadership.

Using PMES as a tool to drive positive change

We began with discussing how Brendan uses the PMES as a tool to interrogate his workforce and workplace cultures. His approach is very Harvard – It is data we can use to make things work better – for individual employees, for work units, and for the organisation.

Brendan: Following my first PMES with Legal Aid, we did a full review, engaged with staff, put the review back out to our people, and made a bunch of changes. A couple of those changes actually made the situation slightly worse. Some things didn’t really work.

The best method of dealing with that is as soon as we realized something didn’t work, we went back out to the staff and said, “Sorry. We tried this and it didn’t work. And these are the reasons why it didn’t work, and this is what we’re going to do about that.”

So, talking to staff often about what we’re doing, including the stuff that didn’t work – and what we are doing differently, builds confidence that the leadership is genuine about making positive changes.

I think the more you do that, the higher level of engagement you get from staff. The more they feel that their input is going to be valued, and the more they think that management is actually being honest with them about what’s going on, the more they will see that the PMES is something of value to them.

For each PMES we made an organization plan, and then we required each office to talk about their PMES results. Then I’d go to each office and talk about the results too. We’d have a discussion about what was good and what wasn’t so good. There were some offices that just had fantastic results, and others that needed some work.

Michael: In terms of the offices that had fantastic results to what extent did leadership play a role?

Brendan: Where staff say management listens to them, and where they report having regular meetings with their managers, they have good engagement scores. And all times where those things are lacking, the engagement scores are down. 

We developed a very collegiate leadership group. Everybody was working together, being really open and honest, and regularly engaging with staff – talking about problems. 

I’m thinking about one office which had very high level of engagement. But it also had a bunch of really wicked operational difficulties to deal with. The challenges were discussed openly and were being dealt with in a way that engaged the staff. That was the quality of local management. 

We set a benchmark for ourselves. In terms of staff engagement, we didn’t want anything below 75%. And if any office got below that, we would have an executive discussion about that location. We would talk about what we knew about that office and what we thought might improve their performance.

And then we’d have a focused discussion with the managers and have a workshop with the staff to talk about those results to see what we could do. 

You engage your staff and say, “Yeah, you said this is good and this wasn’t so good. What do you think we can do to make it better?” And if you listen to the responses and you act on them, things improve. 

I think, in Legal Aid, there was a good knowledge amongst the staff that we took that survey really seriously, that we acted on it, that we were honest about it.

Brendan’s approach can be summed up as follows: 

• High levels of engagement are the best indicator of a healthy and safe workplace.
• Use PMES data to identify threats to high engagement.
• Talk to the staff to find out what the issues are.
• Address the issues.
• Go back to staff to check that the fix worked.
• If not, try again.

The importance of effective leadership and management

Legal Aid gave Brendan a great opportunity to make key observations about managers. Lawyers were promoted to manager positions on the basis for their skills as lawyers, not on their capabilities as managers. Sometimes that caused problems.

Middle managers are the most influential – and hence key factors in the level of workplace engagement.

Brendan: You can get a really good dynamic bunch of senior executives and a bunch of committed frontline staff. But if you’ve got stale middle management, you’re in trouble. 

We had a really mixed bunch of some people who were really good, but a whole bunch of others who were not. And this isn’t just a Legal Aid problem. I think it’s a kind of specialist organization problem where people have been promoted because of their expertise rather than because they’re good managers.

So, I had a bunch of people whose management style was pretty much closing the door and sending everybody emails.

We quickly talked about what is the standard that we expect from managers, and what are the kind of competencies that we need. It was a good learning experience in Legal Aid, because it was clear people were being employed because they were good lawyers, not because they good managers. And in fact, they would actively admit it. That’s not a good way to run an organization. Let’s take a step back and say, “What do we actually need to see in terms of skills and competence in management, not legal work?”

And, therefore, we were able to enunciate those expectations, and say, “OK, this is the kind of standard that we expect of managers in terms of their capabilities and their competence. And this is the way we’re going to help people who aren’t there get there.”  We had a couple of coaching and development programs for that level of management.

The lesson that it teaches you is that you need to be very clear about what you are recruiting for.

Lawyers who were managers could elect to develop their management skills or find alternative employment – as lawyers. That’s a fortunate option for Legal Aid, and I am not sure how transferrable that option is beyond a specialist organisation. However, the point is clear – when recruiting managers, select those with management and leadership skills at the required level of competence.

Brendan: We went through a very clear process of redefining what those management positions looked like, and what we needed from them. So that was reflected in the role description, and in the recruitment process itself. 

So, you’ll be testing for what you want in terms of personal characteristics, the kind of leadership experience, and the leadership style in people for those management jobs. 

The importance of establishing trust and psychological safety in the workplace

Michael: In terms of workplace culture, how do you create the kind of environment suitable not only for staff with disability, but any of the other members of diversity groups?

Brendan: I tried to create an environment where people were encouraged to talk openly about things that they’re uncomfortable with. This included engagement with their manager, bullying in the workplace, or any kind of discrimination, if they saw it.

We had an induction process where I spent about 45 minutes talking with all new staff members. I really tried to emphasize to them kind of all the values of the organization, what we’d expect in terms of their behaviour. We also talked about what they should expect in terms of support from us, and I strongly encouraged people to directly email me if they had concerns.

If you find a workplace that has a high level of staff engagement, that engagement tends to be high across all kinds of people in that workplace.

So, if you’ve got an organisation where it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work, then it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work regardless of who they are.

But it has to be a place in which people are openly encouraged to participate and engage. It has to be a place where people can feel safe. That’s a really important thing.  

It also has to be a workplace where you are able to get some stuff wrong – because we all do that. It’s really important, I think, for leadership and management, it is essential to say that very openly. No one who works with me ever gets into trouble if they screw something up because they gave it their best shot and it didn’t work out.

So, we all screw things up. But it’s not about covering stuff up. You will end up in trouble if you do that. I don’t allow a blame culture to be created. So long as people are doing good work, and we are clear about what’s expected from people in terms of work volume and work outputs, a good work culture will be created.  It is really important to be clear about those kinds of things.

A good workplace is one that brings the best out of people and where people feel like they want to do the best they can. So, it’s a workplace that has a relatively high level of expectation of its staff.  We think you’re going do a good job and we’re going help you do it. And their expectation is you are going do good job – as a manager or a leader. There isn’t an expectation that you can, or will, do a lousy job, or that we are going to monitor or manage you really tightly. 

Brendan spoke about what constituted effective inclusive leadership and management. Here’s what I summarised:

• Be clear about your expectations and talk with staff about them.
• Support staff to meet those expectations.
• Hold them to meaningful account if they fail to honour them with support.
• Identify and address issues injurious to staff engagement.
• Staff will have expectations of the senior leadership team.
• Support your leadership team to meet them.
• Hold your managers and executives to meaningful account if they fail to honour them with support.
• Be approachable.

No tolerance for bullies

Bullying by managers and leaders is a want of relationship and communication skills as well as possibly poor workload management practices. All organisations profess zero tolerance for bullies, but not all deliver. Brendan spoke about the need to address bullying by managers.

Brendan: In Legal Aid, we did have a bullying problem when I started. This was coming from some of the ‘old school’ kind of people who were not great people managers. Their bullying had been ignored for a long time. 

I have no tolerance for that, and I deal with it straight away, and pretty harshly, to be frank. 

Now that we were dealing with this sort of stuff, we had some discussions about what staff needed, without breaching confidentiality. And we worked out a way to do it. About every six months we talked to people and said, “Well, this is the type of things that we’ve dealt with, the volume of them, and the outcomes that have followed.” It was a delicate balance to be able to communicate that to the organization in a way that people would say, “Alright, some people have behaved badly, and I could see something happened.”

So, I really try to feedback to the staff to say, “We don’t tolerate this kind of behaviour, and here’s the examples of where we’ve taken action. And if you’ve got something to say, you should always be able to say it.” But that’s not to say that that always happened. 

I can give you this example where we had a senior executive who managed up very well. Very intelligent, articulate person, but was a micro-manager – and it came out the PMES survey. Issues were coming up, but not directly. We could see there was a problem and when the initial inquiries weren’t really bringing out the problem, we looked at it in another way. 

I spoke to a couple of staff in the division off the record; and said, “I see that you’ve got some issues.” I encouraged them to tell others to raise their concerns directly with me. And a whole bunch of them did. We then did an independent review of that division. Everybody was anonymously spoken to by the reviewer and what came out of that review was it was a really bad workplace where people felt really collegiate to one another, but almost universally bullied by the boss. I’ve never seen a review that was so one-sided.

Everybody had exactly the same view that “We really like our job. Everyone is really nice, except that person. And here’s the examples of what’s happening with that person.” I ended up just dismissing that executive. Now you’re got a good division. That was an example of where people weren’t comfortable and felt frightened, and I needed to act to restore trust in our culture.

Support for staff with disability

The 2021 PMES report for Legal Aid show staff with disability at 10%, twice the state’s average, Brendan recalled that Legal Aid’s internal diversity data for people with disability was around 8%, but he wasn’t completely sure. Usually there is a very significant gap between PMES figures and an agency’s internal diversity data. This is a ‘trust gap’ that hasn’t been closed for years, despite efforts to do so across the sector.

Michael: Let’s talk about disability and to the extent to which staff disclosed any psychological disability. I don’t like using the term mental illness. It has a stigma. Saying that you have a mental illness often implies disordered thinking processes, which would be a problem for a lawyer. The majority of people with ‘mental illness’ are diagnosed with anxiety and/or depression, which doesn’t impact on their intellectual processes.

Brendan: I can give an example of where it came to a head for us, and where it caused us to think very differently. I had very strong focus on Aboriginal employment in Legal Aid. We had a couple of Aboriginal staff and we set some targets for increasing the number. There’s one staff member who sent me an email saying. “I’ve got a mental illness and it’s not being managed in the workplace.” She was a relatively young woman in an administrative role. She had pretty acute anxiety and depression. And she was experiencing times when she was getting pressured in the workplace, and her response to that would be to not come into work the next day because her anxiety level was high.

Then that workplace started to say, “Well, this employee is not showing up and her work is falling on somebody else.” She was on a temporary engagement at the time, like a traineeship, a kind of an entry level employment arrangement. Her manager wanted to terminate her because of repeated non-attendance at the workplace. HR was supporting the proposed termination. It came to me, and I said “No.”

And then she sent me an email saying, “I’ve got a mental illness and people in the workplace were giving me a hard time.” The incident caused us to have a frank discussion about how people who have those issues are dealing with them. Sometimes that comes out in people not attending workplace; or having some kind of performance issue. We need to deal with that. 

I had a discussion with the management group who wanted to get rid of her.  I said, “Well, if she broke her leg and she couldn’t attend the office, what would you do about that?” They said, “We’d say she’s sick.” I said, “I see. But she’s kind of got a broken leg and can’t come into work. But you’re not treating her like she’s sick, you’re treating her like she’s a bad performer.” That’s particularly bad from an Aboriginal point of view. A large proportion of the Aboriginal population have these issues.

Michael:  I’m guessing that given the nature of law, there’s a certain number of people with disabilities studying law.  There would be a fairly ready marketplace, and a chance to drive a recruitment campaign. 

Brendan: Oh yeah, absolutely, and not just legal jobs. We went out and specifically recruited people with disability in some of the other areas as well. I employed people with autism specifically. We went to a firm called Specialisterne and talked to them about the types of jobs they might have people for. We ended up filling a couple of data and analytical roles.

The importance of a self-reflective personal philosophy

Contemporary leadership research recognises the importance of emotional intelligence, and I have noticed that the executives I have the highest regard for have had either an academic grounding in psychology, or they are very well read in individual and organisational psychology (especially in leadership and people management)

Michael: To what extent does what you’re saying come from your own personal insight or have you done a lot of training and or reading in contemporary management and leadership practices?

Brendan: I’ve been a senior executive since 2007. I’ve had a lot of good successes as well as a few experiences that haven’t gone well. That’s why I think you learn more from the things that don’t go well. 

I’ve focused pretty heavily on trying to develop my own knowledge and experience around executive management. I subscribe to the Harvard Business Review which comes out every month. Mostly, I read stuff that’s locked into the Harvard Business School. 

I really try to pay attention to other executives and engage in discussions around executive management. In my last couple of roles, I really tried to foster an environment with the executive leadership group where you do have discussions about what it is to manage an organization, what do you need to know.

Michael: Was your executive leadership group as keen on reading as you were. Was that something that you’re able to foster in the leadership group?

Brendan: Yeah, I was lucky. I think by the time I finished in Legal Aid we had a leadership group that were very interested in their own development. We really tried to foster an environment where the group was interested in doing that together. So, people were looking at how they could develop as a group, not just as individuals, or individual members of a group. How does that group develop if it understands its own strengths and weaknesses?

I had things like the 360 feedback exercises. I always say to people, it doesn’t matter what your score is. What is in my mind, having done a lot of those over 15 years, is that it helps you see how people perceive you. When I get 360 feedback that’s OK because it’s me. I’ve got some areas that I’m not good at that I need to cater for, but I know now about them.

We’ve all got them, right? It’s whether you’re conscious of them that matters. If you’re cognizant of them, you can do something about it. You can either, as an executive, build your skill and understanding, or you can structure yourself so that you are mitigating the things that you’re not great at. So, I know for myself, my natural inclination is not to have open communication with people. I do it much more now because I’ve done it for 15 years, but it’s not my natural inclination.

So, I know I need to have a very strong communications function that works with me. I’m always thinking about how I’m communicating with people because I know it’s something I need to be aware of.

And I know I’ve got a tendency to be a little perfectionistic and expect too much of people and or expect things to get done a little too quickly. And I mitigate that by usually having a PMO function that can manage things and keep them on track and on time – so, I’m not hassling people saying “Where’s this? Where’s that?” It’s being managed by somebody else. 

You know where you’re strong, and you know where you’ve got weaknesses. You’re going have a weakness somewhere around. And you either develop those weaknesses or you develop strategies to mitigate them. 

And as I always say to people, when they do those 360 degrees surveys, it doesn’t matter what your score is. It matters how aware you are of your own strengths and weaknesses.

Conclusion

By now the reader will have formed an opinion about whether Brendan is the kind of executive leader they would want to work to, and you probably don’t care too much about what I am going to say next.

Leadership is not easy, and it doesn’t suit everyone. But it must be done well if we are to have high performing public sector agencies. I don’t know what the upper limit is in terms of the number of people who can be led by an individual. Even in Legal Aid, with just over 1300 people Brendan had a leadership team. But the influence one individual can have is very clear in his story.

It is clear that effective Inclusive Leadership must be:

• Grounded in a personal commitment, 
• Informed by contemporary organisational psychology research on inclusion and leadership, 
• Practised in a self-reflective manner that expresses openness, honesty, and emotional intelligence, and
• Committed to sustained engagement between the senior leadership team and all staff through:
  • Anyone-to-anyone accessibility, 
  • Shared challenge identification and resolution, and 
  • Transparent decision-making. 

Inclusive leaders must be at every level in an organisation – from the very top down through all levels of influence to every manager’s, team leader’s and supervisor’ role.

Introduction

On 7 April 2022, Sharon Bennett, Deputy Chair Comms, NSW Department of Communities and Justice’s Disability Employee Network (DCJ DEN) sent me an email. It said in part, “Like all of us we come with our amazing points as well our baggage that’s why the DEN is such a great safe place.  I’ve been getting so many people reach out with their stories and they’re all saying they finally feel heard and safe.  Some of whom are actually advising they’re ready to speak up about their stories so others can feel safe.  You started that and you should be very proud.”

That is great news. It has taken a few years for it to be possible to write such an email because the DEN had to develop the ability to have such influence, and then work within, and with, the Department to generate the change desired. It’s a work in progress, and it will continue to be so for a few years yet. 

I have noted in an earlier essay that having time to engage in research has opened my eyes and mind to the complexity of the challenge of achieving real Disability Inclusion.

In this essay I want to focus on psychological safety; but get there via the terms intersectionality and microaggression (also called Subtle Acts of Exclusion).

Intersectionality

I am reflexively wary of terms coming from academia into popular use because they are invariably politicised (which may be the right thing for the users) and frequently misinterpreted and misrepresented. Intersectionality is one such word. It has a powerful and universal application.

Put simply, a person may possess several attributes which might be, each by itself, a cause for discrimination and exclusion to some degree. In fact, it is probably safe to say that a minority of people with disability in any given workforce have only the attribute of their disability as a potential trigger for discrimination and exclusion.

I have a cluster of physical disabilities and I am also over age 55, so age discrimination creeps in. A friend has the same 2 attributes; but adds Aboriginality. Other people I know are ‘diversity’ quadruple and even quintuple ‘threats’. But instead of making them valuable, it can make them miserable. We laugh about having a high ‘diversity score’, but it’s not funny, not really.

The other side of this is the reality that a person who feels discriminated against because of some aspect of their identity may choose not to seek a workplace adjustment for a non-visible disability. That discrimination need only be excessive recognition of an identity attribute; and may not be intentionally hurtful. But it can be enough. A person who feels uncomfortable about an identity attribute is treated at work is not going to always be okay about asking for a disability related accommodation.

Intersectionality is an important idea. It can remind us that disability may not be the only, or even the main, cause of discriminatory conduct.

The Victorian government has a webpage devoted to ‘Understanding Intersectionality’. I urge you to read it, share it, and use the downloads to help make intersectionality an important insight.

Microaggressions

This is another term that is misinterpreted, misrepresented, and can be misunderstood. Our speech is something we think we control, but, depending on our cultural and family upbringing, and our own life experiences, there may be elements of how we talk that can injure others. That can be intentional, of course, but here I want only to focus on the unintentional.

This isn’t about walking on eggshells every time you open your mouth. The fact is that we can cause unintended harm, and send signals of exclusion, by what we say.

There’s a useful primer on microaggressions on the NPR website (NPR is the US National Public Radio). The related podcast is available through your podcast app – NPR Life Kit 6 June 2020. 

As I have observed before, so much material on discrimination and exclusion has a USA focus, and this can leave us thinking it’s not as bad here in Australia. But that’s not a safe assumption. The US has researched, written, and talked on the theme way more than anybody else.

I have just started a book, Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify and Stop Microaggressions by Tiffany Jana and Michael Baran.  I will come back with an essay on this theme when I am finished. The authors don’t particularly like the term microaggression, and they have come up with subtle acts of exclusion. At first encounter, I like this approach. But microaggression is in widespread use, so it’s good to know what it is about.

Psychological safety

Psychological safety is a vitally important concept, as you can see in what the Western Australian government has put together. The Harvard Business Review has a good articleon the subject. And then there’s agreatplacetowork.com.au.

In NSW the government has a much dryer approach. Safe Work NSW has a Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work and another page on Mental Health.

Here’s a quote from a recent interview with Brendan Thomas, former CEO of Legal Aid NSW and now Deputy Secretary, Transforming Aboriginal Outcomes, Department of Communities and Justice:

If you find a workplace that has a high level of staff engagement, that engagement tends to be high across all kinds of people in that workplace.

So, if you’ve got an organisation where it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work, then it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work regardless of who they are.

But it has to be a place in which people are openly encouraged to participate and engage. It has to be a place where people can feel safe. That’s a really important thing. 

Brendan has summed up the importance of creating a safe and inclusive workplace neatly. Psychological safety means “it’s comfortable for everyone to come to work regardless of who they are.”

Conclusion

Psychological safety in the workplace is a right of all employees, regardless of who they are. Ensuring that is what they experience is a duty incumbent on all employers. 

The issue is not just whether the harm caused by a psychologically unsafe workplace is compensable, and hence has an impact on WorkCover premiums. The issue is whether we want genuinely inclusive, happy, and highly productive workplaces. Everyone benefits. There is no downside.

Safe, inclusive, and diverse workplaces are more productive, effective, and innovative. They generate lower costs because staff turnover is lower, and unplanned absences are also reduced.

As with everything to do with being inclusive, psychological safety is a complex theme that requires intentional effort to attain it. Intersectionality reminds us that we are multi-dimensional – and some of us have multiple identity attributes that may generate intentional and unintentional exclusion and discrimination. We can be included for one attribute while being excluded for another.

Learning about microaggressions (Subtle Acts of Exclusion) can help us see that we can unintentionally signal exclusion in the act of being inclusive, and then be bewildered by the reaction we have precipitated – sometimes leading to an act of intentional exclusion in response. 

Psychological safety in our workplaces is an essential, and it is an attainable goal – with the investment of effort.

Introduction

In 2020 the NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) participated in the Australian Network on Disability’s (AND) Access and Inclusion Index (the Index). This is a self-assessment tool designed to interrogate an organisation’s self-perception of how it treats staff and customers/service users with disability.

DCJ is a complex entity which engages with the community at problematic stages of the life of individuals and families via corrective services, courts and tribunals, public housing, child protection, as well as other support services. It was formed in 2019 through the merging of the former departments of Justice and Family and Community Services. 

The Index has ten focus areas, seven of which sit squarely with the Corporate Services Division (Premises, Workplace Adjustments, Communication & Marketing, ICT, Recruitment & Selection, Career Development, Suppliers & Partners). The division was undergoing a huge upheaval as Corporate Services teams from the two departments were being merged. We decided to participate in the Index at this difficult time so we could quickly get a clear idea of where the new department needed to develop. Between September and November of 2019, the data came in.

What happened next

Part of the assessment included an independent ‘Benchmark’ report that provides feedback on self-assessment judgements, usually at a less generous level. The report also has suggestions/recommendations about where to focus efforts at improvement. The report arrived in April 2020. It is a valuable tool for keeping self-assessors honest and realistic (we tend to over-rate ourselves).

Getting a response to the report’s critiques, and action recommendations, can be a problem for people in work units already under the pump. They have priorities and adding another isn’t always welcome.

The Deputy Secretary for Corporate Services at the time was John Hubby. 

The report went to the DCJ Board. I wrote the briefing paper for that. I also ensured that John got a separate briefing. John’s response was to have his office liaise with my unit in getting the attention of the various Corporate Services business units to go through parts of the report relevant to their business area and come up with actions to respond to the recommendations.

Corporate Services also took on responsibility for coordinating action in preparation for participating in the Index in 2021.

Nothing is at all remarkable about this. It is what should happen. But there’s a subtle dimension. The level of enthusiasm and commitment that came from John’s office and the leaders of most of the business units was gratifying. 

I’d been around long enough to understand that when a senior leader indicates their interest in something happening, it does happen. But it does need an expression of interest that permeates the business areas – and conveys that level of interest. When that happens, it gives permission to managers who share that interest to prioritise actions. Those managers who are maybe not as enthusiastic, come on board as well. Even the more reluctant can get drawn in as well. Inclusion is not everyone’s priority.

I had an email exchange with John, who was a little bemused by the expressions of gratitude for his support for Disability Inclusion – and Inclusion more generally. He noted that Inclusion was recognised as a priority by the board, and it aligned with his values as well. So far as he was concerned, he was “just doing my job.”

Which he was. But here’s the point. There is critical value in senior executives letting their staff know that Inclusion is something that aligns with their personal values, as well as the values of the organisation. There is critical value in making their commitment manifestly evident. The support from John’s office was energetic and enthusiastic – and that was seen as a reflection of his values and commitment.

In some ways he didn’t do much at a personal level – but the value is in the quality of the act, not the quantum. That is great leadership. And, sure, it was John just doing his job.

Conclusion

I do not imply that other senior executives are not committed to, and supportive of, Inclusion. But there’s the difference of having a visible signal that can be seen and responded to by their staff. Inclusion must be modelled by senior leaders, either directly or via indirect means – but visibly so.

If Inclusion is valued and meaningful, the extent of that commitment must be made clear and unambiguous. It is better if personal commitment to, and enthusiasm for, the objective is also conveyed. Modelling desired change is important – being the change you want to see happen is critical at the top. More people can see you; and will know what to emulate. That is part of doing one’s job, surely.

I have since learned that John was very outcome focused. He not only supported Inclusion; he wanted to know what was happening, and what the outcomes were. That adds the dimension of accountability to commitment. It gives business area leaders something to aim at.

I am looking forward to learning how participation in the 2021 Access and Inclusion Index changed things in Communities and Justice. Maybe sometime in the next month I can find out the extent to which John’s notion of ‘just doing his job’ has paid off.

Introduction

When we get reports on the People Matter Employee Survey (PMES) results, the NSW Public Sector understandably pays attention to the good news. That’s fair enough. Celebrating what is getting better is a good thing. But it also directs our attention away from the magnitude of the negatives. I don’t want to dwell on the negatives in some morbid way. But if we convert percentages into people numbers, we can become more aware of the human story the negatives tell us.

Below I look at negative ratings from the PMES at 15% and higher. I don’t like dealing in parts of people, so let’s say 15% is 3 people in 20. Imagine a room with 20 people in it and then imagine that 3 of them flat out say their experience is negative. To assist, 20% is one person in 5 (4 in 20) and 25% or higher is at least one person in 4 (5 in 20).

The document I rely upon is 2021 NSW Public Sector report.

Scoping the problem

What we have to ask ourselves, from an inclusion perspective, is how many negative assessments are okay? Women make up 59% of the NSW public sector. We have no idea what that means in terms of the level of sex discrimination. What I can tell you is that sex discrimination is alive and well and living in our organisations in some regard.

Based on the 2021 PMES scores we know what a breakdown of the workforce across the sector looks like:

Gender:

• Female 59%
• Non-Binary 0% (However responses from non-binary staff are shown – p. 38)
• Prefer Not to Say 9%

Age:

• 55+ 18%
• Prefer Not to Say 15%

Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander:

• Yes 3%
• Prefer Not to Say 6%

Disability:

• Yes 5%
• Prefer Not to Say 5%

LGBTQI+:

• Yes 5%
• Prefer Not to Say 6%

Language Other Than English spoken at home:

• Yes 21%
• Prefer Not to Say 6%

When we allow for intersectionalities (when 2 or more of these ‘diversity’ attributes are shared by an individual) we can see that we cannot assume that a staff member with disability is experiencing discrimination because of their disability alone. It is therefore essential to consider the range of people who may be vulnerable to discrimination as a whole, rather than try to isolate specific disability related discrimination. We cannot know whether discrimination is disability specific when other ‘diversity’ attributes also apply.

How do we know whether a woman aged 55+ with a disability, or an Aboriginal man aged 55+ with a disability, both of whom have reported discrimination and bullying, have been targeted solely because of their disability?

What the PMES does not tell us

We do not know whether the people who record negative assessments when they respond to the PMES questionnaire belong to the ‘diversity’ groups who most frequently experience discrimination. But we cannot assume they do not.

For this reason, celebrating a ‘good’ score of 85% still might mean that the 15% who gave a negative assessment were members of a ‘diversity’ group. While it is a good thing that improving indicators show progress in addressing issues, those indicators have a natural ‘spongey ceiling’ – when discrimination kicks in and things improve not at all, or very slowly, for members of ‘diversity’ groups. 

Celebrating improvements when a significant proportion of a workforce remains discontent can seem pretty insensitive. Admissions that ‘there is more work to be done’ or ‘we must try harder’ don’t really cut it; if there is no demonstrable commitment to try harder and do that extra work. We have to ask ourselves what that looks like. Public sector agencies are capable of strategic planning – in fact it is essential – so some clear, measurable, and accountable plans that are time limited would be great.

The PMES crunches raw numbers. It does not tell us whether an agency has a plan that is accountable. This is despite the fact that all NSW agencies must have a Disability Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). But these do not have to have staff-related accountable objectives. Inclusion plans are common across the sector – but no plan has intrinsic merit. It must be implemented, monitored, and have accountability built in.

The politics and economics of inclusion

Public sector agencies face real budget restraints, which mean they must work smarter and harder – and that puts real cognitive pressure on staff. This means that staff can be time poor and attention poor – and among the many things that must be done, or should be done, some things fall off the crowded table. Inclusion tends to be one of those things.

Agencies have an obligation to meet the ‘inherent rights’ of those who experience exclusion and discrimination, and this requires an application of effort that is able to deliver the ‘best bang for the bucks’ – value for money essentially.  

That isn’t an easy thing to do. It requires knowledge, coordination and collaboration, planning, prioritisation, and accountability. In short, it must be intentional and prioritised, rather than set aside as something that must contest for available resources.

This is the problem with the notion of an inherent right, especially one backed by legislation and policy. As I have noted in my earlier posts on bias, there is a risk that some will see, in their efforts to manage demands and limited resources, that an inherent right to inclusion is still subject to the risk of being thought something that can be delayed, or deferred, on resource grounds. This flips the inherent right claim into the granting of a gift by those who control access to resources.

This is not a criticism. It is a tension inherent between an organisation and its staff. The PMES provides regular evidence that what is delivered by an organisation and what is experienced by staff doesn’t always accord as okay. The point here is that an inherent rightshouldn’t be part of that tension, but it seems to be.

All organisations operate with a certain level of risk. A reasonable appetite for risk is better than being risk averse. However, when that translates as an appetite for the denial of inherent rights it’s time to rethink priorities. I don’t think this issue has been engaged with to a sufficient degree of transparency. The fact that the rights to inclusion, and freedom from discrimination are enshrined in law and policy have not been instantly acknowledged can suggest that these things are ‘works in progress’. The problem with such an attitude is that it translates as a ‘granting’ of a right as if it is a gift to be bestowed, rather than an inherent and inalienable entitlement.

The private sector is doing better because it has a measurable bottom line and an imperative to grow profits. For example, in the US an aversion to being sued in discrimination cases and the recognition that inclusion is good for business by several measures motivates business to be more actively engaged in inclusion action. Much more is being invested in developing senior leaders’ capacity to drive inclusion across their companies and their business areas.

The solution for the public sector is for an informed conversation with those impacted, and a commitment to some innovative solutions, with a sense of urgency injected.

Which response is from a staff member who experiences discrimination?

Below is a table of PMES responses where 15% or more of respondents have given a flat-out negative response – saying the statement is not true. There are 24 of them. I am not saying all the negative responses are from a diversity group. The anonymity of the survey means we cannot know.

If most of the 15% of respondents who gave a negative rating to the statement “I have the tools and technology to do my job well” were people with disability, we would have to interpret the result very differently. A result showing 85% of staff are happy with their tools and equipment is great news, but if we knew who the other 15% were any celebrating might be restrained.

STATEMENT	NEGATIVE
I have confidence in the way recruitment decisions are made	29%
Change is managed well in my organisation	28%
I have the time to do my job well	26%
I am confident my organisation will act on the results of this survey	26%
I am satisfied with the opportunities available for career development in my organisation	25%
I am paid fairly for the work I do	24%
Senior managers listen to employees	23%
I have confidence in the ways my organisation handles grievances	22%
My organisation generally selects capable people to do the job	21%
I receive adequate recognition for my contributions from my organisation	21%
People in my organisation take responsibility for their own actions	21%
I can keep my work stress at an acceptable level	20%
Senior managers keep employees informed about what’s going on	20%
There is good co-operation between teams across my organisation	19%
My organisation is committed to developing its employees	19%
My manager appropriately deals with employees who perform poorly	19%
Senior managers provide clear direction for the future of the organisation	19%
I get the support I need to do my job well	17%
My performance is assessed against clear criteria	16%
In the last 12 months, I have received feedback to help me improve my work	16%
Senior managers model the values of my organisation	16%
My organisation motivates me to help it achieve its goals	15%
My organisation inspires me to do the best in my job	15%
I have the tools and technology to do my job well	15%

Conclusion

The above table tells us that, on average the negative feedback relates to 3 people in 20 7 times, 4 people in 20 12 times and 5 people in 20 5 times

Inclusion is for everybody, not the majority. The reason inclusion is an issue is that it means the end of exclusion from the majority. The PMES is a fantastic tool – if we use it the right way – and do not bias our interpretation in favour of the majority. Good numbers are great, but the smaller negative numbers must be interrogated with a sensitive awareness that exclusion and discrimination apply most frequently to members of minority groups.