Month: October 2024

Introduction

A couple of weeks ago I took my car up to an excellent local business to have an issue with its wipers addressed. I was offered a seat, and I declined because the two chairs were both very low. I was offered another seat, which I accepted, knowing there would be problems. That chair was higher than the others but had no arms. I needed two guys to help me up.

I am 185 cms [6+ foot]. Part of the spectrum of my disability’s impacts is a weakness in leg strength. Very low seats are a problem for me. I need help to get up from them. I am not disposed to be dependent, so I normally decline to put myself in a situation where I need help to get out of chair. Sometimes there isn’t an option.

At home I have several day chairs I bought from a disability aid supplier. The difference between my ‘clinical’ chairs and the lower seats is the opportunity to adjust the height. They are high to start with, and are entirely comfortable but don’t have that plush sense of ease.

To many, low chairs signify relaxation and ease. But that’s not true for a substantial portion of our community. Aside from people with disability there are those who are pregnant, obese, or injured for whom low seating can even be a hazard. 

Even public sector agencies, who have an obligation to be inclusive, haven’t twigged that super low chairs in lobbies and waiting areas are not accessible. A range of seating options ensures inclusivity.

In most settings all seating is at the same height

You are unlikely to find an adjustable dining chair or an adjustable dining table. Ergonomic considerations have made adjustable chairs and desks a thing because of a work health safety liability. But get away from office settings and cars and we are back to the ‘one size fits all’ world.

My lounge room seating at home is low and no longer accessible to me. Several years ago, I explored an electric lounge chair that lifted up, and tilted forward, so the user could get up. That was a few thousand dollars ($2,400). Instead of buying that, I spent $600 to get an adjustable height chair from a disability supplies store. That’s a ridiculous price for a ‘day chair’, but there really aren’t alternatives.

You can’t, as far as I know, get an accessible option for a lounge suite. Fair enough. There’s not the market for such.

As a member of my local council’s Access Advisory Committee, I have raised concerns about seating in streets and parks being too low and often without arm rests that can be used as an aid when rising. There may not be a happy medium which is an ideal height, so there may be a need to have different heights to cater to varied needs. The luxury of adjustable street and park seating is not on the horizon, so we must rethink what the ‘normal’ height might be.

A related concern is the potential for informal seating in landscaped settings. Retaining walls are often used as casual seating so in parks and along paths it is possible to creating variable height seating without the cost of a formal seat. Not everyone can walk any distance without needing a break, so by incorporating seating into landscape designs a park can become inherently more accessible. Informal seating incorporated in landscape design has become something of a soapbox for me.

I was chatting with a friend recently. She told me that she had finally applied for a Mobility Parking Scheme card. She met the requirement of not being able to walk 100 metres without distress. She described a time when she needed to walk around 500 metres because accessible parking close to her destination wasn’t available (in fact there was no parking). There were no seats on the route she took, and no informal opportunities to rest either. That meant that along this route in a dense urban setting there was nothing she saw that she could sit on. An inclusive urban landscape is a sittable landscape. It was a painful and unpleasant walk for her.

Sometimes I get the feeling that my fixation on seating isn’t welcome, but I do recall the latter days of my mother-in-law who was aged and frail. She loved outings. We could go to a park, but if there was nothing like a picnic table or seat within 30 metres that was a problem. We are living longer and with impaired mobility. Access to a seat within 30 metres of a carpark can have a huge impact on quality of life. It can be the difference between a picnic and lunch in the car.

Imagining inclusion

Inclusive thinking isn’t intuitive. We think by habit mostly. Before I acquired my mobility disability the notion that how high a seat might be never entered my head. Now, whether I can get up from a chair is a vital consideration, especially if there is nobody around. A few years ago, I fell in my hallway, and I had to drag myself along the floor to my bedroom (mercifully the door was open) so I could use my bed to get up. Now I must calculate risks in many settings and seating is one major risk area.

What prompted me to buy an adjustable height chair was discovering that I could not get out of a low soft and very comfortable lounge without assistance. I couldn’t even move myself onto the floor and follow my fall recovery method. Had I been alone and with no mobile phone close I could have died in that comfy chair.

Last year my bath seat slid, and I fell into the bath. The fact it slid was down to me being slack about checking it. I had assumed it was set-and-forget. It wasn’t. Mercifully I had my phone with me, so I was able to call for help. These days we have great strategies and technologies for detecting falls. These are important because getting up afterwards is simply not possible for so many people. 

We don’t imagine that sitting in a seat that is too low, or having the seat fail, is a fall, but it is in many ways because the lack of intent and control, and the consequences are the same. And our fall alarms don’t activate either.

When you are vulnerable to falls seating become a potential life saver. Walking with such a vulnerability can induce anxiety. It can be dangerous to walk. You become dependent on aids and assistance – and forward planning. There are times when the need to find a place to sit is imperative – but is it something you can rise from later?

People with disability can seriously depend upon help from others, without which their lives would be miserable. Long ago I worked for a time in a psychiatric hospital’s ‘hospital ward’. All of the residents required total care. That was a humbling experience.

But for many others the dignity of independence is precious – as it is for others with no disability. Imagine that the height of a seat can make such a difference. Imagine that we no longer assume there is a one size that fits all. We don’t imagine this is so with clothing, shoes, office furniture or car seats. Yet we think low soft seating is luxuriant to everyone. What is low means ease, and is good, what is high means work and isn’t so good. This isn’t universally true. 

Conclusion

Thinking inclusively isn’t easy. In fact, its darned hard work. I have a disability, but while I am more sympathetic to others with disability it doesn’t magically confer upon me insight into their needs and challenges. In fact, I am increasingly disappointed with disability tokenism. No one person can represent disability as a whole. You need at least 3 people with distinctly different disabilities in any representative setting – and that will still not be a universal point of view.

My seating soapbox has been crafted from personal experience as well as having some sense of design requirements. I wouldn’t imagine a wheelchair user, a blind person, or anybody else for whom seating is not a safety concern to identify it as an issue.

Who knew where and how we sit could be so fraught?

Introduction

One thing that has dogged people with disability for a very long has been discrimination in recruitment. Sure, adjustments during the recruitment process offer something, but nothing effective has been done to address subsequent bias and discrimination by the selection panel.

I was involved in recruitment way back in the last half of the 1980s. It was when anti-discrimination legislation was being applied to recruitment conducted by the Commonwealth Employment Service. These were early days and a huge learning opportunity for me. Discrimination was rampant and flagrant. I was younger and idealistic and pushed the anti-discrimination line with determination. I learned a lot about why it wasn’t popular then. Its popular now, in principle, but not yet as common in practice as we desire.

Since then, I have been periodically involved in recruitment in the NSW public sector – as a panel convenor, panel member and as an independent with disability. Bias and discrimination are still issues. Sometimes this is intentional, but mostly it’s not – just baked into attitudes and values of the decision-makers.

The system I am familiar with is a selection panel of 3 – the convenor who is most often the business unit manager, a panel member from the same business unit and an ‘independent’ [somebody from a different business unit].

Efforts to mitigate bias in panels haven’t progressed much beyond online anti-bias ‘training’. There are many reasons why this is ineffectual – it is undertaken as an obligation, completed in isolation and has no follow up discussion or assessment. Some agencies may do better, but mostly covering the spectrum of external and internal recruitment exercises is beyond any agency’s capacity. And though most are deeply committed to addressing the problem, how to do that hasn’t been figured out.

Is there a solution? I think so, but it will take focused and determined action by volunteers. Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) can be serious change agents if they have the vision, determination and skill to initiate a strategy and then stay the course. In this they are partners with their agency, saying that ‘We don’t want to wait until you address the resource issue. Let’s get going on a solution now. We will help.’  

How independent is an independent?

Mostly not at all. Its fine to be called an ‘independent’ but there’s knowledge, skill, and confidence that goes with the role. Recruitment is a skilled business that requires knowledge and insight, but recruitment panels are convened based on where a vacancy is. It is therefore not realistic to ensure a panel has the necessary skill level. We can’t predict where a vacancy might arise – and hence who might be the panel convenor and the member. But we can predict and plan for who might be the ‘independent’ panel member. We can create a pool of independents.

An alternative of having all recruitment done by recruitment professional may be thought a superior option, but the cost is prohibitive. We are stuck with the present approach. In acknowledging the resource issues, we must not absolve agencies of their obligation to ensure bias and discrimination free recruitment.

Ensuring the ‘independent’ is genuinely independent and skilled isn’t a perfect solution that will end bias and discrimination. But it can radically reduce the risk and significantly change the culture. It can generate a change momentum that is integrated into the agency’s culture. It can demonstrate that an organisation is prepared to ‘walk the walk’.

Creating a pool of skilled independents

Depending on what ERGs an organisation has, it can create a wide pool of independents from active ERG members. A commitment to the cause is a necessary starting point, but it is not sufficient. Other attributes and capabilities are critical. An independent must be confident in expressing concerns of bias and be prepared to stand their ground with tact.

Preparatory training is also essential. There is usually online training in recruitment procedures, or written material. There is an abundance of material on bias mitigation and decision-making hygiene. But this must be backed up with facilitated group discussion. Building a community of practice would be a highly advantageous thing to do.

An organisational aversion to the creation of such a pool will be that it is hard to manage and the resources to do so are not available to do so. The counter argument is that there is no control on, or support for, independents now, so any improvement is highly desirable. Besides the ERGs add a voluntary resource that must be finetuned for best value.

The pool can be established and managed by a working party of ERG members. It may stretch an ERG’s resources but if it has a commitment to ending bias and discrimination at recruitment such an activity should be a core function. 

There’s a question of scale to be addressed as well. ERGs in large organisations with a high volume of recruitment may need to negotiate targeting recruitment where there is an identified risk (not every recruitment will have the same level of risk). The pool may have to be an evolving response rather than a whole solution.

The critical importance of accreditation of pool members

First, ERG representatives who want to be independents must meet agreed criteria. Second, the employer must agree to accrediting independents and ensuring they have a reporting pathway so that concerns about clear bias and discrimination will be conveyed to relevant decision-makers.

The times I was an independent I had no advice on what to do if I thought the panel was engaging in bias or discrimination. I was okay about this because I felt no uncertainty about advancing any issue I identified. Others may not feel the same level of confidence.

This lack of guidance and assurance of support undermines the whole reason for having an ‘independent’. The general rule has been that the convenor calls the shots, and, if a decision is discriminatory, it is down to an aggrieved applicant to complain.

I have concerns about allowing a business unit manager to convene a selection panel and effectively dominate the recruitment decision without any balancing influence. Bias and discrimination may not be the only reasons for poor recruitment decisions, but, in my experience, they have certainly contributed to a substantial number of truly awful decisions.

The presence of an accredited credible independent may be an issue for some panel convenors because their power to dominate the decision making will be taken away. All panel members must sign off on the decision, so a decline to sign is a potent response. An independent with accreditation and the means to escalate a concern to HR will diminish all but determined efforts at bias and discrimination – and these must be addressed directly by the agency.

There are many instances where ‘independents’ have been selected by the panel convenor, which should instantly generate a doubt about whether the person selected is skilled or genuinely independent. Having an accredited independent randomly assigned is likely to be hugely disruptive and is a strong argument for this concept.

Conclusion

Bias or discrimination can be hard to prove for a candidate. Even if the experience feels flagrant, it can also be damaging to their reputation, especially if a complaint fails – most do. Mostly bias and discrimination are unintentional and inadvertent. An accredited independent can eliminate such decisions simply by triggering more self-reflection. 

The more problematic situations are less common but still unacceptable roadblocks on recruitment and career progression that must not be tolerated in any public sector agency. When such instances arise, the problems presented may bring up more complex reasons as to why panel members fail to meet their obligations to uphold equity and inclusion obligations. This could be because of cultural or religious beliefs or personal history. The simple fact is that some people should not be in control of recruitment decisions, and an agency fails in its responsibility to ensure equity and inclusion if those situations are not addressed when they arise. With genuine independents there is little chance of identifying them.

The idea of an accredited panel of independents for selection panels isn’t a perfect response to the very real problem faced by members of diversity groups. But it’s a beginning and its efficacy can be measured after an interval. The ERGs and the agency can review and revise their agreed approach.

I recognise that agencies may feel they do not have the wherewithal to set up such a mechanism. Using volunteer members from ERGs makes sense because ERG members are stakeholders in addressing the problem. If the issue for the agency is one of resourcing rather than no will to change then volunteers can be critical to proof of concept and confirmation of value. ERG members benefit from the action because their careers can progress.

But, as I noted above, not having the resources isn’t a sufficient reason to not honour a duty to eliminate bias and discrimination. Hence any objection to, or obstruction of, the creation of a panel of independents should raise important questions.

The establishment of a panel of independents can be an invaluable demonstration of how collaboration between ERGs and their agency will benefit staff and evolve the organisational culture toward greater inclusion and equity. The problem is known as persistent and damaging, and a pathway to an enduring solution can be opened up.

The goal of a disruptive intervention like this is, in the words of a friend and former colleague, “…to embed inclusion in the organisation’s cultural DNA.” This can be achieved only by intentional evolution supported by innovation and deep commitment.