Introduction
I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Seb Ducarme, Membership Engagement Manager, PurpleSpace by phone. Seb is based on the east coast of Australia but has a global reach. The great thing about him being here is that he will be able to run the kind of events that PurpleSpace runs in the UK and Europe.
Before I go on, I should make it clear that this isn’t an ad for PurpleSpace. It’s more an ongoing affection that stretches back to May 2018 when PurpleSpace’s founder and CEO, Kate Nash, gave the keynote address at the Australian Network on Disability’s Annual National Conference in Sydney. The next day she ran a workshop on Networkology at the Westpac Bank’s HO.
At the time I had been a Disability ERG lead for 17 months. I had spent that time rebuilding numbers and the ERG’s profile after a prolonged period of restructure and doing the conventional stuff – 4 meetings a year and not a great deal in between.
Kate Nash ‘radicalised’ me and in turn I transformed the ERG into a potent force for change in favour of staff with disability. I won’t retell the story. Suffice to say that in September 2020 my successor was offered the ERG lead role as fulltime. It included a few other jobs as well, which put the ERG lead in the driver’s seat for energising change in favour of staff with disability. That was an extraordinary commitment to an experiment in employee-led positive change. It began with Kate’s keynote speech.
In 2019 and 2020 I was invited to present at the Australian Network on Disability’s Annual National Conferences on the innovative work the ERG had been doing.
Below I want to reflect on how and why I was ‘radicalised’ to become a highly effective Disability ERG lead.
Networkology
Kate introduced me to the idea of Networkology in company with the notion that data was important when it came to Disability Inclusion. The idea that Disability Inclusion was a rational discipline wasn’t a shock to me other than it hadn’t entered my head that it could be applied in this case. I had been reading in management theory for decades and completed an applied management program. But I hadn’t imagined this applied to Disability Inclusion – the realm of volunteers and amateurs.
I had been involved in the Disability ERG since its founding in July 2010 and had never thought of it as more than a passive staff association mostly providing lived experience insight for policy and program reform.
With the advent of the idea of Networkology the ERG became an energised agency for advocacy and a driver of change. I eventually envisioned it as a de facto business unit – a professional partner with the department creating the changes we all wanted to see happen.
I comprehended Networkology as a discipline, a science and this utterly transformed how I operated. Thank you, Kate!
The life of a Disability ERG without Networkology
Our original Disability ERG was set up as a kind of staff association. This was novel to everyone, and our first job was to educate HR on the reality of being a staff member with a disability in the department. This was a good and productive process for awhile and then things went slow. We had gotten disability onto the agenda. This was a priority, but now we had made it, we were competing for attention and resources like everything else on the agenda.
We had neither the culture nor the means to grab and hold attention, so after the initial success we lost ground. It was now okay that unresolved issues of accessibility, fairness and bullying could be put on the backburner until there were funding and attention available to address those needs. That was not a good thing, but what to do?
I was aware that other Disability ERGs had adopted a union-flavoured approach which developed a contentious sentiment toward executive leaders. That hardly helped. I wanted collaboration and partnership. Networkology gave me the theoretical model and then, when we joined PurpleSpace, there were practice guides to make it happen as well.
Conclusion
PurpleSpace is the only organisation I am aware of that has a professional commitment to supporting Disability ERGs and their organisations. I was very fortunate that my department’s executive leadership fully understood that commitment from the top was crucial if the Disability ERG was going to be an effective partner in helping the organisation meet its obligations concerning Disability Inclusion.
However, I more often saw that organisations assumed that their staff association-based Disability ERGs were responsible for leading implementation of the vital changes that ensured accessibility, equity and fairness. They are not. They are critical partners in delivering those changes that the organization is responsible for ensuring happen. Maybe Disability ERGs also have a role in reminding the organisation of its duty and priority – but as an equal partner, not as an amateur and volunteer body.
Driving any kind of change in an organisation is a complex and challenging role. Disability ERGs should be playing a vital part as an equal partner in bringing those change efforts to fruition. But to do so skills must be developed, relationships must be established, and insights must be distilled and shared.
Neither Disability ERGs nor their organisations will usually have the necessary insights and skills to make this happen unassisted.
It is no exaggeration to say that my success as a Disability ERG lead was grounded in PurpleSpace’s insights and methods. Their critical insights into leadership capabilities and strategies made the difference for me. One word sums it up – Networkology. There’s a science behind success that can be learned. The art of being successful is up to us – and belonging to a community of practitioners can help that a lot.
Seb said its okay for me to include his email address: [email protected]