Author: mp2201

Introduction

Over the 2024 Christmas/New Year season I have been getting an introduction to cognitive science and a bit of a refresh on evolutionary psychology. Yeah, that’s my idea of fun. I wanted to start off 2025 with some fresh insights.

Below I will reflect on a few ideas I have developed in previous posts. You might think that I am drawing a long bow at times, but bear with me.

Thinking in the right scale

Anatomically modern humans have been around about 200,000 years. What we call civilisation is around 6,000 years old. That suggests that our ancestors had something like 194,000 years living in tribes or villages. You’d expect that’s plenty of time for we humans to have developed deeply ingrained behaviours and attitudes ideally suited to groups of around 150 people.

By comparison 6,000 isn’t very long to adapt those behaviours and attitudes to larger more complex communities. This is especially so when we remember that small rural communities were still a thing for most of those 6,000 years.

Our concerns about bias and inclusion maybe began a few centuries ago but became a major theme only in the 1960s – in the midst of the technological, economic, and social changes that were triggered after World War 2. That’s a scant 60 years ago.

Reflex and aspiration

The conditions under which we live now [physically, technologically, and socially] are nothing like our ancestors knew or could have imagined. The momentum of change seems to be relentless.

I have been reading Thriving with Stone-Age Minds by Justin L. Barret & Pamela Ebstyne King. As a text on evolutionary psychology, I found it immensely useful, and while I do commend it, I should caution the reader that it does have a religious context which may be challenging to some. 

The premise of the book is that we have ‘stone-age’ minds, but we mostly live in settings utterly unlike where those minds/brains were developed. How do you thrive in a contemporary metropolis with psychological tools created for jungles, forests and savannas?

Our reflexes are stone-age, but our aspirations are space-age.

As we evolve our understanding of our psychology, we must surrender mistaken ideas and myths about our nature and behaviour. There are times when information is sufficient to activate changes in behaviour, and there are times when it is not. A sign saying that a bridge is out is usually sufficient to induce a person not to drive across it. But a message saying ‘be inclusive of people with disability’ is not. This is because very different reflexes are involved in the response to the different messages.

We need to understand what reflexes are triggered in what situation and set our expectations and methods of communication accordingly.

When virtues become vices

Our stone-age tribal reflexes still serve us well in many settings – in small communities, in families, in teams for instance. We favour in-group members. We are more tolerant of them, we grant them indulgences and preferences, we may also take risks or make sacrifices for them.

In a tribe or village those reflexes would never be questioned. And when they include exclusion, it is usually in response to a threat of some kind – an enemy or competitor, or someone very strange.

In larger communities, exclusion may be activated simply because we are psychologically stretched beyond that 150 mark. We must be selective about who is counted in that belonging-to group. We prefer people like us. Bias is a cognitively efficient tool to express that preference.

It has been argued that it is our strong sense of community or need to belong to a group that has made being human distinct, and not our capacity for tool making. Our ability to develop tools and refine them exists as it does only because of the group – or tribe – or village. Dedicating the time to refine tools is safer in a community.

But in civilisations those reflexes which were fundamental to the survival and flourishing of tribes and villages become problematic, and in some settings impediments to collective well-being. In fact, these reflexes can also become the basis for abusive or criminal conduct.

We don’t have civilisation specific reflexes yet. Consequently, there is a constant tension between what we aspire to and what we deliver.

Adaptive evolution is hard

We are constantly adapting and evolving our physical and social environment, and as a result, we also evolve. But we are talking evolution and not transformation. The core of a thing remains. The first car is still recognisable in our contemporary cars. The first plane is still recognisable in contemporary planes. The stone-age mind is still recognisable in the space-age citizen.

Cores are refined, not transformed. They adapt – provided intent and effort are applied. Any evolutionary process is difficult and requires skill. Our ancestors went from using found rocks to creating sometimes exquisitely formed tools from flint. Then we transformed our tool making when we developed the ability to work with metal.

Our stone-age minds are evolving at a slow but steady pace. There is no transformation yet on the horizon, so we are going to have to stay with our inherited psychological technology and continue to refine it. To do so effectively we must first understand it, discard wrong ideas, develop strategies that work with, not against, it, and implement them with empathy and respect.

Conclusion

Contemporary organisations [whether businesses, government agencies, or NGOs] are novel iterations of old forms. They operate in an unprecedented cultural environment. They are ‘space-age’ entities operated by people who often allow their ‘stone-age’ minds more latitude than serves the common good.

Its not that anybody is doing anything wrong. Its more that we don’t yet have adaptive strategies that work as well as they could.

Its hard enough for staff to flourish in many contemporary operating environments as it is without adding the extra demand to be less biased and more inclusive in a non-insightful way. What we need are strategies that trigger actions that are sufficiently rewarding so people will put in the extra cognitive effort to change their behaviour. This will require deep self-reflection by those who want to be effective change agents.

Let’s ensure there will be opportunities in 2025 to re-imagine how to evolve more inclusive workplaces and communities.

Michael Patterson

31 December 2024

Introduction
MY time as a disability ERG lead was dominated by addressing the multiple concerns raised by members. We had a lot of work to do with limited resources. I left celebration of diversity up to my successor. I focused on inclusion in a very practical problem-solving way. 

Over the past near 18 months of working with ERG leads from a range of diversity areas I have been rethinking my hyper focus on practical problem solving. 

Celebration of diversity is an inclusion strategy. It has a goal of bringing about positive cultural change in the workforce. It should be part of a balanced approach by an ERG. 

ERGs are created to address a perceived need – so their primary focus is on generating change – of perceptions, attitudes and behaviours. On an organisational level this includes policies, procedures and practices. On a workplace level this includes activity that allows a workforce’s culture to evolve into a more aware, responsive, inclusive, and kinder community. 

One of us
Contemporary research affirms that our natural behaviour is to privilege members of our own group rather than specifically exclude members of other groups. 

In the book Tribal Michael Morris argues that we have misunderstood this reflex as primarily exclusive when in fact it is the opposite. This doesn’t mean that we aren’t also brutally exclusive at times – just that it’s not our primary nature. The problem is that our in-group can be too narrowly defined, too exclusive. The challenge is to make our in-group bigger. We can expand from a small team or group all the way up to the ideal that we are all fellow humans – and maybe beyond that if we are so inclined.

In between there is a realisable goal – we are all members of the same workplace community equally deserving of kindness and empathy – and (the benefit of privileging in-group members) the extra effort to respond to individual situations and needs. 

We are naturally social creatures. In fact, some are reimagining that what made it possible for humans to evolve the way we have isn’t our way with fire or tool making. It is that we are more potently social than the other primates. 

In-groups are cool with diversity, and with accommodating (privileging) individual needs within the group. We have a natural response to be inclusive and supportive of our own. The challenge is how we can expand our in-group – how we embrace others as one of us. 

Celebrating diversity as if people really matter

I didn’t want to initiate celebrations of the diversity of people with disability while members were still being excluded through inaccessible physical spaces, technologies, and practices. Being included in principle but not in practice isn’t a welcome experience – and for way too many people with disability that has been a persistent reality in workplaces and in the community.

But among ‘diversity groups’ people with disability are unique in that others do not face the same physical and practical needs for accommodations. Some diversity groups do require changes to policies and procedures, while for others the need is for changes to attitudes and behaviours.

We exclude unintentionally when we do not see how we respond to difference unconsciously, triggered by cultural or circumstantial conditioning that says, ‘They are not one of us.’

Research undertaken in the US a few years ago showed that managers, while sympathetic to the cause of Disability Inclusion, were not comfortable talking to staff with disability in case their ignorance of their disability gave offence.

I had a similar experience in 2019 when an office fire warden admitted they had not approached a blind staff member with a guide dog about their emergency response needs out of fear of being thought offensive.

So, while there maybe be an inclusive sentiment that wants to embrace a person as ‘one of us’, unresolved anxieties can create a barrier and push that person into an out-group.

We often use the term diversity not to denote subtle differences we all have, but to denote large differences that place another person into a separate group – whether they want that or not. Members of diversity groups want inclusion because the distinctions we make about them are unkind and inappropriate. So, if we label them as members of a ‘diversity group’ we have created a classification that not only excludes them through an act we imagine as inclusive, but it can impose upon them a primary identity they do not want.

Our tribal instincts are not at fault, but they do induce us to think and behave in terms of groups and membership of groups at an unconscious level – even when it creates out-groups we do not intend to make. We have the ability and the power, as well as an obligation, to make our sense of tribal identity far larger.

This last point is important because by their very nature, an organisation’s workforce constitutes a group to which all staff belong. It has the potential to be a vital in-group for all staff members. This is often explicit as an obligation in codes of conduct.

The fact is that we are all diverse, and we can all be divided into sub-groups that could become grounds for exclusion – where we live, which sport we follow [and which team], music tastes, hair colour, and so. Indeed, there have been times when such groupings have been grounds for exclusion, and sometimes violence. 

Our culture has evolved to a point where a residual stubbornly persistent insistence on putting some people into out-groups remains. Our community has steadily evolved into a rich array of diverse individual expressions as the demand for conformity to determined and imposed identities has declined. Individuals are asserting self-determined identities over those culturally asserted. This is a novel development.

Our next step is to affirm diversity as an individual attribute of every member of our evolving in-group. We are who we say we are, not who we are said to be.

Conclusion

The evolution of our shared community over the past several centuries has been remarkable. However, there are persistent culturally embedded habits of exclusion by the legacy of rigidly defined in-groups that will continue to decline slowly, probably via generational change. 

In the meantime, our efforts to advance that process of change include celebrating the diversity inherent in our community members we identify by their ‘diversity group’ labels. There is a risk that we will accidentally contribute to the persistence of these exclusionary group ideas if we start seeing individual group members as inherently identified with the group.

I don’t want to be known as Michael with a disability. Disability is part of my identity – an obvious part – but I could offer up another 100 things that make me who I am. It’s not all of who I am. Its not even most of who I am.

Celebrating diversity is important, but let’s remember that it is diversity within a group. The question is whether that group is our in-group and the people whose diversity we celebrate are one of us.

This is an intentional choice on our part – and it is what will make the positive difference that should be the goal of every ERG.

Michael Patterson

12 December 2024

Introduction
Generally speaking I am reluctant to favour such an idea, were it not for the fact that bias in recruitment persists. If we can address the bias issue effectively, that might improve things. 

However, bias is baked into the very processes of recruitment – not just in terms of obvious disability but also diversity factors like neurodiversity (which isn’t inherently a disability) and forms of anxiety that might be triggered by the selection process. Non-conformity with an assumed norm activates our instinct to be biased. Bias isn’t a sin, just a reflex out of place.

And then there’s the occasional matter of roles that directly concern disability. We might assume that targeted recruitment makes clear sense – only it doesn’t, unless we are subtle in our approach.

Recruitment method reform is a complex topic, so I will leave that for last as I reflect on these themes. 

Thinking about disability specific roles
Disability specific roles aren’t all that common so it’s easy to miss that they are not infrequently just a component of, for example, a DEI role. Do you then privilege disability over any other diversity attribute? I think so, for the following reasons. 

Disability is singular among the spectrum of diversity groups in that it requires the addressing of accessibility needs that may be physical, sensory, or behavioural. This may require specialist knowledge and insights.

Not all disabilities require such accommodations and not all people with a particular disability have insight into other disabilities. So, we can’t assume that recruiting a person who has a disability is going to be as useful as we might imagine.

A potential area for targeted recruitment is disability-related policy, procedure and practice where remedies against bias and exclusion are developed. 

This can be a problematic area because what seems like a good idea can be ineffectual. A classic example of this was the NSW Public Service Commission’s Age of Inclusion campaign which had offensive descriptions of people with disability that I had removed from its website after over a year of lobbying, and content which remained that lacked any real practical value in my view. 

The offensive comments included an assertion that people with disability were adept at problem solving because having a disability means you have to meet accessibility challenges caused by one’s disability. And there was an observation that people with disability might be preferred because they change jobs less often and are hence more stable. You can safely bet there was very little informed input from people with disability in what was claimed to have been a $1m campaign.

Some of these impediments might be overcome if an organisation engages its disability ERG as a consultative body – provided it isn’t persuaded to use this option to duck hiring a suitable person with disability. But here we have the problem of tokenism. People with disability are ‘consulted’, but they are not often part of the decision-making process. They have ‘a voice’ but no power.

A singular problem in this area is that well-intentioned people without lived experience of disability may imagine that their sense of sympathy for people with disability is sufficient to guide them to make good decisions. But sympathy doesn’t generate empathy or insight, and empathic insight is what gives us good policy, procedure and practice. 

There can be a temptation also to assume that ‘lived experience of disability is inherently sufficient.  But, like having a disability is not assurance of being universally aware of the spectrum of disability. Having exposure to disability in some meaningful fashion isn’t an assurance of anything beyond, perhaps, sincere empathy. This doesn’t mean such a person may not suit a role, just that it can’t be assumed. Empathy and insight trump sympathy and asserted knowledge.

When I became DCJ DEN Chair I had experience of living with mobility and grip disabilities. I had some insight into other disabilities but not enough to be useful. In 2018 I created a Guidance and Action Team (GAT) of 15 members with a wide array of disabilities. The GAT promptly set about schooling me on how different disabilities impacted the work experience. The DEN’s subsequent success was down to the GAT.

Having a disability doesn’t magically confer universal insight or activate empathy and compassion. People with acquired disabilities may have ongoing emotional challenges in processing the grief that comes with catastrophic loss of aspects of one’s life capabilities. That’s something too little acknowledged or explored. Disability doesn’t necessarily make you a hero or a saint. It can make you distressed and angry, traumatised in fact.

Many of us live with the after affects of trauma. It can stimulate passion but also impair empathy and impede the development of insight.

So, there no simple solution to the question of whether employing a person with disability is the best option. It is preferable if the right person is selected – but this opens a vigorous can of worms about recruitment methods. How do you know you have found ‘the right person’?

On doing a better job of selecting the best person for the job

I recently had an experience which drove home to me just how fundamentally exclusionary standard public sector recruitment practices can be. I will do a separate piece on that shortly. What starkly struck me was that the role I applied for was specifically for people with disability and yet the recruitment methodology worked against people with anxiety and people who are neurodiverse. I will repeat my assertion that not everyone who experiences anxiety, or who is neurodiverse has a disability, in their view. But the recruitment methodology would have adversely impacted some people who don’t identify as having a disability, as well as those who do.

People with disability question recruitment methods while people who have diverse needs feel they have no right to seek equity simply because they are ‘different’. Disability inclusion advocacy reaches far beyond people we recognise as having a disability to embrace those with diverse needs and those with circumstantial or situational disability – all of whom may be adversely affected by insensitive recruitment approaches.

The clear impression I got was that while the recruitment exercise was specifically to recruit people with disability, it was controlled by people without lived experience of disability of a nature that could sensitively inform the recruitment process.

A major feature of the recruitment exercise was the provision of interview question 30 minutes ahead of the interview. However, because the interview was conducted remotely via MS Teams there was a sensible requirement to activate the Teams link 10 minutes ahead of the interview to avoid any last-minute problems – thereby effectively reducing the preparation time to 20 minutes. For a variety of reasons even 30 minutes preparation time can stress people with cognitive, emotional, sensory, and motor disabilities and lead to poor interview performance.

The same can also have adverse impacts on people with no declared disability or who have a ‘situational’ disability arising from a variety of ‘normal’ life events that may trigger stress, anxiety, or other cognitive impairment (e.g. lack of sleep – which a new parent might experience).

There is, so far as I know, no rational informed reason why interview questions may not be provided several days ahead of the interview. The whole logic of what interview questions are supposed to demonstrate is in need of serious review. I am aware that Aboriginal recruitment specialists are more inclined toward an opportunity for a yarn that can bring out a candidate’s personal attributes in a more relaxed atmosphere. This could be a way of enabling a recruitment process to be psychologically safe so that ‘non-normal’ attributes can be expressed.

Let me balance this with the observation that we have become accustomed to assume that what we have now works well, despite overwhelming evidence it does not. We are still recruiting managers with low psychological intelligence, low empathy, an aversion to innovation, and a disinclination to engage in ongoing professional development – precisely what sound research tells us we must avoid. I argue that regular recruitment practices favour the less sensitive, less empathic, and less diverse candidates. 

There is a larger reason for this – entrenched cultures prefer those who conform to their in-group model. Hence, we are less likely to see a neurodiverse person being recruited to a management role than a person who is psychologically ill-suited to contemporary management challenges.

There are other critical issues about interview questions which adversely impact candidates with some disabilities. Questions can be unclear or may be ‘doubled-barrelled’ – making one question effectively 2 with no extra time to prepare or respond. This can mess up a neurodiverse person regardless of whether they identify as having a disability.

Recruitment practices should aim to be inclusive and not rely on candidates self-identifying as a person with disability and hence entitled to an adjustment. The mere act of asking for an adjustment may be sufficient to trigger bias in the recruitment panel.

But if a workplace culture favours the ‘normal’ there is little incentive to take the extra effort to embrace the diverse and unfamiliar. Organisational leaders must champion the development of recruitment practices which favour capability and diversity over conformity to a comparatively insensitive norm.

To add to the challenge, recruitment panel bias is potentially a huge issue when staff who constitute the panel are not recruitment specialists. Anti bias training doesn’t work well enough to assure a candidate the panel they are about to front is not disposed to bias. In fact, some researchers argue anti bias training makes matters worse because participants wrongly believe that the fact that they have undertaken the training was all that was needed. Bias will, I think, realistically remain a problem for a long time, but which can be ameliorated to a degree by two approaches:

1. Ensure all candidates get interview questions at least 3 days ahead of the interview.
2. Ensure all panels have a genuine independent. I have argued for certified independents who having standing in their organisation to hold the panel convenor to account in instances of perceived bias (I have detailed some thoughts on this matter elsewhere).

Conclusion

No recruitment process will ever be perfect. We can engage in harm reduction by steadily evolving how we recruit through intentional actions. I spent 4 years in recruitment, and I have been in the public sector long enough to know how often poor choices are made. We don’t routinely get it right because our assumptions about how to recruit well haven’t been updated for decades. Knowledge about how to recruit better is available, but it requires a genuine commitment of effort to shift from insensitive to sensitive recruitment practices. We must progress beyond defending the insensitive norm.

Considerations that make recruitment fairer for people with disability and those who simply diverge from the ‘normal’ will benefit more people than will be disadvantaged. A genuine commitment to diversity means that the bog standard one-size-fits-all approach which is insensitive (and favours less sensitive people) can’t remain the business-as-usual model.

There are superior alternatives, but it will take a willingness to surrender habituated practice, and it will take an articulated demand for change in the spirit of equity and inclusion that goes way beyond the theme of disability and genuinely embraces the ideals of true diversity.

Introduction
Generally speaking the [Australian] culture I live in is pretty inclusive. Of course, biases are present and there acts of intentional exclusion. 

When I was DCJ DEN Chair [11/2016. to 3/2020] I made a point to the then Secretary that there was an abundance of good will in the department, and we should aim to tap it. It wasn’t that people were not responsive to disability inclusion as much as not being habituated to thinking inclusively. I was committed to engaging with that goodwill.

There’s a trend toward greater inclusivity, but, as ever, demand exceeds supply. Those in need are justly impatient. But that impatience must not become cranky. There are smarter ways of making good change happen. Blaming people for not ‘getting it’ doesn’t work. Having a sense that one is on the right side of the moral fence – and there are others who appear morally defective – is destructive.

Contemporary workplace data tells us that staff members are under pressure just dealing with business as usual. Many also have private life demands and dramas that decrease the cognitive and emotional bandwidth they have to process changes in perception and behaviour that foster greater inclusion – even if they want to.

We all want to be as good as we imagine we could be, but we have only so much capacity to modify our behaviour in the blizzard of demands upon us.

Inclusion advocates must work smarter. They can work harder too, but if they are not working smarter that will be energy wasted.

We are always better off reinforcing positive behaviour than punishing bad behaviour. This is a fundamental insight. Being nice and being kind gets better results than being cranky – even if there is apparent justification.

This post has been inspired by Michael Morris’ Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together. Studies in evolutionary, cultural, and social psychology are helping us re-imagine what we thought we knew about making good change happen.

Today there’s an ever-growing wealth of insights for leaders of positive inclusive change efforts to tap into. It’s a constantly evolving area of inquiry. Below I want to reflect on some of the challenges leaders face.

An historical perspective

Depending on your age, your sense of how fast things are changing will have a different perspective.

The Australian community has been evolving toward greater inclusivity since the period after WW2 which saw refugees from war-ravaged Europe come here up to the present. Things have been helped along by movements and campaigns, and by generational change. This is as well as legislation and policies. It has been a multi-faceted and collective effort. 

I marched or protested for the rights of women, gays [it was called Gay Rights back then], and Aboriginal people in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Because I grew up in a community full of post WW2 migrants I didn’t have any problems with multiculturalism. My parents did. They were immigrants from the UK, as was I. They didn’t eat foreign food. At my 2^ndwedding my mother eyed a plate of French vegetables suspiciously. She earnestly, in a whisper, asked me whether they were “safe to eat.”

My serious interest in disability developed in the early 1990s when I started working with the NSW Department of Community Services [DOCS]. I had been involved with people with disability since back in the early 1970s when I worked in psychiatric hospitals and in several roles after. But DOCS introduced me to the political dimension.

Over that time, I have seen the introduction of legislation, and the development of policies, designed to reduce discrimination. In the 1980s I was working in the Commonwealth Employment Service when legislation against discrimination in employment came into force – and we had to introduce our business owner clients to it. That was a fun thing to do in a rural community already fed up with ‘hippies’.

When you have a perspective spanning 6 decades you have a sense of definite change rolling out slowly. That’s evolution for you.

Some cultures and communities have remained steadfastly determined to perpetuate divisive and discriminatory values and practices. But they are in the minority. Recent trends suggest a backlash has been manifesting. While that’s true to some extent, we need to reflect on whether the ‘good guys’ are not part of the reason.

I think we have been working harder, but not smarter. We have been relying on ‘truths’ that no longer stand up to contemporary evidence. We need new truths. Scholarship has provided what we need. But we need to take the time to discover it.

Change leadership

Whether one is an ERG lead or a member of a business unit’s leadership team, or an executive leader change is a constant theme. There are always external factors necessitating internal adaptation. And there are always internal factors demanding further adaption.

One of those factors is social change as values and expectations evolve. The welfare of staff isn’t just a WHS concern. It can determine who stays, and who seeks to join the organisation – ultimately influencing its culture and its ability to perform in conformity with its mission. In the private sector this can be a matter of life or death in the marketplace.

The public sector is very different. This is something we don’t reflect on deeply enough. Departments don’t go bust, and there’s always a steady stream of candidates for vacant positions. The organisational mission is the public good delivered to an acceptable degree. Instead of profit, strong principles and high standards of thought and behaviour are intended. That’s on a macro level.

On the micro level of individual self-interest, for many staff members the reality is that their job is just that – a job. Their focus is on meeting the requirements of their role so they can keep their job, pay their bills, realise their ambitions/dreams, and sustain their families to the best of their ability. 

This places leaders in an interesting position. They have the same imperatives as other staff plus a need to navigate the complexities generated by the forces of change. For-profit businesses have an imperative to invest in supporting internal leaders to be effective change leaders. This isn’t uniformly the case in the public sector for a variety of reasons that I won’t explore here.

I want to focus the reader’s attention on two key ideas:

1. Any role having to do with leading change is complex and challenging.
2. The resources and support to perform in the role well may not necessarily be offered or available.

ERGs are about change

It is worthwhile reminding the reader that ERG is Employee Resource Group. Let’s focus on resource – for what? If it has anything to do with BAU that’s paid work. ERGs are substantially voluntary – so to do what?

Its to change something in the organisation that the organisation can’t do without voluntary assistance – and that change is to the benefit of the staff [especially ERG members]. What could be that difficult?

Let’s establish the insight that an organisation needs its staff to volunteer to deliver change that is necessary and desirable. That must be complex and/or difficult. It is also a clear admission that the organisation knows it can’t achieve its objective with its own ‘professional’ resources.

I want to appear to digress for a moment. There is legislation, with related policies, that require changes to the way organisations behave. However, governments do not resource agencies to comply with these requirements at a paid professional capacity. Why would you need volunteers otherwise?

I think there are two reasons for this. The first is governments are still operating on the ‘cognitive silver bullet’ theory which assumes that humans are ‘rational actors’ who adapt their behaviours to information. This has never been true outside the fantasy of hardline reason fanboys. The second is that government agencies have not developed a cogent argument against this position because [a] they believe the same theory, and [b] they haven’t taken the opportunity to become deeply informed on what the reality is.

The response is to hope that a body of motivated and self-interested but not necessarily well-informed staff might have the solution. What they can do is articulate what their needs are. But if that was the nub of the problem a few consultations and a couple of surveys would be ‘job done’. Plainly that’s not the case.  Maybe these volunteer staff could offer insights into what the real problem is?

So, let’s be clear. Driving necessary organisational behavioural and cultural change to create a reality that inclusion and diversity ideals are manifest across an organisation is a hugely difficult and complex challenge. And of course, a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers are going to provide the solution. No?

This is hard work – but it must be done

I quit fulltime work on 10 June 2021. I had quit the DEN Chair role in March the year before and had devoted my time to working on my department’s Disability Inclusion Action Plan [DIAP]. My unexpected elevation to DEN Chair in November 2018 made me a member of the DIAP implementation committee. That was a firsthand exposure to how complex the whole Disability Inclusion business is. That experience profoundly influenced how I operated as DEN Chair.

For 18 months after I left fulltime work, I researched Disability Inclusion in particular, and Inclusion in general for 18 months – putting in at least 4 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week. I finally had the time to catch up on stuff I wished I had known earlier.

It was obvious that Disability Inclusion was more complex than a DEI team could manage, but why was this the case? Changing human behaviour has always been problematic. One of the reasons we invented religion was to do that. That’s worked a bit, it also generated more unforeseen problems that we are still arguing over.

Changing behaviour in an organisational context in response to evolving cultural values and expectations adds new flavours to the challenge. This is especially so in the public sector where there an expectation that agencies funded by public money reflect and honour the evolving level of diversity in the communities they serve – and which fund them.

We have legislation, policies and programs but our culture prefers persuasion rather than enforcement. This is a kind and inclusive approach, but it just multiplies the level of difficulty beyond the scope well-intentioned amateurs.

I have elsewhere argued that member elections are not a reliable guide to getting the best leader, and here I want to affirm that ERG leadership roles are complex and demanding and require knowledge and skill. It would be a very good thing if those supporting the ERG were similarly knowledgeable and skilled. I should also reaffirm that this is collaborative work – ERG professional, DEI professional, and organisational leadership professional.

I think an intentional, planned, and supported approach to ERG leadership is essential if ERGs are to meet the potential that is implicit in their formation. 

ERG leaders must be supported to grow their skills in the same way as any other professional role. This is especially so because the job is implicitly beyond what the organisation can manage without volunteer support. And here’s the paradox – the hardest job is easily least supported.

Conclusion

Change is a constant challenge these days. Sometimes it is exhausting. Sometimes it seems pointless. But making our workplaces more inclusive and safer is an objective we cannot responsibly resile from.

The only reason an ERG exists is that it is assumed to play a vital role in attaining a goal that is beneficial to everyone involved. It is implicitly understood that getting to that goal is very difficult.  I was a founding member of what is now the DCJ DEN. Its inaugural meeting was in July 2010. That’s over 14 years ago now. And still not mission accomplished. The equal rights movements I participated in in the late 1960s and early 1970s can report the same thing – still not mission accomplished. 

Nevertheless, we have come a long way with Disability Inclusion – and all the other equal rights causes can say the same thing. We are getting there. But even [nice and kind] people of goodwill are slow to adapt. It isn’t intentional resistance, just the nature of who we are.

This is good work. We are making progress. But, like any field, we can do far better if we are skilled and knowledgeable.

Here’s my challenge to ERG Leads, Champions and Executive Sponsors – answer these questions quickly:

• Why does the ERG exist – what lack in organisational capacity is it supposed to fill?
• What exactly is the volunteer ERG meant to do that the organisation’s paid staff can’t?
• What tangible outcomes from ERG activities are expected/desired from all stakeholders -and do they align?

I think ERGs play an essential role in driving very necessary positive changes to align organisational cultures with community values. The argument is compelling for private sector bodies when inclusion and diversity enhance their capacity to attract and retain staff who sustain or boost their bottom line. In the public sector it is a moral imperative. Taxpayers are shareholders in a sense – and there is an expectation that they have equal rights to employment in the organisations their taxes fund. That right to access employment includes a right to safety [physical and psychological] – and have the opportunity to flourish. 

Safe and inclusive work cultures provide more equitable and effective services – which is the mission of the public sector. Good leadership is essential. If ERGs are to perform as desired, then they must be supported. And we must begin with helping them find the best leaders they can and developing their potential.

Introduction

Earlier this year [2024] I watched an online discussion with two ERGs leads from an international bank. The discussion was hosted by a person with no evident ERG experience, and hence a lost opportunity to get to more subtle insights. However, what made me pay serious attention was the observation that ERG lead roles were filled via competitive interview.

I have been ruminating on this for a couple of months. What seems like a great idea at first blush may become less attractive after reflection.

I tried twice to become DEN Chair [DEN = Disability Employee Network]. The first time was a fail. The second time I got to be deputy chair – which was really a nothing role and essentially meant I’d become chair in the event the incumbent was unable to continue in the role – and this did happen when the incumbent left the department. 

I don’t think it is immodest of me to assert that I was the most consequential DEN Chair in the DEN’s 14-year history. I got that role by accident. Leadership selection wasn’t designed to pick the best leaders.

Consequential leaders aren’t as common as they could be. Neither elections nor other recruitment exercises are any reliable way of ensuring the best person for the job gets it.

In preparation for stepping down as DEN Chair in March 2020 I made it known who I wanted to follow me and what capabilities were necessary for a good Chair. That assessment was later challenged, and some good points were raised. I quit fulltime employment in June 2021 and in June 2023 I accepted a consultancy role with my former employer to mentor its ERG leads.

Below I want to reflect on my learnings about ERG leadership.

What makes a good leader?

I have a vexed relationship with leadership. I can count the leaders I admire on two hands but have fingers left over [and that’s a public sector career spanning 6 decades – but not every year of each decade – that’d be only 2]. That’s a low score for a very simple fact – leadership is hard to do well.

What that small number of leaders I admired had in common came down to 5 things:

• They were open-minded, flexible and curious.
• They were self-reflective and sensitive to how others felt.
• They had a strong moral compass and a sense of idealism. They had courage.
• They had good political [organisational] awareness and a strong strategic sense of how to get things done.
• They took pride in the quality of work they did.

Here I am talking only about the public sector. The commitment to the idea of service had to be strong. Leadership in business or other fields will have distinct attributes associated with those fields. I am not suggesting what I admired is universal. Maybe come up with your own set of attributes.

Leadership must be goal and outcome oriented, but that’s not enough. It must be about how you enlist others to be committed to that goal or outcome and how you preserve and foster that commitment. 

Leadership is a skillset as well as a personal attribute. Innate talent always benefits from an education. This is true in the arts, in business, in cooking, and so on. The gifted amateur will be undone eventually without the opportunity to refine insights and skills. I have repeatedly asserted that Disability Inclusion is a skillset, so let me add that leading a Disability Inclusion ERG is more emphatically a skillset that must be acquired and refined.

Good leaders are motivated to refine their skills and insights because they are dedicated to achieving the best outcomes in their area of responsibility.

How do we select the best leaders available?

I will be blunt. The outcomes from the recruitment exercises that I have witnessed give me no confidence in current methods. So, while the idea of using competitive interviews appeals to me, I can’t see it as a universal solution without vital caveats.

The alternative of elections, a popular method, is so flawed as to be unacceptable in any situation. It’s a problematic method by which the highly motivated represent their capabilities to people who have little capacity to assess their claims. Those who imagine they are great leaders may be driven more by ego and ambition than by a commitment to service. And then there’s the problem of the response level from ERG members – which can be 10% or lower. Let’s rule out elections as a responsible option.

The question is: How do we make the recruitment process work to its optimal potential? Here are a few thoughts:

• Develop a lucid understanding of how the ERG functions within the organisation.
• Develop a clear set of selection criteria and necessary capabilities.
• Establish a clear set of objectives – what it to be achieved within the term of office.
• Ensure the assessment panel is sufficiently representative of stakeholders – ERG members, champions, allies and executive sponsors.

I will discuss each below.

Develop a lucid understanding of how the ERG functions within the organisation.

ERGs must have a clear contract with their organisation to ensure that there is agreement about the role and objectives of the ERG. This rarely happens. An ERG either has an adversarial or collaborative relationship with its organisation. An adversarial relationship is never productive, so a collaborative relationship must be negotiated.

That agreement can be seen as a contract which specifies performances on both sides. This gives a prospective leader a clear picture of what is expected of them, and the organisation an idea of what resources it should make available to honour its side of the contract.

Establish a clear set of objectives – what it to be achieved within the term of office.

ERGs exist to change some aspect of their organisation. This might be attitudes, behaviours, values, policies, procedures, or knowledge/understanding. The consequences of desired changes are enhanced employee wellbeing which may result in greater opportunity for career progression and enhanced retention rates, which make the organisation more attractive to prospective employee. 

An ERG must have a goal that is expressed in terms of actionable steps. This is a strategic necessity. There is no point in having just a noble goal of, say, making the organisation more inclusive and accessible without saying how it is going to get to that goal.

While some ERGs emphasise celebratory activities such activities still must have a change objective.

Develop a clear set of selection criteria and necessary capabilities.

As noted above, leadership is a complex and challenging role. The ERG must tell a prospective leader what it expects. The organisation is also entitled to express its needs of an ERG leader as well.

Development of a role description which outlines the capabilities and

time commitments needed to perform the leadership role well is essential.

Ensure the assessment panel is sufficiently representative of stakeholders – ERG members, champions, allies and executive sponsors.

This is critical. All these people are legitimate stakeholders. The ERG is not just for ERG members

The assessment panel may have 2 steps. One to assess applications and cull applicants to those who best fit the criteria/capability requirements, and the other to interview. The second step may be ERG members only.

Conclusion

ERG leaders seeking to be effective quickly discover that being a leader is a job, albeit one that requires a lot of unpaid hours. ERGs live in a kind of twilight zone in an organisation because they don’t fit neatly into any formal structure. They have a unique potential to be immensely influential – but only if they are well-led and supported.

I stepped down as DEN Chair in March 2020 after 3 years and 4 months in the role. I think I had proven to my employers that the DEN had become an effective change agent. The next Chair was offered the opportunity to take on the role full-time. That was a bold and unexpected experiment.

The nature of ERGs is such that they must establish their capability before they can expect or demand greater levels of support from their organisation beyond an agreed essential level. Even in the public sector this makes them entrepreneurial – and hence should be able to attract talented aspiring leaders. This should make ERG leadership beneficial for everyone – the ERG leadership team which hones and refines its skills, the membership which benefits from improvements to their work experience, and the organisation which is better able to support its workforce.

Realising that potential depends on three things:

1. A clear contract between the ERG and the organisation.
2. A clear and agreed set of objectives and ways to achieve them.
3. Attraction of the best leadership talent available to the ERG, plus creation of opportunities for the leaders to be supported and guided.

The international bank ERG leads observed that recruitment for ERG leadership roles was hotly contested. It was evident that the organisation invested significant resources in its ERGs, so there may have been attractions that weren’t discussed.

This post was inspired by my reflection on what conditions might need to apply to see public sector ERG leadership roles being attractive to talented staff.

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.

Introduction

A reader responded to Take the positive potential approach posted on my birthday – Jan 22^nd this year with the following message:

I’d appreciate a follow on from this thought-provoking blog including some concrete strategies or actionable steps for implementing these principles in practical settings. Also, how individuals in an organisation can address power dynamics which could significantly influence the pace and effectiveness of inclusion initiatives. Lastly, how might we measure and evaluate the effectiveness of inclusion initiatives, which is crucial for assessing progress, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring accountability in promoting inclusivity within organization. 

I have delayed responding because with my current consultancy with my former employer I am continually refining my thinking as I talk with ERG leads. It has been useful to step outside my focus on disability and consider positive change in general.

Below I will respond to each point separately.

An initial overview

A conversation yesterday on the need to help mangers be more effective in meeting contemporary demands reminded me of the importance of developing a theory of what is going on – and then refining it as evidence becomes available. I speak in terms of evolution of workplace and community culture because that is how I have decided to look at my experiences. Rather than seeing a deficit to be corrected I see a potential to be attained.

Evolution is slow but inexorable. Activism in favour of disability started gaining momentum in the 1960s – along with other critical inclusion causes. In NSW we have the Disability Inclusion Act 2014. There were other moves to enshrine disability inclusion in law, but my point is that this act came into effect roughly 50 years after concerted demand for change got under way.

I have been in the public sector almost as long and I have seen a steady evolution of organisational attitudes toward staff wellbeing. In the latter part of the 1980s the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) introduced requirements to remove discriminatory requirements from job vacancies. It was a half-hearted move in the CES office where I was employed, but it was the start of a vital change.

I don’t have a clear understanding of when Inclusion and Diversity teams became the norm in public sector agencies in New South Wales, but I wasn’t aware of the one in my department until mid 2010, when its Disability Employee Network was established. 

Now the presence of multiple ERGs is a testimony for the need for ongoing and more effective action to improve work experience for members of a spectrum of diversity groups. It’s taken 50 years to get to this point and there’s a lot of work to be done yet.

So why advocate a positive evolutionary approach rather than more vigorous agitation?

Quite simply a decent appreciation of our psychology doesn’t support blaming or pressure. Contemporary workplaces are high pressure from core business demands, so adding additional expectations to conform to inclusion goals can be counter-productive.

While many of us are innately inclusive, others are not – for personal or cultural reasons. Even those who are inclusive are not constantly ‘disability aware’. That takes intentional commitment, involvement and continuity of engagement. Not everyone has the need, motive, or opportunity to develop that level of awareness.

While evolutionary forces will move our communities toward greater inclusivity eventually, simply because there is a majority of people who are inherently inclusive and who are support of positive, we need to think about how effective the change advocates are. In no area of activity does having right on your side constitute a sufficient basis for being effective and successful.

Accelerating the pace of positive change is a high-skill job anywhere and the fact that those who participate in seeking change via ERGs are volunteers doesn’t change the need for high skills. I participated in bush search and rescue in Tasmania many decades ago. We were mostly volunteers, but we had to be skilled and competent. Volunteers are no less accountable for ensuring good outcomes. In this case people’s lives depended on us.

If we have a theory of what is going on we can shape our skills and direct our actions to best effect. If we engage in reflective practice we can refine our theory, upgrade our skills, and make our actions more effective – the action learning cycle.

Some concrete strategies or actionable steps for implementing these principles in practical settings

• See being an inclusion advocate as a skilled role. This includes developing a discourse model that helps you to clearly articulate what you want, and why you want it. Here is a useful starting point.
• Inclusion must be a personal commitment that is universally applied. You can’t focus on disability inclusion and ignore the other diversity groups. You must ensure you are not unintentionally discriminating against other people. Understanding the nature and extent of bias is essential.
• Being authentic and empathic in your interactions with the people you want to influence is critical. This isn’t easy to do initially. Your right to be agitating for change must be calmly centred.

How individuals in an organisation can address power dynamics which could significantly influence the pace and effectiveness of inclusion initiatives

• So much depends on an organisation’s leadership culture and its attitude toward inclusion. You can’t assume that a positive attitude toward inclusion is backed by an informed understanding of how to progress from intent to attainment. Equally you can’t assume reluctance arises from aversion to inclusion.
• Inclusion advocates must have a clear sense of situational leadership, as opposed to leadership based on role and rank. I recommend Loretta Malandro’s Fearless Leadership: How to Overcome Behavioral Blindspots and Transform Your Organization. 
• How inclusion advocates approach an organisation’s leaders is critical. You can be an agitator or an ally. There’s a lot said about inclusion advocates seeking allies in support of their cause and virtually nothing about them being allies to, for example, an organisation’s DEI team. Telling an organisation that you want to help it meet its inclusion obligations and goals makes more sense than calling out its perceived failures.
• Its not easy for an organisation to meet its inclusion goals. Doing so stretches the organisation, its DEI team, and its staff. Change, even for those who are willing, takes cognitive and emotional effort. We mostly can’t honour our own freely made New Year’s Resolutions. Inclusion advocates can’t go to an organisation’s leadership naïve about what they are asking for – and certainly must avoid placing the onus of change upon the executive. I know it’s a cliché but we must be the change we want to see.

How might we measure and evaluate the effectiveness of inclusion initiatives, which is crucial for assessing progress, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring accountability in promoting inclusivity within organization.

• Most well-run organisations have methods for measuring how effective actions are. Much will depend upon how well-resourced and supported its DEI team is – and whether staff are motivated to participate in their means to measure success.
• Inclusion advocates must be close allies of DEI teams and support their efforts to measure responses and outcomes.
• ERGs should have their business model that helps them measure how effective they are. I recently came across The ERG Handbook by Aimee K. Broadhurst and Supercharge Your ERGs by Joseph Santana. Broadhurst’s book is a comprehensive guide that covers the key steps needed to develop a good business model that embraces ways to self-evaluate performance. I haven’t read Santana yet.
• If there is a good working partnership between an ERG, the organisation’s executive and its DEI team there will be a commitment to evaluating efforts to grow inclusion and accessibility.

Conclusion

I have intentionally focused on the skills and capabilities of inclusion advocates and their ERGs because without these skills and capabilities any activities are less likely to deliver the outcomes desired.

As I have noted, being a change advocate is a skilled role. Such an advocate must work with the psychology of individuals, groups and organisations. In larger corporations this is acknowledged as a critical and well-paid role. But DEI is often seen substantially as a ‘feel good’ thing driven by passionate people – paid if they are members of a DEI team but mostly volunteer if members of an ERG. True, some corporations offer some degree of compensation to ERG leads and, rarely, an ERG lead might be a paid role.

My commitment is to professionalise the standards of inclusion advocates and ERGs leads because such a role is complex and difficult. There are ‘gifted amateurs’ of course, but they are either self-taught or have critical professional experiences, training or education that give them a solid foundation upon which to build a reputation for being highly effective.

Disability Inclusion will be an ongoing challenge simply because our workplaces are continuous experiments in complexity and diversity as our communities evolve. In decades past discrimination was the casual norm. Now it is a contested norm. But how that contest plays out will be the difference between discrimination still being a norm in another 50 years or being an exception a decade hence.

We can/must choose to contest with knowledge, insight, skill, and empathy.

Introduction

I live in the Blue Mountains, about 100 kms west of Sydney. It is a beautiful region loved by Sydneysiders as a destination for day outings. I have mixed feelings about this – as any anybody living in an attractive destination knows. We can be overrun by visitors on weekends and holidays. In 2020 and into 2021 COVID brought residents a period of blessed respite. We had the place to ourselves – and that was wonderful. That said I do believe that people with disability are equally entitled to be a nuisance.

The Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) has an impressive commitment to inclusion and accessibility. In June this year (2024) it launched its Blue Mountains Mobility Map. As a member of the council’s Access Advisory Committee, I was able to contribute some thoughts to the map’s development.

I was particularly impressed that the council committed itself to developing the map with limited funds and produced a useful web-based tool that could be accessed on mobile phones (as well as tablets and computers). This was an innovation that had potential to be replicated across the state, across the nation and beyond.

What does the map do?

The map covers the BMCC local government area, principally localities along the Great Western Highway. The map gives the opportunity to identify accessible playgrounds, toilets, parking, walking tracks and lookout as well as other facilities and services. It means that people like me with mobility disabilities can plan a visit to the region and not have to guess whether a potential destination is accessible.

You can explore the map here.

The value of the map to a person with mobility challenges

I don’t travel as much as I used to. Places and travel routes are not as accessible as I need. So, when I do go anywhere I have to plan carefully. Travelling itself is bad enough for me. It can be draining physically and emotionally. It is hence deeply disappointing to arrive and have no idea where is accessible, inclusive and safe. The opportunity to consult a map that guides me on what and where is accessible would be a huge advantage. 

My personal reaction to this Mobility Map is that it must become a universal tool to which other critical information can be added. My major travel gripe is the way motels misrepresent that they have ‘accessible’ rooms. Last year I travelled east to the coast and booked into a motel I was assured was accessible. It was true there was a handrail into the shower and steady grips in the shower cubicle. But I am 186 cms tall and I had to bend over a lot to grip the handrail, rendering it useless. It was way too low. The toilet had a grip mounted on the wall, but it was too low and too close to be on any use to me.

I have previously approached the NSW government recommending that it set standards concerning claims about accessibility made by motels. I mostly travel solo, so I don’t have a companion who can look out for my safety. In the last 5 years I have found only one motel with a genuinely accessible room – The Shearing Shed in Dubbo. I was told I was lucky to have gotten the room, given the demand for it.

My vision is a statewide mobility map that also provides real information about a whole range of accessibility concerns,  including accessible accommodation – something the BMCC map does not yet cover.

The potential of a mobility map

Aside from my issues about accessible accommodation there are questions about whether a variety of facilities and services are accessible. This includes cafes, restaurants, and shops as well as other businesses.

I use Google maps a lot and I am sometimes irritated by the number of businesses whose information clutters my screen. But that tells me there is a possibility of enticing accessible businesses to make their presence known on a mobility map. 

I think the map is a wonderful idea whose potential begs to be developed. I understand that in realising this potential money and management beyond a local council’s scope. But at a regional or state level realising that potential is eminently doable.

The ideal would be to develop the mobility map as an app for mobile devices as well as computers.

Conclusion

I contracted GBS in 2008 and acquired permanent mobility and grip disabilities. In 2009 I bought my first iPhone and discovered how mobile technology could enhance my lived experience of disability.

My first response to the BMCC’s mobility map wasn’t that it would make my life in this community any better. I have lived here 22 years. My immediate reaction was to imagine how good it would be to have such a map available when I visit places I don’t know. At the moment, a visit to an unfamiliar destination requires a lot of net-based preparation. This is especially the case when it comes to identifying accessible toilets, parking, recreation areas and accommodation.

The BMCC has opened up an extraordinary potential that all people who need to know how accessible a community or destination is can benefit from. The mobility map should have ongoing refinement, of course.

Check the map out. Urge your local government to create something similar. Better still urge it to create a coalition of local governments who can share costs or access funding.

Introduction

I was recently alerted to a promo for training for ERGs and this set me to wondering what I now think of the idea. After all my operation as an ERG lead was transformed after one keynote conference speech and participation in a day long workshop on Networkology.

So much depends on the nature of the training and the skill/experience level of those participating. In an ideal world there would be a perfect match of training content and format with need. In the real world that match is mostly down to good fortune and destiny. I didn’t go to the 2018 AND Annual National Conference intending to get a transformational education. I may have been the only ERG lead at this event at the right stage of my development to extract maximum benefit from the experience.

For the past 14 months I have been providing periodic mentoring support to a handful of ERGs leads. This experience has been an opportunity for me to rethink, and sometimes re-imagine, how ERGs might be supported. I currently have a bias toward longer term mentoring over short-term training. But I can see that either option may serve particular needs.

Below I want to reflect on a few ideas about training and mentoring for ERGs.

Is training always a good idea?

It isn’t. It’s often a waste of time. This is for 2 key reasons:

1. It often provides an intense burst of information which overloads our cognitive capacity and doesn’t build long term capability.
2. There is rarely any follow up.

I am not a fan of training as a concept. I prefer education. Training has its place in many contexts, but not in all. You can be trained in a particular skill, but you must be educated to acquire a skill set. Training tends to be seen as a time-limited exercise in learning a skill or a discrete set of information delivered in isolation. Education implies skill development plus the acquisition of knowledge developed over time and in some cultural context.

True, there are training courses that extend beyond one session and may have multiple sessions over weeks or months. Here I am not trying to create a clear or definite distinction between training and education. Rather stimulate awareness of the spectrum of ways we can learn.

There’s a huge difference between acquiring knowledge and skills and applying them. When it comes to running an ERG well so much depends on what skills, experience and knowledge you bring to the role – and hence what your need developmental needs are.

In short, if your developmental needs match the content of a training course, take the course. But how do you know whether you have assessed your developmental needs accurately?

What is involved in running an ERG well?

When I first encountered Kate Nash’s idea of Networkology I had an idea of what management and leadership were as defined skill sets – based on years of reading and research. That was in 2018. Since then, I have come to better appreciate that these skills are built on academic disciplines and a scientific approach (psychology and neuroscience).

Not all ERG leads come with a solid background/education in management and leadership. Neither do they come with experience in navigating organisational politics or have reputational standing with the organisation’s executive leadership.

Some organisations grant their ERGs high status. Others do little more than sanction an ERG’s establishment and grant modest support. ERG leads can be selected by competitive recruitment or election by ERG members.

Some ERGs are seen as an accountable business unit and others are led by volunteers with an ill-defined function.

A minimal requirement for a successful ERG is skilled leadership operating a body recognised as being integrated into the organisation’s inclusion policies and accountable to members (meeting needs and delivering outcomes) and the organisation’s executive leadership (value for money and contribution to inclusion objectives). 

But who might know this? Who might agree that this, or an alternative, formula is what should be applied?

Whole organisation training/education

If there is only a focus on developing the skills of ERG leaders there is a risk that, unless the ERG leads are very carefully selected, the skill deficit might be significant and beyond the realistic capacity of any training program.

The critical foundational requirement for any ERG is that there is a clear understanding of, and commitment to, the ERG coming from the organisation’s executive leadership, and ERG sponsors and champions. These people, plus the ERG leads, should participate in a shared experience of mutual discovery, trust building and expectation clarification.

The challenge of running an ERG well isn’t just down to ERG leaders. The welfare of staff is an organisational responsibility, and an ERG is just one manifestation of that responsibility playing out. But an organisation is a community, not an assembly of unrelated parts. The ERG and the organisation’s  leadership are interdependent.

We must think in terms of shared responsibility and collaboration, and not in terms of heroic struggle against uncaring or oppressive forces. Yes, elements of an organisation can most certainly be uncaring and oppressive, but countering them is a shared responsibility.

I have argued elsewhere that inclusive organisations reflect our cultural evolution toward embracing diversity (despite the periodic hiccups). This means that for most organisations their DEI policies and practices are exploratory and experimental. Nobody is expert in making inclusion happen. It is novel and all practitioners are ‘building their airplane while flying it’.

Hence to imagine that ERGs alone need training and developing misses the scope of the challenge and unreasonably places the burden of responsibility upon an ERG. Let’s take a moment to tease out who needs to evolve their thinking and practice:

• An organisation’s senior executive leadership – so it can provide guidance to the organisation on what permissions to give, what resources to allocate, and what expectations to sanction.
• Executive sponsors and champions – who can support ERG leads through coaching and mentoring and develop relationships with ERG leads so they feel confident about putting their reputations on the line to promote the ERG’s cause.
• ERG leaders – their role is complex. In some organisations it is a ‘wildcard’ role that sits outside normal ideas of hierarchy and acknowledged lines of authority. This is especially so if the ERG lead does not have a leadership background or status. The risk of electing ERG leaders is that they may have potential but not experience and so require well thought-through support.

This is the critical triad. When it works well the potential of an ERG is unleashed. This was my experience as an ERG lead. But that was not by design, rather fortune smiling. In my consultancy I have had to ask how to convert good fortune into effective intentional action.

An ideal training model

I think all elements of the critical triad must participate in developmental experiences which reflect the reality that this is all a novel evolutionary situation, and all parties must acquire new insights. But the novelty must be admitted to, as must be the need to learn how to get maximum benefit from setting up an ERG.

I will suggest a few ideas that should be part of a shared learning action:

• The development of an appreciation of how the demand for equity and inclusion has evolved over the past near 70 years. The demand became a movement in the 1960s. It has taken this long to get where we are now. What does that tell us?
• Understand that this is an evolution, not a struggle of good against evil. Not everybody is quickly capable of expressing their innate sense of goodwill in a universal way. Many have cultural and personal disincentives to be inclusive, and these will not be overcome by rational appeals. Habits of thought and feeling are deeply ingrained at an individual psychological level. Change requires significant cognitive effort – so the reason to change must be compelling and aspirational. Action is more potent than argument.
• Managing the politics of changing behaviours requires understanding how persuasion is best engaged in. None of the members of the critical triad are immune from needing this knowledge. We can persuade people to comply but that does not mean that behaviour has changed to conform with new insights, only to appear to meet requirements. Deep learning and behavioural change come only from the authentic engagement of personal emotions. It is hard work, so there must be a compelling reason to undertake it – other than appearing to comply. We are all good at faking it.
• ERG leaders may not be seen as members of the elite leadership in-group if their status in the organisation does not warrant that assumption or extension of membership. That limits the perception of credibility and right of influence. If ERGs are assumed to have the same status as unions, rather than as partners in helping an organisation achieve its equity and inclusion goal, that can place a gulf between the ERG leader and other leaders. The potential for collaboration recedes into unconscious and unintended competition.

The value of mentoring

As an ongoing commitment, ERG leads should be mentored by Executive Sponsors and Executive Champions. This has two advantages. It creates development opportunities for ERG leads who have less developed skills and it ensures that the organisation has insight into the challenges faced by ERG leads. Mentoring primarily builds strength in mentees, but it also is a lens on problems that do require executive intervention or more extensive action. 

Mentoring also minimises the risk of failure. I have noted elsewhere that while organisations do not intentionally set up ERGs to fail, failure is more likely if there is no linkage between ERG leads and executive leadership. Mentoring can be a subtle form of supervision as well as guidance, reflecting an organisation’s concern that the ERG is on track in delivering agreed outcomes.

Mentoring must be predicated upon a sound foundation of understanding of an ERG’s agreed function and purpose – what its value proposition is, and what its standing is within the organisation. Such a foundation is built when the organisation’s Senior Executive Leadership, the ERG’s Executive Sponsor and Executive Champions, the ERG leads, and the DEI team undertake a shared ‘training’ session how to run and support an ERG. Such a session should be revisited periodically to ensure there is ongoing agreement on understandings, insights and commitments. 

Building this foundation is the most critical learning/development experience for all players. Other skill acquisition needs can be identified and addressed via mentoring and accessing other L&D sources. 

I am arguing that there should not be ERG-specific training for ERG leads beyond understanding how ERGs function. The Incredible Power of Staff Networks by Cherron Inko-Tariah was immensely helpful to me. I can definitely see benefit from training of this kind. The unique nature of ERGs must be understood.

ERGs must fit within an organisation’s DEI policy and practice commitments, so any other training and development must be mainstream.

Conclusion

ERGs will have developmental needs. But which of them cannot be satisfied through a program of mentoring and accessing existing L&D resources? In some cases, where ERG leads are elected, rather than selected, and there is no control over a requirement for prerequisite capabilities, a more intensive training need may be apparent. Here mentoring and coaching might have to be more frequent and more intensive.

My aversion to training, having undertaken a huge amount over my public sector career (spanning over 4 decades) is that its not very sticky. The ideal of Life-Long Learning was finally abandoned a few years back as a forlorn cause. You must be a motivated learner to extract maximum benefit from a brief training experience – and that’s not most of us. I have no memory of ever having a follow up or review of my any of training experiences. 

Learning comes from exposure, immersion, commitment and repetition (EICR). This, at least, is true of the things I have become very good at doing. A motivated learner will seek out opportunities for EICR, but unless an organisation is on the same page it is unlikely to provide such opportunities as a matter of course. Coaching and mentoring are still not routine supports offered within organisations to even highly motivated learners.

Its not usual for mangers and executives in general to appreciate the need for EICR, so we can’t assume that any learning experience is going to reinforced with effective follow up.

I think the idea that ERG leads need training in an isolated skill set is flawed – if it is seen as a panacea. Would ERG leads benefit from being supported to enhance their skills? Of course. But that applies to any leader.

What those needs might be will depend upon how the organisation, and the ERG leads understand the ERG’s nature and role. Is it a volunteer staff committee representing the interests of certain staff groups or is it a de facto business unit providing lived experience feedback on how certain policies or procedures are playing out?

It’s not sufficient to assume the spectrum of needs ERG leads may have. We must understand the role of an ERG and then ensure all the players have a shared need for mutual comprehension and trust which is then satisfied. We must keep in mind this is about collaboration in meeting a shared objective.