Category: Uncategorized

Introduction
I have been listening to This Isn’t Working’s latest show (The Best Workers Aren’t Woke) and I am astonished and dismayed at the degree to which DEI has morphed into a political monster, especially in the USA.

We need to pause, take perspective and rethink what it is we think we are talking about.

I am going to talk about DEI from the perspective I know best – the Australian (especially NSW) public sector. What is relevant to a public sector isn’t necessarily relevant to a business because there are a set of specific factors to be considered.

I went from marching in the streets for gay, Aboriginal and women’s rights in the late 1960s to implementing Commonwealth anti-discrimination policies when I worked in the Commonwealth Employment Service in the mid to late 1980s to my involvement in Disability Inclusion from 2010. It’s been a workplace interest for me for almost 4 decades.

DEI now isn’t what it was envisioned to be. But the issue is far less about the objective than the methods employed in achieving its goals.

The vision was that people are not excluded from equal participation in a community solely because their gender, sexuality, colour, race or disability. But how that ideal might be achieved is little considered beyond force of law, policy or social sanction through activism. Over the decades, though, our understanding of how the vision might be realised has been transformed through more mature thinking and a lot of research.

I want to make it clear that DEI has done a lot of good. It hasn’t failed utterly. It has gotten lost and hasn’t grown up sufficiently since the early heady days of activism. So now it can’t meet the challenges of contemporary organizations and work cultures.

Below I want to reflect on why I think DEI is now in a crisis and what we might do about it. This is a personal perspective, not a thesis.

DEI is an aspiration, not a directive
In the NSW public sector organizations are subject to anti-discrimination legislation and a policy directive – to ensure the profile of the sector’s workforce reflects the community it serves. That makes sense. It is the community’s money. There’s also the 2014 NSW Disability Inclusion Act that creates a positive potential to make the community more accessible and inclusive for people with disability.

A business in NSW is also subject to anti-discrimination legislation. It is also, subject to compliance with law, free to make policies about DEI on its own account. Many do, especially in relation to people with disability. The Australian Disability Network is headquartered in Sydney and supports private and public organizations to work with staff, customers and service users with disabilities to ensure accessibility and inclusion.

Whether the NSW public sector meets its representative policy obligations is a matter of public interest, and this includes the interests of the workforce members. None of this has anything to do with politics. It is about compliance with law and policy. Acting to ensure an organization meets its obligations might be construed as political, but it isn’t. It’s about accountability – legal and moral.

The truth is that meeting the social policy of representing the community in the constitution of the workforce in a safe way is way harder than was anticipated. The NSW government has recently introduced anti-racism training for its workforce. That should be sounding alarm bells. What happened to the inclusive culture the sector has been developing for decades? Is it that fragile? Or was it never as strong, never as well settled, as imagined?

The reason things are far harder than expected is quite simple – reality is way more complex than our idealism. Good ideas and genuinely noble sentiments become bogged down in the grubby reality of human nature and psychology.

How we respond to that reality depends on how we understand what we need to do change individual and collective behaviour.

Misunderstanding method
Our communities have evolved into being increasingly complex, diverse and pluralistic. This is partially because of how our populations have developed, how our collective values have changed and how our public policies are formed. The scope of changes over the past 50 years has been astonishing.

While DEI law and policy compliance can be enforced in a simplistic way, it all runs up against our individual and group psychologies. We are naturally disposed to be biased and discriminatory. There is nothing inherently wrong here. Bias and discrimination make it possible for us to be psychologically healthy. Unfortunately DEI practitioners have been making bias the villain for a long time.

I live on the edge of a city with over 5.5 million people. I have a natural bias toward my in-group of family, friends and allies. I read somewhere that I can have around 140 who are close to me. Regardless of what that figure is agreed to be, I can count around a third of that. And that’s just fine. I want to keep the rest at bay but without negative sentiments. I want to be kind and inclusive but maintain my psycho-social space as it is. I exclude a lot of people so I can feel psychologically okay.

The key idea that is always left out when we think about bias is whether our biases or our acts of discrimination are appropriate. Anti-discrimination legislation is not against discrimination per se, but against inappropriate discrimination. Being discriminating used to be a good thing. It meant ‘discerning’. Now it has become a crime. The result is misunderstanding and confusion.

For example, I am not fond of the company of any number of people. On a personal and cultural level, we don’t have enough in common for me to include them in my friendship group. I have a right to make that choice. I wish them no ill. I do not disrespect them. I just do not resonate with choices they make. It is not that I do not like them as a class of people, just not on a personal social level. We are all like this.

But as a public servant sitting on a selection panel or making a decision of any kind, I do not have the right to bring my personal feelings to bear on my decision-making. I might know this consciously, but I will still find that bias may influencing my decision-making – unless I take intentional steps to mitigate the risk. It is not insidious, just natural and pervasive.

As public servants we have a legal and moral responsibility not to let our decisions and actions be influenced by inappropriate bias. There is an implied moral responsibility as well – because complying with law is something that we value. This supposes that we have an obligation to understand the risks of inappropriate bias and take clear, rational steps to eliminate it from our work practices.

But how we gain compliance when people are not in agreement with the intent of a law or policy and are not interested in being persuaded to agree with, and act in compliance with, such laws or policy. We can’t just police them and enforce compliance through coercion. We have 50 years of evidence that this does not work.

Changing behaviour is hard – in ourselves and in others. Taking a coercive or punitive approach does not work. And yet it is still the method we reflexively turn to. Studies show that employees tend to think of accountability as being about punishment. Few workplace cultures have the psychological safety to encourage staff to own up to mistakes. The Neuroleadership Institute and the Global Leadership Foundation do powerful work on this theme.

The rights campaigns of the late 1960s led to rights being asserted via law and policy. These are solid foundations from which to launch an aspiration, not flip a moral switch.

Winning the ground to launch an aspiration with general societal assent is not job done. It is only permission to do the hard work that comes next. If we understand that laws and policies are permission-givers for aspirations, and not enforcement if there isn’t the desired level compliance, we can begin to see where DEI went so badly wrong.

Human nature and psychology are huge impediments to aspirational change. The realities of politics and government drive this home daily. And yet we revert to a simple, but entirely illusory, moral enforcement way of thinking with such ease.

So how do we make DEI work?
My biggest concern about DEI is how it became self-serving and didn’t hold the interests of the people it originally championed as the primary concern. It didn’t evolve in the way that thinking about leadership and management has, especially in the past 3 decades.

True, leadership and management have been two fields that have been richly supported by funded research. DEI has not, and so far as I can tell, practitioners haven’t asked. They have assumed that they know.

I often go back to Iris Bohnet’s What Works: Gender Equity by Design. It was published in 2016, decades after the issue of women’s equality was no longer a contested matter. Here is a rational, disciplined professional approach to securing that equality. It isn’t that women’s equality has been a complete failure of course. It’s just that the job was done patchily and Bohnet has put an argument for a method that might get the success rate up.

DEI is a deeply complex field that requires insight into psychology – evolutionary, individual, group, organizational – as well as sociology and history. I have probably missed a few fields, but I hope this makes my point.

The transition from activism (idealism, moral argument and passion) to skilled implementation of a ‘contract’ has never been intentionally taken on a collective level.

I saw this when I became Disability ERG lead in 2016 and started to connect with other Disability leads. When you are advocating for something like Disability Inclusion and you hit resistance you have to do things differently if that resistance will not readily yield. The reflex is to go back into activism mode – because that was successful. But all it really did was get attention and a promise of action – though no commitment to it. This can become a cycle that leads to habituated failure or very slow progress.

The promise of action might have been sincere, but it was ‘magical’. That is that it was made with good intent as if that alone was sufficient to trigger change. The ‘how’ of changing organizational and individual behaviour in conformity with agreed ideals is an entirely different matter.

In What Works Bohnet described how an executive board issued a directive to HR to make women’s equality happen – an act of magical thinking. The board would have assumed, wrongly, that HR would know how to do this. HR would have delegated the task to an individual or a team it assumed would know how to do it. Everyone in the decision-making chain engaged in magical thinking – until the last person who maybe hadn’t progressed beyond the activism stage. So, nothing of any substance could happen. Maybe there was change that was triggered by a general spirit of good will – but that would just be a case of harvesting the low hanging fruit. It may have felt good, but it wasn’t repeatable. Misreading harvesting low hanging fruit as evidence of an effective repeatable method is common.

We all know that quote attributed to Einstein – ‘Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity’. But this is what humans do in a sane, but not insightful way. We identify a good and then apply the least amount of cognitive effort to achieve it. We think magically repeatedly even when it doesn’t work. It feels natural. It feels good – and it may not really matter if it doesn’t work. We can feel morally justified in failure.

A friend of mine has a long list of certificates in group work, communication styles etc., a post-graduate degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy and a PhD in Applied Psychology. Why? To help people change their behaviour in ways they want. These days you can get a therapist, a life coach, a counsellor or a mentor to help you change behaviour in desired directions. All these roles require education, training and skill development.

And yet we do not require the same of DEI practitioners – inside HR or as consultants or trainers.

My qualifications are in Social Ecology – which is, according to my former professor, Stuart Hill, “The study & practice of personal, social & ecological sustainability…” (Hill 2011). It’s not enough to do the academic work, there’s personal growth required as well. The same is true, of course, other fields in the ‘human sciences’ – engagement with head and the heart is necessary.

Many years ago, I participated in a week-long residential training program in sales techniques run by an insurance company I was briefly associated with. It was training in manipulation of customers, which I found unethical – so I quit. I later completed a conflict resolution course. In both cases, influencing behaviour required knowledge and skill. My application of my conflict resolution skills was highly effective because I was also aware of the dark art of manipulation and the temptation to abuse a professional relationship. I tried harder to be authentic and ethical.

DEI is about influencing human behaviour to be more inclusive, and more equitable. The good will part of us sees this as a good thing. But our fundamental psychological responses respond in a highly selective way. If you are ‘one of us’ then you are included and are treated with a high degree of equity. If you are not ‘one of us’ neither inclusion nor equity are assured. This is neither good nor bad – it’s how we are.

The ideals which govern contemporary western cultures are humanist and universalist. This is evidenced in United Nations charters on rights. But these are aspirational ideals, not statements of actualities. They are also shared, to varying degrees by religious folks. Transitioning from a ‘tribal’ sense of ‘one of us’ to a universalist sense of ‘all of us’ is not something everyone agrees with – and for those who do, it isn’t at all easy to live up to. The shift from baked-in psychological reflexes to ideals, whether on an individual level or collective level, is neither natural nor assured. It must be intentionally worked at.

Those of us who embrace the ideals of DEI cannot assume that others do so as well. We cannot assume that we have a right to impose them. At best we might assert we have a duty to persuade others of our cause. But persuasion is a fine skill. Here’s a guide from Prof Stuart Hill using a Social Ecology perspective on Keys for enabling transformative change:
• Empathic & responsive listening
• Gaining trust
• Meeting other’s specific needs
• Being ‘critically’ supportive & loving
• Mentoring, modelling, inspiring, challenging
• Acknowledging, celebrating
• Creating supportive structures & processes

This requires self-awareness and a decent degree of psychological maturity. Enabling and facilitating transformative change with integrity and competence is what DEI should be about, but we didn’t imagine how hard that would be.

It is tempting to decide that this is just too hard and that morally satisfying activism is easier – and gives us that that ‘feel good’ hit we enjoy so much for way less effort.

Conclusion
DEI was originally about facilitating transformative change in our communities and workplaces, but it got stuck in the activism phase. It was a noble idea that didn’t comprehend the difference between a non-existent moral switch (a form of magical thinking) and the hard work of helping a culture evolve toward a universalist and humanist ideal. To make matters somewhat worse its supporters assumed that attaining that ideal was non-negotiable and easy – and resistance was evidence of moral and intellectual deficiency.

What has happened might have been predictable decades ago, had we the insight now available now back then. But it wasn’t – for most of us at least. Over the past 3 decades our understanding of human behaviour had grown immensely. But that’s of very little use if we don’t access it and employ it.

In Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results (2025), Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi make a strong argument that DEI now has harmful political and cultural baggage, so we may be better off thinking in terms of fairness in general rather than in terms of ‘disadvantaged’ groups. Fairness may be politically neutral (for now) but it is still vulnerable to the ‘people like us’ problem. The book’s appeal for me is in the words ‘data’ and ‘design’ – intentional and informed rather than activist guesswork.

In 2018 I encountered Kate Nash, founder and CEO of PurpleSpace. She gave a keynote address at a conference and introduced me to the idea of Networkology. An ERG could be seen as engaging in deliberate, informed and strategic ways to achieve Disability Inclusion goals for staff with disability? This was the final stage of my transition out of the activism stage and into being a professional change agent. It was radically transformative. I went from being a Disability ERG lead struggling to find the time to perform in that role to being given 3 days a week. When I became professional in my approach, I delivered positive change outcomes and the organization responded by making my Disability ERG lead role part of my ‘real job’.

I am not a great fan of perpetuating the idea of identified disadvantaged groups that were an essential part of the 1960s rights assertion movements. Continuing to rely on them now muddles settled campaigns with current forms of activism that have a strong, if not excessive, focus on gender and sex identity that is irrelevant to the workplace, save in a few very limited areas.

Disability remains pertinent because it has a concrete dimension. Disability Inclusion is supported by serious professional bodies like the Australian Disability Network and PurpleSpace.

We are increasingly moving into a more general need for a cultural change that makes workplaces kinder and fairer. The ‘disadvantaged’ groups are far less disadvantaged as a whole, but individual members might be subject to ongoing discrimination in one workplace setting, but not in others.

However, this kind of change is the hardest of all – because it requires personal assent and commitment. It was part of the original ideal that has not been fully realised. Those most resistant to common goodwill are the hardest to persuade and it’s easy to see this resistance as moral failing. It is not. It’s just not a priority for everyone – and that is okay. We are still free to choose how we respond to propositions that seek to engage our sense of fairness and justice. We cannot deny others the right to disagree.

We have work to do, but it must be done competently. We may not exempt ourselves from the obligation to engage in respectful and consensual persuasion just because we imagine the moral power of our cause is beyond dispute. But we see such exemptions made everywhere.

We cannot demand respect by being disrespectful. We cannot celebrate diversity by outlawing diversity we do not like. We cannot champion inclusion by excluding those who disagree with us. We cannot celebrate equality by denying others their voice.

I aspire to making the transition from ‘one of us’ to ‘all of us’, but it’s hard to sustain. ‘All of us’ was what we marched for in the 1960s. It was, and remains, a high and fine ideal.

Introduction
In a time when ERGs are taking a hammering for being out of control and ineffectual I am relieved to discover that PurpleSpace is running a global summit for Disability ERGs on 15 October 2026.

I regularly celebrate PurpleSpace as the inspiration for my success as a Disability ERG Lead. I went from being well-intentioned but groping to being a radical innovator.

This summit is an important development for several reasons I want to briefly discuss below.

Offering an improved image of ERGs
Disability ERGs are different from other ERGs in that they have a specific focus that other ERGs generally do not have. Employees with disabilities can face particular and concrete barriers to equal accessibility and inclusion. These include policies, procedures and practices that require intentional actions by organizations to reform them. A Disability ERG can be a decisive partner in that process of reform.

Other ERGS have more complex challenges concerning attitudes and behaviors (which Disability ERGs also share). Responding to these effectively requires a level of sophistication few volunteer and ‘amateur’ ERGs can muster. The result is often an ERG that is unfocused and ineffectual – and attracted to ‘celebrating diversity’ or engaging in political activity. Some Disability ERGs end up in the same bind.

An effective Disability ERG, supported by an organization like PurpleSpace, with professional insights can demonstrate the full potential of an ERG as a genuine change partner.

A timely event
The global summit comes at a time when the whole area of DEI is under assault from politically motivated people. Their complaints are not wholly unjustified. DEI has become a problematic fixture in HR without having a clear focus on benefits, outcomes and effective methodologies. It has become more about performing concern, engaging in political activity and preserving the jobs and businesses of those who have benefitted from its growth.

Its time to reenvision what the original intent of DEI was and to see it in the present cultural context. That a is big job. What a professionally supported Disability ERGs can do is lead the way in demonstrating that there is still immense value in the work of ERGs.

Find out about the summit
This isn’t just for people with disability. It’s for anyone who wants to rethink what an ERG is and what it can deliver.

Click on this link to discover more:
https://www.purplespace.org/global-summit-2026

Conclusion
The simple fact that a global summit on Disability ERGs is happening must tell us a lot. So far as I know, PurpleSpace is the only organization who purpose is to support an ERG of any kind – and the fact that is about disability is important – because it is a focused form of activism that can be done professionally.

PurpleSpace was established in 2015, so it’s been around for more than a decade. Here’s a link to some background:
https://wearethecity.com/inspirational-woman-kate-nash-obe-founder-ceo-purplespace/

Introduction
I am a great fan of the podcast This Isn’t Working, set up and hosted by Tanya de Grunwald. It is doing the hard work of re-imagining how HR might perform its roles better and how an organisation’s leadership might better engage with the politics of inclusion and diversity.

In the episode ‘No Debate’ Is Dead – What Now? [came out 10/09/26] Tanya made some comments about staff networks/ERGs that were fair enough in the conventional sense, but which excluded other perspectives – because they aren’t widely known.

I agree with Tanya in that staff networks/ERGs are often not only of no real use but can be a source of trouble within an organisation. They can be disruptive and destructive because they push a political agenda. But they can also be vehicles for positive transformation.

Below I want to reflect on the notion that a staff network/ERG (henceforth just ERG) can be a potent transformative influence.

What an ERG is not
There isn’t, so far as I know, any written down history of ERGs. My direct knowledge of ERGs goes back to July 2010 when I became a founding member of one set up by our organization’s CEO. It had one function – to provide insight from staff with disability to inform HR on developing policies, procedures and practices to ensure access and equity for staff with disability.

HR did all the secretariat work as well as all the policy, procedure and practice development. The ERG was a partner with a clear role. It had a chairperson who had only 2 jobs – run the meetings and sit on a committee.

That was simple and clear, and it worked well for a few years. We were helping the organization meet its identified responsibilities. The organization was in control at every level. And then it wasn’t.

Circumstances changed but the original intent wasn’t reviewed. The ERG continued but no longer with the level of control upon it, or the support it had enjoyed. It could now be more self-determining. Many things subsequently changed – but one thing did not. The ERG remained a collaborator or partner on helping the organization meet its recognised legal responsibilities toward its staff.

An ERG may have a proper role reminding an organization of its legal obligations. This can get quite tricky at times. But it has no proper function in trying to introduce attitudes, beliefs or behaviors which are not arguably part of an organization’s legal responsibilities.

That is to say it has zero entitlement to any engage in political activity undertaken within paid working time or using the organization’s resources or property. And, unless the organization is privately run and its executive leadership has the direct authority to promote or approve political activity by staff, no organization’s executive leadership should give staff authority to engage in political activity regardless of whether it is sympathetic to the cause.

That sounds like a dogmatic statement, but it is not. I have worked in 5 federal and 5 state departments, 1 NGO and 1local government and I have been a contract manager for funded business and disability organizations. Organizational governance isn’t a vague notion.

The need for a goal, a theory and a contract
These needs didn’t become clear to me until I started to do research into why the ERGs that I was contracted to support were having such a hard time. The ERG leads had a common, and real, lament. They didn’t have the time. They had been modelled on the successful Disability ERG I had led – but on a version my successor had adapted, which excluded a key factor I attributed to my success and included an innovation that had some value, but which increased complexity for subsequent ERGs.

I was Disability ERG lead for 3.25 years, stepping down in March 2020. From May 2018 I was allowed to work 3 days a week on the Disability ERG’s business. In September 2020, based on my track record, the organization’s executive embarked on a bold experiment. It offered my successor a fulltime role as EEG lead and other disability related work.

So, why was I allowed 3 days a week as Disability ERG lead? That was unheard of at the time. The simple explanation was that I was delivering results. I ran the Disability ERG as a de facto business unit. The ERG was invited to present at the 2019 and 2020 Australian Network on Disability’s Annual National Conferences to report on the innovations developed and the outcomes delivered.

It is only looking back now that I can see that I had a goal – to end suffering experienced by staff with disability because of inaccessibility, discrimination and abuse. I also had a theory of sorts – hence the notion of the ERG as a de facto business unit. I also had a contract of sorts. The ERG was funded for a 2-day planning session which produced a plan which was presented to, and endorsed by, the executive board.

During my consultancy I asked the ERG leads to give me an ‘elevator pitch’ statement of their ERG’s value to the organization. None could. When invited them to write a strategic plan for the next 12 months only one did so with ease and another did with quite some effort. There seemed little capacity to readily develop a clear sense of their purpose – either in terms of goals or overall function. A common theme that was favored was ‘celebrating diversity’ – but you don’t need an ERG to do that.

What was most glaring was that neither the ERGs, HR nor the organization had any agreed theory on the role and function of the ERGs. There were certainly no shared conversations. So, there was no contract. This was especially evident in the lament from the ERG leads about not having time to put into their roles. The ERGs didn’t think to network among themselves to lobby for more time – probably because they didn’t have the time? The organization’s executive leadership may not have been even aware of this but certainly felt no need to enable the leads to have the time they craved. HR either didn’t the resources or didn’t have the capability to intervene.

My point here is not to assign blame but to illustrate how easy it can be for the critical elements of an effective role for an ERG can be either fragmented or absent. In my case as an ERG lead the key elements were there, but not because we all agreed in a rational way that these were what they should be. Instead, the ERG was successful because those elements were functionally present through the good fortune of the right people being in the ERG, in HR and in the organization’s executive at the same time. Maybe ‘dumb luck’? But you still have to play the hand you are dealt well.

Hindsight and research enable me to look back and understand what worked and why. In part it was down to the caliber of the individuals. The executives and HR leaders I worked with were of high caliber, as were my fellow ERG members. We can put success or failure down to key individuals – but inside an organization we need something more – an operating environment and a culture.

Having a goal, a theory and a contract agreed upon by the ERG, HR and the organization’s executive is critical to create the operating environment – and the extent to which that is coherent creates a capacity to positively influence the organization’s culture.

The pointless notion of staff networks
I recently reviewed the NSW Public Service Commission’s guidelines for establishing and running staff networks. I commented extensively on them in my previous post. I still struggle to understand why bother having them. In this regard I agree with Tanya’s remarks about them. The guidelines suggest little more than somebody’s ‘good idea’ that ends up being a tepid soup of ‘feel good’ sentiments.

You certainly don’t need a group of ‘volunteer’ amateurs getting involved in policy. And if staff networks are not intended to have any real power – which they are not – are they anything more than a tokenistic distraction to deflect staff belonging to minority groups from being as aggrieved about their mistreatment as they should do – especially if an organization has a legal duty they are ignoring or underplaying.

At best this vision of staff networks/ERGs is well-intentioned but naïve. It dwells in a fog of good ideas, as imagined by people who have no direct experience of actual exclusion and discrimination. What I saw was ’learned helplessness’. My early encounters with Disability ERGs left me bewildered by people who articulated serious grievances but then settled into a habituated sense of failure. Their disorganized efforts at attracting attention and concern had come to nothing. They assumed moral indifference. But they did nothing to alter their insights or their behaviour.

Hence organizations were content that they were being ‘progressive’ by having ERGs, and the employees who joined them felt a sense of vindication. HR figured it was doing its job. It wasn’t often that anything became an effective locus of change – enabling an organization to meet its legal obligations and ERGs to deliver outcomes for members.

I divided the ERGs I worked with into 2 categories – problem solvers and celebrators. I have a bias toward problem solving because that’s about meeting the needs of staff experiencing real disadvantage and contra the obligations of the organization toward its employees.

I worked in the NSW public sector. It has a policy obligation to ensure a diverse workforce that reflects the community it serves. That imposes a different set of obligations from a corporation seeking to maximize profit or ROI. The public sector has, sadly, no equivalent to either. It is guided by foggy notions of public benefit and political expediency. In such an intellectual/moral environment ERGs have an inherently ill-defined role. I am guessing that the idea of staff networks originated in the public sector because such a vapid notion could not have arisen in any well-functioning for-profit organization.

Employees might join an ERG because it promises a prospect of change to adverse workplace experiences, behaviors and cultures. But the ERGs are not designed to enable such changes, just appear as if they are.

The NSW public sector is subject to anti-discrimination, disability inclusion and work health and safety legislation. All these impact staff with disability. There’s a policy to employ more people with disability under the logic of being representative of the community. There is, however, no corresponding strategy to identify and address discrimination, abuse and bias against employees with disability. This is despite comforting words to the contrary. ERGs could be engaged as a highly effective partner in addressing these concerns.

The alternative approach
I have demonstrated that an ERG can be a highly effective partner in addressing real risks and threats to staff with disability by proving critical lived experience feedback when policies and procedures don’t work – because they are flawed or because they are not being followed.

ERG members are seen as volunteer amateurs. But that’s unkind and unfair. By the time I became Disability ERG in November 2016 I had around 22 years’ experience in disability fields including 6 years as a Disability Support Manager and 10 years as a Senior Project Officer. I also had earned Masters and Masters Honours degrees majoring in Social Ecology and had an Associate Diploma in Applied Management paid for by my employer.

Being an amateur at running an ERG isn’t the same thing as being an amateur in a host of contexts. A Disability ERG member might be a Senior Policy Officer who brings the added insight of lived experience to the job to policy development.

My point in making the Disability ERG a ‘de facto business unit’ was precisely to instill a professional discipline in what we did. We consulted on policy development from the perspective of being on the receiving end of policies, strategies and other efforts to generated desired change as well as also fully understanding policy formation. It isn’t really the field of esoteric expertise it is pretended to be. In that respect it’s a lot like HR.

By making an ERG a genuine partner and collaborator two important things happen. The first is that an organization that is serious about meeting its legal obligations toward employees will get genuinely frank and fearless advice that gets around the self-interested filters of the standard hierarchy. The second is that there is a professional and civil influence that carries a genuine sense of urgency. Staff experiencing exclusion, discrimination and abuse must not be asked to take a number and stand in line. Response to those needs must have priority.

Conclusion
I largely agree with Tanya that ERGs as they are presently imagined are neither fit for purpose nor otherwise useful to the extent that they should be ‘tolerated’.

They are not ‘fit for purpose’ because that purpose has been neither defined nor agreed upon. No business area in any organization should be so loosely defined. I personally don’t see the point in having an ERG whose function is about celebrating diversity. I confess this is a bias. If genuine problems that impact staff members wellbeing and welfare are neglected I can’t see the point in prioritizing celebrations of difference. Let’s be ‘One’ before celebrating that we are ‘Many’. This is an entirely personal perspective that fuels my passion to ‘end the suffering experienced by staff with disability’. There’s no hyperbole in that statement.

You can’t be ‘fit for purpose’ if the purpose is not clearly articulated and agreed upon by all who have a material interest. I have moved away from the idea of an Employee Resource Group to an Employee Reference Group. This wasn’t my idea. It came from a DEI manager.

The difference between Resource and Reference is critical because it relocated the notion of an ERG to entirely within the core business of an organization. This is often overlooked or mistaken. Core business isn’t just about an organization’s outputs but also its governance – not just behaviour but also health.

I have avoided using the word ‘moral’ here because I want to focus on legal responsibility because it is clearly delineated and unambiguous. How an organization addresses its legal duties to its employees is about method, style and strategy.

But then there’s moral dimension. Organizational processes can grind slowly as problems of resourcing arise and are confronted. In the meantime, how do you face the staff who, because of their disabilities, are feeling the pain of being excluded, discriminated against and even psychologically abused? This happens out of sight of organizational leaders. And when it is raised by staff subject to such conduct, they are often subject to more of the same.

Without a sophisticated and professional Disability ERG there is no protection, no trusted voice. In the NSW public sector, the number of staff with disabilities who take leave for psychological injury because exclusionary, discriminatory or abusive behaviour by team members or [mostly] managers has been cause for alarm. But the idea than an effective Disability ERG might be able to reduce such claims isn’t a popular notion. I understand why. The logic is just dumb.

I am not arguing that an ERG is the ideal answer. In fact, it isn’t. But in the type of ERG that I developed there is the seed of a solution to the challenge of genuinely meeting the needs of the ‘diversity groups’ we have been encouraged to embrace and include.

The current message seems to be that this is all too hard and stupid, and we should go back to being how we were. My argument is that we need to stop engaging in sloppy emotional reactions and start thinking clearly about how we are going respond like mature self-aware adults.

ERGs haven’t evolved with the workplaces they were designed for over 16 years ago. They are stuck in a time warp because there has been almost no serious thinking directed at them – because they were invented to be ineffectual displacement activity rather than genuine agents to change in response to evidence of inequity and injustice. I don’t think this was an intentional conspiracy – just what we do stuff as humans.

We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
by Musa al-Gharbi is an excellent exploration of why this is the case.

PurpleSpace is what can happen when you take running an ERG seriously. PurpleSpace’s founder and CEO, Kate Nash gave the keynote address at the 2018 Australian Network on Disability’s [AND] Annual National Conference in Sydney. Kate introduced me to the concept of Networkology. I could run a Disability ERG as a professional body? That was a novel idea. I tried it out and it worked a treat. I was invited to the AND’s Annual National Conferences in the following 2 years to report on our progress. So far as I know no Disability ERG in Australia has been invited to do similar.

ERGs can be imagined as genuine effective agents of change in service of an organization and its employees.

Michael Patterson
[email protected]
11 September 2026

Introduction
I figured it’s time to remind the reader why I think the way I do. It didn’t come out of the blue.

I was a conventional thinker about Disability ERGs from July 2010 to May 2018. Then I attended the Australian Network on Disability’s (AND – now ADN) Annual National Conference in Sydney. The keynote speaker was Kate Nash, founder and CEO of PurpleSpace.

Kate introduced me to the idea of Networkology and the next day she ran a workshop on the theme.

My transition to being an active and even radical Disability ERG lead was fast. Below I want to explore some of the key inspirations that Kate triggered and why they made such an impact.

A methodology
The idea of Networkology was one of those “Aha!” moments for me. I had been used to thinking about Disability Inclusion as being opportunistic – getting what attention and focus I could between doing my ‘real’ job.

I stopped thinking in fragments and started to join things up – a discipline of envisioning, conceiving, planning, executing, reviewing. It was a project like any other work I was doing. I was, after all, a Senior Project Officer.

So, I rethought my role as ERG lead as a project and not ‘hobby’ – something to engaged in in my ‘spare’ time. This was a critical change because it instantly made me ‘professionalize’ my perspective.

Networkology was a powerful idea to me because it instantly reminded me that there was a professional discipline at the foundation of Disability Inclusion. Now I had a plan and was conscious of the need for a strategy.

The experience couldn’t have been more timely. My conception of what I was about was radically disrupted when I was on the cusp of an extraordinary change in my work environment. I was to transfer to a new division and be given the opportunity to put as much time into the Disability ERG as I wanted.

Always on
Disability Inclusion was something I thought about routinely because I was almost always making some assessment about my own needs. My grip and mobility disabilities impacted my working in some way every day.

But thinking about Disability Inclusion for others, as Disability ERG lead, was a different matter.

I was a founding member of the Disability ERG back in July 2010. It met 4 times a year for a generous full day. We were backed by HR who organized and paid for everything. What we were doing was taken seriously.

But things change and people move on. Shortly after I became ERG lead HR had to pull back its support. The department was undergoing more restructuring, and HR resources had to be re-assigned. Besides there was good progress being made on the Disability Inclusion front. This was true.

But Kate reminded me that Disability Inclusion isn’t just a bureaucratic process. The progress being made didn’t mean that less effort should be applied. It meant that we should be grateful and then ask what else must happen?

The withdrawal of HR support simply signaled that we had to re-imagine what the ERG was about. We had to evolve beyond the bureaucratic phase of changing policies, systems and procedures and become agents for cultural change.

I didn’t understand this properly until recently. Back in 2018 all I had was a dimly formed intuition that Disability Inclusion was an ‘always on’ state of mind. I was energised by a huge sense of excitement and an extraordinary opportunity to make something happen.

Later that year I called for volunteers to help me. I had the privilege of having my employer’s support to have the time work on evolving the ERG, but I didn’t know a great deal about how my fellow ERG members were experiencing their workplaces.

My call for volunteers led to the creation of the Guidance and Action Team (GAT) – 13 passionate, frustrated and highly principled people with a range of disabilities who wanted to make positive things happen. There were also 2 allies who brought their own useful perspectives.

The first thing that happened for me was an intensive education about what members with sensory, motor, chronic illness (like MS) and mental health disabilities constantly experienced in the workplace.

This was an intense time. My work with disability goes back a long way and includes providing personal care, intimate aids and ensuring the delivery of social and health services. But that did little to prepare me for the existential pain of adults feeling marginalized, disrespected and psychologically abused in their workplaces.

Perhaps because PurpleSpace was a separate ongoing organization the idea of being ‘always on’ made perfect sense. But how could that become anything close to being real in my workplace?

The gift of time
In June 2023 I was invited to act as a consultant to my former employer’s ERG leads. The first thing that became evident was that there was a shared complaint about not having the time needed to work on ERG business.

This was a legitimate complaint because there was the expectation that an ERG was a voluntary employee-led body that had organizational sanction but no formal standing. ERG business had to fit into an ERG lead’s regular workload, which had priority.

Kate’s keynote address at the conference was possible only because she, as founder and CEO of PurpleSpace, had the time to formulate her ideas and methods. She had time to think, time to research, time to collaborate and communicate

Also at that conference was our Disability ERG’s Executive Champion, a Deputy Secretary. Her role in what happened next cannot be under-estimated.

In the space of a few weeks, I went from spending a lot of my evenings, weekends and leave working on Disability ERG matters to having at least 3 days a week to do that work. I was able to create a communications infrastructure that enabled the GAT to interact daily. I also sent out monthly reports to members, supporters and champions, and had a regular presence in the organization’s newsletter.

The benefit of having time is undeniable. But the foundation for this rests on two critical factors relevant before I was granted that gift of 3 paid days a week. And this was before the AND conference and Kate’s speech.

The first was that I had created an active presence for the Disability ERG in the organization. And I had established a value to members and the organization. This was hard time-consuming work that had to be thought through very carefully. I had the good fortune to have had a decent grounding in writing. In the past I had written a satirical workplace newsletter that was shared widely. I had won literary competition awards for short fiction, essays and poetry and I had written a Masters Honours thesis.

The ERGs I worked with from June 2023 to June 2025 mostly belonged to a very different phase to the one the Disability ERG was created in. They were mostly modelled on the Disability ERG’s success but with none of the roots or foundational experiences.

They were established with minimal organizational support and with no theoretical foundation to what they were and how they were to succeed. That’s not a criticism. I didn’t have a theory either. The Disability ERG’s success depended on multiple factors, none of which included having an overall theory. We had a great strategy though.

Having the time is one thing. Knowing what to do with it is another. In June 2023 I sympathized with the ERG leads who complained they had no time. They didn’t. But it was only half of their problem.

Theory aversion
Hindsight is a wonderful when we have the luxury of developing it. So, I can look back of the Disability ERG’s success and, after several years of reflection and research, write about why that success came about. I wasn’t prescient so much as fortunate enough to be at the right place and the right time. But I also had some attributes and capabilities that enabled me to take advantage of opportunity.

In July 2010 the CEO of my department formed the belief that there was inadequate support for staff with disability while the department was responsible for providing support for people with disability across the state. Some of that support was being provided by staff with disability. There was, then, a clear sense of moral and legal responsibility – hitherto overlooked. Within this sense the Disability ERG was formed to provide input to inform how this newly formed sense of responsibility for staff with disability was to express as action. This was done well for a few years.

But, like so many initiatives, when the department’s Disability Inclusion behaviour matured from creating to maintenance, there was no corresponding theory of purpose and role negotiated with the ERG. Nobody thought this was necessary, understandably. What we were doing was still novel.

When I took on the ERG lead role in November 2016 I had several advantages. I had decent experience in leadership roles. I had a background of working with business and organizational leaders (mostly modest scale entities) in previous roles. I had Masters and Masters Honours degrees majoring in Social Ecology. I had been reading in management, leadership and organizational behaviour informally for several decades, and I had an Associate Diploma in Applied Management – a 6-months course my employer paid for.

Depending on the organization, requirements for ERG leadership vary. In my department ERG leadership was determined by popular vote with no particular selection criteria. This frequently led to relatively junior staff with no leadership, management or project management skills being elected. This had the result of ERGs having no idea of the benefit of having a theory of what they were about, or how they fitted into the organization. And given the organization had shifted into a different understanding of what roles ERGs played without developing this into a shared theory, it also had no theory. There was bound to be confusion.

My advantage was that I was able to quickly grasp the value of Kate’s idea of Networkology – once I had become aware of it. Because our Executive Champion was at the same event, and the executive board was actively supportive of the cause of Disability Inclusion, there was an implicit shared understanding of the Disability ERG’s role. It was not, however, explicit. We hadn’t advanced that far. Nevertheless, that implicit understanding enabled good things to happen.

What I found interesting and frustrating during my consultancy was that there was an aversion among many ERG leads and within the DEI team toward any attempt to develop a shared theory of function and role, and to engage with executive sponsors and champions as a shared-interest group.

Perhaps this was too radical an idea? But I am reluctantly obliged to consider also that a lot of folks are just averse to doing good research and thinking. This isn’t a criticism. I must confess to being something of a nerd. I like research. There’s no reason to criticize those who don’t, but there’s good reason to wonder aloud whether somebody who doesn’t would be a good pick as ERG lead, given the amount of learning that is required.

Its one thing to develop a theory of what an ERG is, and what it should do, and another thing to have it shared and agreed to. Everyone associated with an ERG must be in agreement – the ERG, the DEI team and the organization’s executive.

Employee led or employee directed
The official position on ERGs in the NSW government clings to the outdated notion that an ERG is an employee led ‘network’. Network is a completely vague idea, which is why I don’t use it. Networking is something we do for personal advantage or to influence decisions or actions. The moment an organization has an interest in networks for its staff it time to pay attention.

The Disability ERG I joined as a founding member was called a network, not because it was an actual network, but because that was the term in vogue – as it still is today.

From Guidelines for Employee Networks we read “An Employee Network is a voluntary network of employees formed with common interests and objectives to enhance the workplace experience of target employee demographic/s.” That’s awfully soporific, bland and essentially meaningless. It sounds and feels good because it puts your brain into a coma – as intended.

Under the heading, Benefits to the Agency, the first benefit is, “Develop sources of expertise and support for employees with specific needs in the
Agency.” It is not, “Identify and address issues that lead to inaccessibility, exclusion or discrimination so that staff can experience safe workplaces and rewarding work experiences.”

Under the heading, Benefits to the Individual, the first benefit is, “Personal development opportunities.” It is not, “Identify and take up opportunities to increase inaccessibility and reduce exclusion or discrimination so that staff can experience safe workplaces and rewarding work experiences.”

In Appendix – 3 there is a Member Sample Survey which asks the question, “Realistically, how much time can you devote to providing support to the Employee Network each month?” The last of 4 options is “More than 8 hours per month.” That’s over 2 hours a week – 24 minutes a day. That’s not enough for ERG leads. There nothing, notably, recommending anything about paid time being made available to help the employer meet its responsibilities toward staff. The organization is ‘hands off’, except in telling employees how to run their network.

The idea of ‘volunteer employee network’ here is as a social club not intended not to have any impact on addressing real problems of exclusion, discrimination and inequity. It’s about a public posture to affirm a sentiment the sector is expected to affirm, but not genuinely deliver on. The cost of doing so exceeds that tolerance of those in power.

Employee are expected to contribute their own time to participate in a group that is focused on soft personal targets. This is a remarkably flaccid approach that can come only from those who have never experienced discrimination, exclusion or abuse. Nobody who has such experiences would ever write such guff.

Under the heading Why have an Employee Network? We can read “Building an inclusive workplace culture is important for retaining top talent and ensuring the public sector continues to deliver high-quality services to the people of NSW.

It is proven that when employees feel they can bring their whole self to work, they are more engaged, productive and motivated to drive innovation and growth.

Recognising the diverse needs of employees and empowering them to achieve their full potential at work will enhance the quality of services delivered to the people of NSW.”

So, let me put that into perspective, the author of this document imagines that these things should be done by employees in their own time? The employer is the one who has the responsibility of “Building an inclusive workplace culture” and “Recognising the diverse needs of employees and empowering them to achieve their full potential at work.”

This document reflects the complete confusion of the sector’s grasp of ERGs. It sets a high standard of imagined benefit, for which agencies are actually responsible, on moral, policy and legal grounds. But it offers no concrete support beyond creating a document that provides an unworkable set of guidelines, which, as I saw in my consultancy, leaves ERGs floundering under workload demands and no real benefit for effort put in.

You cannot achieve the imagined benefits with ‘volunteer’ networks without considerable organizational support and contribution.

The compelling observation is that ‘networks’ of this kind are ‘good ideas’ invented by people with no direct experience of discrimination or exclusion, and who imagine that polite informal conversations are all it will take. What the author this document seems unaware of is the people most motivated to joins such networks are those who experience personal disadvantage arising from attributes that class them as disadvantaged in some way – disability, gender, ethnicity, sexuality.

My former employer also had ‘networks’ for staff who were carers and/or older. Both may be subject to inflexible and/or uncaring attitudes and/or discrimination.

The only positive network was The Young Professionals, which, because it was based on positive self-interest was a genuine network.

Some ERGs which started off as problem-solvers transitioned into being more about celebrating identity and diversity because the grosser forms of discrimination have been seen to have been addressed. Whether celebrating identity and diversity is a proper function for an ERG is not something I will discuss here. It is sufficient that I flag genuine scepticism.

Problem-solving ERGs are what interest me intensely. The Disability ERG I led was established because there was a problem. Staff with disability were subject to discrimination and sometimes abuse. They were denied equal opportunity to participate in the work experience because of multiple barriers – physical, technological, systems, processes, practices and attitudes and behaviours.

Addressing these issues isn’t just about employees with disability getting together in a ‘network’. It is also about them asserting their rights for equity and inclusion.

This isn’t a universal entitlement. In NSW the public sector is obliged to ensure that its workforce reflects the community it serves. So, employing staff with disability isn’t a business efficiency proposition. It’s a social obligation. Its also then about anti-discrimination and work health and safety legal obligations.

Consequently, precisely why the sector imagines that making ‘voluntary’ groups putting in work in their own time a responsible party in meeting these responsibilities is something I genuinely find utterly baffling.

Conclusion
The current backlash against DEI and ERGs stems from, I think, the absence of shared theory of function and role. The NSW public sector guide for staff network hammers this home starkly. It has no real theory, just a collection of platitudes based on no genuine insight about what might motivate employees to join an ERG.

Research into the impacts of discrimination, exclusion and abuse indicate that the brains of those who experience such treatment in their workplaces register it the same way physical pain is registered. Precisely why, then, should ending this suffering be a casual matter flicked off to unskilled and over-taxed employees? By ‘unskilled’ I mean only in the context of addressing the suffering of their members.

Let me put this remark in a more precise context. In early 2021 (I think) the NSW public sector expressed concern about the high level of workers compensation claims. For good reason. A substantial number of the claims were for psychological injury. These included claims related to discrimination and what amounted to emotional abuse of staff with disability.

The response was to try to make such claims harder to establish and defend. There was reason for that, but what struck me most was the absence of any acknowledgement that many claims were justified. I have detailed knowledge of several. Comment on this theme must be left to a separate post.

The goals of ERGs must be the goals of an organization in relation to the safety and welfare of staff. Here is mutual self-interest. An organization has a legal and a moral duty towards its employees and it could create a partnership with its staff to help it fulfill those duties.

The Disability ERG I joined in July 2010 did that to a reasonable degree, given in was a new approach. The ERG I led from November 2016 to March 2020 did that as well. In each case there was a commitment from the organization’s executive, from HR and from the ERG members.

Active commitment and engagement from all 3 (the ERG, HR and the executive) are essential to ensure certain risks do not emerge:
• Politicization of the ERG.
• ERG members, HR staff or executives pushing ideological or personal agendas.
• The capacity for shared conversation breaks down with a loss of perspective, misunderstanding and suspicion of motives arising.
• A lack of professionalism in how an ERG is led is not identified and addressed through coaching, mentoring or leadership change.

Ultimately an ERG should be part of an organization’s core business in addressing its responsibilities toward staff and be supported and resourced accordingly. For this to happen there must be a theory of what the ERG’s function and role is – agreed to by the ERG, HR and the organization’s executive. When these things are in place good things happen. When they are not inequity, exclusion and discrimination persist. It is not just the ERG that must be fit for purpose to meet employee needs and rights, but HR and executive sponsors and champions must be fit to support and facilitate the intended outcome as well.

The post’s title suggests a radical approach. What PurpleSpace demonstrated to me was that a thoughtful, disciplined and professional approach to Disability Inclusion in the workplace will deliver the outcomes that organizations and ERG members want.

I adapted Kate’s insights to suit my capacity and the needs of my organization. In 2019 and 2020 we were invited to present at the AND (now ADN) Annual National Conferences on the innovations introduced and their impact. That’s a decent enough acknowledgement of success – contributed to by the ERG, HR and the organization’s executive. What we achieved required all 3 to be working together in mutual respect, trust and harmony.

I guess that’s radical.

Radical thinking isn’t a solitary business. I was inspired by Kate Nash, supported by my department’s Secretary, the ERG’s Executive Champions, other senior executives and the Manager of the Inclusion and Diversity team. I was energetically abetted by the 15 members of the GAT and ERG members in general. As well, I sought and obtained the collaboration of other executives and managers, many of whom became Disability Inclusion Champions.

Kate’s critical insight that Disability Inclusion was a professional matter triggered a cascade of insights and innovations. My main contribution was that I ran the ERG as a ‘de facto business unit’ – and I had the background and skills to do that well. This allowed me to position the ERG inside the organization’s core business – where it properly belonged.

Michael Patterson
6 September 2026
[email protected]

Introduction
This has been an evolving theme for me for getting on for 3 years now. While my focus has been on Disability Inclusion, the reality is that what must change to make Disability Inclusion real embraces a far wider field of issues.

The Social Model of Disability is only one manifestation of the social models of inclusion that have changed the lives of many people over the past 60+ years. It is distinct in that it has introduced physical changes that have transformed public and organizational spaces to make them more accessible to people with mobility and sensory disabilities. The changes had made life easier for other people as well – parents with prams, people carrying stuff for example.

There are other changes we can see as well. Websites are more visually accessible – where web accessibility standards are adhered to. We can see signers in meetings or on screens to aid deaf audience members. Tech providers like Apple and Microsoft design accessibility into their products. Organizations have introduced workplace adjustments that enable staff with disabilities to work in safer ways. Accessible parking spaces are more common.

There’s a long list to demonstrate that life for a person with a disability can be a lot better now than it was decades ago. There is now legislation and policy and a broad commitment to continuing to make things better.

But a lot of people with disabilities don’t experience these benefits to anywhere near the extent we might believe. The social model has certainly created a momentum of change in the right direction, but it isn’t a standalone model. It has a companion component – a cultural dimension.

Below I want to reflect on why the cultural dimension is lagging behind the social dimension and why this is creating tensions and problems we need to recognize and address.

The bigger picture
The ‘rights revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s progressively transformed our cultures over subsequent decades because there was a lot of enthusiasm for greater equality and inclusion. Laws were developed and passed. Policies were formulated. There were plenty of people eager and impatient for change.

And then things toned down a lot. Greater inclusion and equity weren’t being flat out denied, just slowed down. Those of us who marched in the streets in the 1960s got older, got jobs, created families and mortgages – and suddenly, when confronted with intransigent attitudes, found we no longer felt inclined to be quite so confrontational.

What happened? Consider Iris Bohnet’s book, What Works: Gender Equality By Design, was published in 2016. The book description says:
“Gender equality is a moral and a business imperative. But unconscious bias holds us back, and de-biasing people’s minds has proven to be difficult and expensive. Diversity training programs have had limited success, and individual effort alone often invites backlash. Behavioral design offers a new solution. By de-biasing organizations instead of individuals, we can make smart changes that have big impacts. Presenting research-based solutions, Iris Bohnet hands us the tools we need to move the needle in classrooms and boardrooms…

What Works is built on new insights into the human mind. It draws on data collected by companies, universities, and governments… It points out dozens of evidence-based interventions that could be adopted right now and demonstrates how research is addressing gender bias, improving lives and performance. What Works shows what more can be done-often at shockingly low cost and surprisingly high speed.”

“Iris Bohnet is the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government and the co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. She is a behavioral economist, combining insights from economics and psychology to improve decision-making in organizations and society, often with a gender or cross-cultural perspective.”

Here’s my point. Women’s equality was achieved in principle in the 1960s and 1970s. But it took far longer for it to become widespread reality. So much so that over 40 years later a prominent academic is moved to publish a book with the subtitle – Gender Equality By Design.

My former employer has a decent record on gender equality. Its not ideal, but its also not terrible. In 2025 61% of staff were female. Women are well represented at manger grade or higher in most divisions. In my 19.5 years in the department 73% of my managers were women.

Gender equality is well in advance of Disability Inclusion – if only because there are way more people advocating for it. So, if gender equality has become so problematic there has to be serious research undertaken and remedies proposed, please imagine the under-researched reality of staff with disability.

These days I routinely hear reports of staff with disability experiencing significant levels of discrimination and sometimes abuse. The Social Model seems frozen. Something isn’t working.

Bohnet sees it as well. The intended momentum of change seems to be on pause – unable to go further in the passionate and fluid way that drove the early energy for change.

Why momentum freezes
It isn’t about moral failings but the limits of our psychological capacity to adapt without a compelling motive to do so. We are change averse. Change usually means there is a threat we need to adapt to, so the cognitive effort we employ has a pay-off – we survive, and maybe flourish.

Many of the threats we encounter now are existential. They concern our sense of identity and meaning. These are no small matter, but they are also complex, and beyond my capacity to explore in this context.

There are, however, two critical considerations. The first is that identity is fast becoming a singular theme of our time. The second is that we have a choice about how we respond to the challenge it represents. We can go with the cultural flow and become engulfed in popular sentiment. Or we can step back and engage with intellectual and emotional discipline. Why does this difference matter?

Popular sentiment is reactive. It may be idealistic, but it is about sentiment and not strategy. Feeling good isn’t the same as doing good. Feeling good is about affirming ideals and values. Doing good is about translating those emotions into actions that deliver benefits to the people we say we want to help.

This isn’t a complex or an esoteric matter. The tension between well-intended sentiment and actual beneficial action is baked into our cultural psyche. In its worst aspect the well-intended sentiment is cynical and manipulative, rather than just ineffectual. But that weakness may exist precisely because it is inherently difficult to convert good intent in effective action.

This may seem like a transgression into waffly philosophy and away from the subject making Disability Inclusion a reality. It isn’t. If we misdiagnose the reason for things not happening as fast as we would like the consequences can be dire. Misdiagnose an illness, prescribe the wrong medicine, patient continues to suffer. How is that any different?

Iris Bohnet’s research is an admission of misdiagnosis and prescription of the wrong remedies over more than half a century by idealistic, well-intentioned, highly educated and skilled practitioners. How could they have gotten things so wrong? They weren’t asking the right questions? They didn’t have the mindset that allowed them to formulate the right answers?

In an evolutionary context both questions are real, but neither imply incompetence or moral failing. We just haven’t become aware of the potential we have to have beliefs, attitudes and behaviours beyond what we presently have. To adapt to that we need an education.

I remember when our Learning & Development teams were championing Life-Long Learning. It was a good idea in theory, but it radically over-estimated the level of interest. And there was almost zero serious effort to promote it, to be blunt. I am a total LLL nerd, but I also figure that understanding why such a ‘good idea’ isn’t popular is critically important. We can’t justly blame those unenthusiastic for not ‘getting with the program’ if they didn’t agree it was important in the first place.

How do you become a Disability Inclusion champion if you have no insight into Disability Inclusion? You might be totally empathic and keen to be supportive. But your ageing mum might need attention, your kid needs your engagement, your relationship isn’t exactly bliss, and there’s crap going down at work.

So yeah, these people demanding equity and inclusion have legit concerns that we support. But, unless an organisation is going to make easier for me to engage, my capacity for cognitive concern, they going to have to take a ticket and stand in line as I work through the order of my priorities for attention and cognitive effort.

The Neuroleadership Institute (NLI) has formulated a neat model for thinking about organizational leadership – GPA. This identifies 3 key attributes for contemporary leaders – G = Growth Mindset, P = Psychological Safety and A = Accountability.

For those unfamiliar with the term ‘growth mindset’, it’s the opposite of the idea of a fixed mindset – the disinclination to learn and develop new skills. A growth mindset asserts the proposition that we can all change what we know and believe by application of patient effort.

I like the idea of GPA because it neatly sums up the critical elements of a response to change demands that go beyond the demands of formal organizational leadership and embrace situational and contextual leadership (which applies to ERGs and effective activism) and our personal responses to contemporary challenges in working environments, regardless of where we are in any hierarchy. This also applies to our role in any community.

The work of Iris Bohnet and the NLI are only elements of a general trend toward developing greater personal awareness of operating in our contemporary social and organizational environments.

The most recent indication of this collective and shared pressure can be seen in the critical commentaries on the introduction to AI. I make this observation only because AI represents a spectacular change potential in work environments, and, notwithstanding the massive degree of over-hype, the need to adapt intelligently is still compelling.

The key phrase (not yet a buzz word) is ‘meta-cognition’. We cannot under-estimate the value of this term. It is described as ‘thinking about thinking’. But that’s too nerdy. It’s about self-awareness and self-reflection. The danger signal is that us we are not aware of the hazards and potential of what is ahead of us, we can become cognitively debilitated. The alternative is that we have a sense of control over our destinies.

This may seem like I am veering into nerdy esoteric territory again. Far from it. We are familiar with the litany that we are swamped by change and that in organizations change is mostly done badly. But change is also experienced badly by those who don’t have a ‘growth mindset’, who can’t adapt in an environment that doesn’t have a spirit of psychological safety and which has no culture of psychological safety.

This is to say that it’s a rare organization that enables its staff to adapt to critical changes in a conducive atmosphere. And, if it’s tough in an organizational setting, how much harder is it on a personal and individual level.

What, you may be wondering, has this got to do with Disability Inclusion and the idea of a Cultural Model of Inclusion?

The shift to a Cultural Model of Inclusion requires two vital steps:
• An organizational commitment to going down that path
• A willingness of individuals with authority and/or influence to make the changes to their personal beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that are necessary to make any objective set realizable.

The fundamental reality is that any transition toward a cultural model requires personal changes in behaviour – and that requires focused personal effort to meet asserted standards of behaviour.

The changes we want to see are aspirational on a cultural level, and are, consequentially, personal challenges. We must evolve our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors in an intentional way.

Just agreeing that something is a good idea isn’t enough. This has become a cultural assumption built on myth because of religious beliefs rather than any actual insight into our behaviour. Were it otherwise we could easily reverse the direction of our feelings.

Disability Inclusion is beyond the empathic sentiment and about the gritty reality of making it happen.

As I have noted above the issue isn’t about ‘moral failing’ – the standard destructive complaint. It’s about our in-built resistance to being and doing more than we are. Evolution and aspiration are not the same thing. The former relates to an implacable mechanism and the latter to what we dare imagine we can be. But both work together.

We must always choose to be better than we are if we want to progress the evolution of Disability Inclusion.

The transitions between the ‘rights securing’ and the ‘rights honouring’ phases in our culture’s evolution are demanding – as all adaptive transitions are. The initial cognitive demand changes to familiarity and ease of engagement. This is where we are with Disability Inclusion as a secured right. That’s Phase 1. Phase 2 is the rights honouring step.

Think of this in terms of buying a new device, like a smart TV. That’s Phase 1. When you get it home and set it up you need to pick up the user’s manual and learn how to operate it. There’s a method of use that works very well. Or you can just guess.

The cultural model of inclusion doesn’t have a single volume user’s manual, but maybe thousands of sources – books, podcasts, articles, videos. And the piece of technology isn’t physical hardware – it’s our psychology and the organizations and communities we have created.

Conclusion
I am not arguing that there’s only one right way to do things. But I am arguing that there are critical and unavoidable steps to be taken to ensure that we transition to a rights-honouring approach to Disability Inclusion effectively. In fact, as Iris Bohnet reminds us, this applies to all forms of equality and inclusion.

In January 2025 Iris Bohnet and co-author Siri Chilazi published Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results. This was in response to the backlash against DEI that had been simmering quietly until Trump triggered open hostility. Bohnet and Chilazi argue that fairness is a better way of thinking than the familiar DEI themes.

Fairness is a great idea in a culture where rights have been secured but not yet honoured. But it’s still a cultural shift at an individual level – and there are many user’s manuals to guide.

Kindness at work is a growing theme – see kindnessatwork.com. I am also a huge fan of the Global Leadership Foundation, which works to grow the emotional health and emotional intelligence of staff in organizations and the wider community.

The ideal of fair, kind and emotionally healthy workplaces should a no brainer. But making the ideal a reality requires intentional, deliberate cognitive effort. None of the desired benefits and outcomes will arise by some mysterious process of aspirational osmosis – although that background atmosphere of good intent must not be dismissed as irrelevant. It is essential. It’s just not enough.

What does this mean at an organizational level? How do we make things happen? I have already argued that it is better to see Employee Resource Groups as Employee Reference Groups, rethink them entirely or to move away from the model of an ERG being employee-led in the traditional sense to a Peer-to-Peer model. The idea of an employee-led ERG is now hopelessly out of date [in most cases] and confers no benefit to staff who think their needs are being represented effectively to the organization. This set up also gives an organization a justification to ignore such an ERG as something optional or outside its core business.

But, more importantly, ERGs, DEI teams and executives must be talking to each other, be on the same page in terms of their understanding what is to be achieved, and how, and be capable of developing and implementing a mutually agreed plan. This might be demanding, but it’s not difficult – provided there’s a shared determination to make it happen.

Michael Patterson
1 September 2026
[email protected]

Introduction
I have been recently looking at some NSW government programs and policies and was dismayed to see affirmations of zero tolerance of unkind and exclusive conduct expressed in a passive sentimental tone with vague, emotionally remote affirmations of what will be done.

These were written and approved by people engaging in an intellectual exercise calculated to win approval for saying a good thing. It’s good to disapprove of bullying, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and the exclusion of people with disabilities etc.

The sentiment is genuine in its general orientation and people are responding in various ways – sometimes with a passion – but often weakly and ineffectually.

I have had a few recent conversations with people who think I am being too harsh in my assessment. But I am not criticizing a moral failure, rather a cultural one and this is of vital importance because I argue that the next stage in our efforts to secure Disability Inclusion is a transition from the familiar social model to a novel cultural model.

The social model of disability has required the building of physical and system infrastructures. This is an ongoing action area. I have been a member of my local government’s Access Reference Group since July 2021 and have been impressed by the council’s commitment to Disability Inclusion. I have also discovered how much work is to be done to make our LGA more inclusive and accessible and the cost of getting it done. I am grateful that I live in a community in a nation where this matters enough to put real money and effort into making things happen.

A shift to a cultural model will require an investment in a different kind of infrastructure – a psychological one. This is also pertinent to a wide range of trends in our communities and organizations. Fortunately, there’s a lot of well-funded research being done. But we are largely lagging behind on the job of implementing the fruits of this research.

The situation is complex and the work to be done is challenging. We are making progress, but we would make more if we didn’t under-estimate the level of complexity and difficulty we face.

Below I want to explore some key themes.

Why is it so complex and difficult?
In sum, it’s because we are a bunch of humans trying to do stuff we haven’t done before. Complex, diverse, pluralistic and inclusive communities are novel. They are an evolutionary novelty thanks to the strength of humanist values that influence our culture for a few centuries. They are aspirational, and an aspiration.

We are still guided by psychological and neurological reflexes that were developed a very long time ago – and which suited us well to ways we lived tens of millennia ago. So, we have a tension between reflex and aspiration.

We have a reflex to be inclusive toward members of our in-group, and now we are expected to be inclusive of everyone. That’s an aspiration, and it’s hard to do without intentional effort.

We have a bias toward people who are like us or with whom we identify, and now we are expected not to be biased when we make decisions. That’s an aspiration, and it’s very hard to do without intentional effort.

The humanist values we have adopted put a burden of responsibility upon us. We must change our reflexive habits of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors so that we make those values a living reality in our communities and organizations.

To make such changes we must exert significant cognitive effort. Here’s a paradox of sorts. We are innately averse to cognitive effort – unless it is in response to a threat. We prefer an easy life. We are hardwired for it. Our brains are suited to minimal cognitive effort. This explains why, for 10s, even 100s of millennia, humans didn’t do an awful of ‘progressing’.

The ‘paradox’ is that now we benefit from the minority who not only don’t see cognitive effort as a threat response but positively get off on such effort. Next time you pick up your smart phone give thanks to them and capitalism – which brings the fruits of their strange behavior to all of us – and which makes exerting cognitive effort even less necessary.

But the cognitive downside is that we have now hit a point where our reflexive behaviors and the humanist values we have come to treasure have come to a tipping-point.

We need to transition into a different reflex mode if we want to continue to benefit from modes of belief, attitude and behaviour that guide the good things about our civilization.

Okay, so I have just identified a ‘threat’. Why so? Anti-woke sentiments that have been stirred up, increasingly on a global scale, expose a serious weakness in ‘progressive’ politics. This is a reliance on sentiment and moral argument which renders advocates for ‘wokeism’ inarticulate when defending their position against frustrated opponents who have been rehearsing and refining their counterargument for decades.

It is cognitively and emotionally easier to advocate from an emotional and moral position. That way you get the status you desire and the job you want. But it also entrenches failure to achieve compelling changes and leaves us with a trickle of successes – because doing better than that is impossible because we are facing a moral brick wall of denial.

The alternative is to ‘call a spade a spade’ in clear no BS terms that remain civil, respectful and professional. But this triggers a real problem for Disability Inclusion advocates and activists. It is generated by the power imbalance in organizations and communities, and the absence of a culture of genuine accountability at the top of many organizations and governments.

Saying you don’t tolerate discrimination or unkindness is like reciting a magical incantation with no actual magical powers. You can recite all you like – but in the end you must make the change yourself if you really mean what you say.

Change is hard
Organizational change so hard there are books on the subject, and admissions that most organizational change initiatives fail. My beef with Disability Inclusion efforts in organizations is that organizations and Disability ERGs imagine they can do what highly paid consultants and academic experts routinely fail to do – and with no particular insights or skills.

We don’t like change at the best of times, unless it promises less cognitive effort and more pleasure or reward. Not all desired changes are easy – especially aspirational ones. This is why we don’t talk about New Year’s resolutions anymore. This why, if we are serious about an aspirational change, we will seek out coaches or mentors or communities of like-minded devotees. We understand that these changes must demand our attention, and hence our cognitive and emotional effort.

There still must be a recognizable sense of threat to focus our attention and effort. The rights campaigns of the 1960s were responding to powerful sense of threat – the denial of equal rights. The outcome was a range of laws and policies upon which we now rely. But that was at least 56 years ago. The rights are secured (though some have been eroded), but the freedom and support to realise them has not been won by everyone. A right must be honoured and protected in deed, not just in word.

Conclusion
For very good and understandable reasons we are locked into beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that innately resist our efforts to transform good intentions into aspirational and beneficial actions.

There’s a reason why governments continue to spew passive avowals of intolerance for what is actually tolerated pretty well and make declarations of accountability for behaviors that are never held to account.

It isn’t a moral failing in the sense of supporting what is actually wrong so much as a failing in not staying up to date with what we really do know about behaviour in organizations and communities. We know why discrimination and bias occur. And we do know what to do in response.

And yet those paid by the public purse appear to believe that they have no duty to engage in greater intellectual effort and explore what contemporary science and philosophy can add to strengthening their assertions that they are honouring shared values and bringing about conforming changes.

This is a quote from a very current anti-racism post from the NSW government:
We all have a role to play in eradicating racism in our workplaces and ensuring a safe and healthy working environment. Everyone should have the resources and confidence to report instances of racism if they witness it and support colleagues who might experience it.

Pay attention to the language – disengaged, remote and passive:
• We all have a role – not play a role
• should have the resources – not must have
• if they witness – not when they witness
• who might experience – not who do experience.

Let me revise this a little:
We all play a role in eradicating racism in our workplaces and ensuring a safe and healthy working environment. Everyone will have the resources and confidence to report instances of racism when they witness it and support colleagues who experience it. See the difference?

My point is that here is a government website promoting anti-racism while undermining it in the same breath. This the most recent example of a mindset that has been undermining Disability Inclusion for years.

This kind of pretend caring is everywhere. It explains why changes haven’t moved at the pace desired. Governments serve their own interests (which is to look like they give a damn) and ‘advocates’ and ‘activists’ routinely fail to move the dial.

It isn’t that we don’t care, just that we don’t know how to do so in a genuinely effective way – and some want the status of being an advocate or an activist without bothering to put the effort into being good at the role.

Finally, I will rework that paragraph just a little more:
We all play a role in eradicating discrimination against staff with disabilities in our workplaces and ensuring a safe and healthy working environment. Everyone will have the resources and confidence to report instances of discrimination against staff with disabilities when they witness it and support colleagues who experience it. We have clear and accountable strategies and actions that will ensure that this happens.

You do deserve to understand why ‘Caring is more than saying that you do.’ Please do think deeply about this – and then do something.

Introduction
In answer to the title question, I think not – as we now understand them – and this may not be a bad thing. But that’s not to say that transitioning to a new way of advancing inclusion will be easy – or even doable.

I have recently had some despairing conversations with some ERG leads who are at the end of their terms or who are considering quitting. They do not paint a pretty picture. I hope this is only a local phenomenon, but, looking at trends and comments, I fear not.

Organizations are withdrawing support from ERGs – mostly for justifiable reasons, to be fair – but also for misguided motives. This is part of what I see as a general confusion that I first encountered back in June 2023 when I accepted a consultancy role with my former employer, mentoring its ERG leads. That was a disappointing and frustrating experience stretched over 2 years. The consultancy ended in June 2025. I was unaware of how bad the situation was – far worse than those who engaged me realized. I had to do a heap of research in a hurry and completely rethink how I could help.

Twelve months later and things are worse – but not for only bad reasons. By that I mean I think we are going through a necessary evolutionary crisis in thinking and behaving. My fear is that staff with disabilities who need effective and skilled advocacy will be ‘collateral damage’ in a larger philosophical and political shakeout.

Below I want to think through my reaction to the conversations I have been having.

Maybe ERGs just aren’t the right tool for the job?
Withdrawal of organizational support from ERGs reflects an inability of ERGs to make a compelling case for the support they say they need. When I began my consultancy the first thing I asked for was an ‘elevator pitch’ business case. Tell me in a minute why your ERG should be supported in the way you want. But there was neither clarity nor passion in answer that challenge. In fact, no ERG could answer without prompting and support – and even then, what I heard was hardly encouraging.

ERGs were seen as a good idea by everyone – the ERG leaders, the DEI team and the organization’s executive. But they weren’t talking to each other. There was no shared vision, no agreed passion or mission. When I asked what was the worst thing that would happen if an ERG ceased to exist the responses weren’t electrifying – not much, really. And this was despite the reality that members of some of the ERGs were experiencing real discrimination, disadvantage and harm.

For example, the NSW government has found it necessary to run an anti-racism campaign in the public sector. Why is this necessary in well-paid sophisticated organizations that deliver human services? How has this become an issue in organizations that have executive leaders aware of what is going on beneath them, DEI teams and ERGs? Why fund DEI teams or ERGs if you need to run an anti-racism campaign?

I still hear stories of discrimination and abuse that shouldn’t be happening. And the ERGs seem incapable of mounting an effective defence of their members in dire straits at work. Let me put this into perspective.

When I became lead of my Disability ERG in November 2016, I felt obliged, finally, to read its terms of reference – which were imposed, not negotiated. Once rule was that the ERG was not to engage in advocacy for individual members. Well, that was bullshit. What was the point of an ERG if it was rendered powerless to respond to a member’s plea for help against abusive and discriminatory conduct from managers or other staff?

I fully understood that there should be an injunction against direct intervention. But the fact of a plea for help demonstrated that whatever systems or processes were in place weren’t working. I could initiate inquiry into system/process failure. It wasn’t the ERG’s job to directly police individual inappropriate conduct, but we could red-flag it and demand it be addressed.

That approach takes a bit of canny, a lot of political nous and considerable determination. I got very good results. So, the first context for consideration is the capability of the ERG lead – and here we tear open a complex tangled can of worms. Below I identify the major worms we need to look at:
• What is the function of an ERG?
• What skills/capabilities are needed to ensure that that function can be realised – the ERGs leaders, the DEI team and the organization’s executive?

What is the function of an ERG?
ERGs presumably have a function everyone agrees on. Not actually. This was one thing that struck me about my consultancy. Neither the DEI team, which supported the establishment of ERGs on behalf of the organization, nor the ERGs had a defined and agreed idea of the ERG’s function beyond the vaguest terms – support, promote, facilitate – you know this foggy language that has no action-rooted foundation.

I was successful as a Disability ERG lead because I had three clear missions:

1. Change systems, processes and behaviours to eliminate systemic discrimination.
2. Address individual suffering by staff with disability subject to discrimination and abuse because of their disability.
3. Influence the organization’s culture to make it more inclusive.
   I met those mission intents – not as ‘job done’, but as ‘job started and underway’.

I have since refined my sense of the ERG’s function to be one of Collaborating, as a subject matter expert, with an organization to help it meet its legal responsibilities to staff with disabilities. That is intentionally a narrow definition. There is nothing political or social in it. If an organization wants to expand its definition, I have no objection. I would like to the additional of a ‘moral responsibility’, but that is subject to argument that could be fairly called political. I just want to define a minimal function rooted in law.

What are the skills/capabilities needed to achieve this?
Let’s start at the top. An organization’s executive must have a clear intellectual framework that incorporates a realistic grasp of the social/cultural environment, its legal and moral responsibilities and the practicalities of organizational governance and management to ensure its obligations are met.

It can’t/shouldn’t farm out that critical intelligence to people who are not qualified to provide advice and guide actions.

DEI teams are comprised of well-intentioned people, many of whom have a passion for equity and inclusion. But it’s rare to encounter a member of such a team who has a strong intellectual understanding – insight into organizational, social, group or individual psychology for example. Most have political and sentimental connections to the ideals and values – but on a professional level, they are frequently clueless, and sometimes obstructive of any effort to stimulate change. Being in a DEI team might be just where you landed to earn a wage and pay your mortgage. It doesn’t mean you are a devotee to the cause, even if you are genuinely in sympathy with it.

ERG leads are a mixed bunch. In some sensible organizations they are selected via a competitive recruitment process, because the roles are esteemed. But they are often a matter of membership vote. This has to be the most stupid form of leadership selection for this kind of organization.

An ERG whose details I won’t divulge held an election for a lead. It had over 200 members. There were no selection criteria or capabilities for candidates to meet. There were just pitches from self-identified candidates. There were 16 votes cast and the margin between the candidate who won, and a disastrous choice was a single vote. Not even political parties are that reckless in candidate selection – and we all know how that turns out.

The ERG leadership choice is critical. I was a founding member of a Disability ERG in 2010. Our inaugural Chair was a regional manager who was a wheelchair user. He was appointed. He had strong effective relationships with the organization’s executive. The Chair role seemed to be just about chairing meetings. That’s what we saw, and he did a great job. But he was followed by two Chairs with low organizational standing and little relevant leadership experience. They were elected by ‘popular’ vote. I stood in both elections and was rewarded with the ‘do nothing’ role of Deputy Chair at my second attempt. I got to be Chair because the incumbent departed to another department during a restructure.

What we didn’t see, in our inaugural Chair’s role, were all the ‘behind the scenes’ conversations he had with executives with whom he had already an established relationship. There was influence there that we didn’t see. I had a chat with him one morning about how he saw his role, because I was curious. The two Chairs who followed him had no such influence and the ERG’s influence significantly waned. We had less attention and fewer resources. The standing and the competence of the lead mattered. It took me maybe 18 months as ERG lead to fully understand this.

So, my point here is that Disability Inclusion is a matter of legal responsibility in the first instance, whether this about anti-discrimination law or work health and safety. In the second instance it is about competent roll out of policy. In the third instance it’s about effective delivery of subject matter expertise and advocacy. But none of this could happen without effective leadership – within the ERG, the DEI team or the organization’s executive. I was blessed with having the latter two, which allowed my own capabilities to shine.

This isn’t about armed camps in conflict, but about aligned and mutually dependent interest groups collaborating in common cause. But how often do you see that?

The ERG isn’t fit for purpose anymore
ERGs are modelled on a voluntary staff association notion in Australia. That was a well-intentioned but hopelessly naïve thought. It may have got things moving, but the idea didn’t evolve beyond that naïve initiation in so many instances.

Many of the early unanswered questions about how effective ERGs are have been answered – not perfectly, but sufficiently, so as we need to now ask different questions. What I see in the NSW public sector is a disengagement with the real challenges and a continual regurgitation of calmative platitudes. There is an absence of critical engagement with the notion of Disability Inclusion and ERGs as a vehicle for driving genuine change in the interests of staff with disability whose inclusion and safety needs have not been met.

I now understand that when a government talks about ERGs being ‘employee led’ it means a performative and decorative role, not empowerment to demand or drive changes. I missed that memo.

My time as Disability ERG lead triggered a series of changes that eliminated many system and process impediments. We were able to change the culture and raise the profile of Disability Inclusion – a theme taken up enthusiastically by many staff. What is left to be tackled in terms of systems and processes? I don’t know, but I do believe that people of goodwill are continuing to work through the wish list. But there isn’t a clear shared picture of what legal duty and moral duty demand. Not in the organization, not in HR, and not in the ERGs.

Why hasn’t this picture been crafted in a collaborative and consultative manner between the people whose interests are served and those who have the decision-making powers and a duty-of-care responsibilities? The answers I got tended to be about lack of time and opportunity. You can make both if you have a passion and determination – and a sense of responsibility.

An early question I asked in my consultancy was, “Why support this ERG?” Beyond the answer, “It is a good thing to do.” I wasn’t convinced by what I heard. That’s not a business case. Asking for support for ERGs should require a business case that is clear, credible and compelling. My background gives me a strong bias toward problem solving. How do we end suffering, which is very real?

What I found was that a lot of ERGs wanted to focus on ‘celebrating diversity’. They weren’t able to identify a problem to be solved other than that they didn’t have time to organise the ‘celebrations’ and do the administration needed to maintain the ERG. I was surprised and dismayed by the ERG leads who wanted their role to be fulltime. What was happening in the internal conversation? Were there no problems – inequities or injustices – to be addressed?

Celebrating diversity and inclusion is good to do, but does this merit an expectation of fulltime role as ERG lead?

To put this desire into perspective it is worthwhile getting a brief history lesson. In early 2018 I was restructured out of my role and was offered a role in another division whose Deputy Secretary was the Executive Disability ERG champion at the time. I was facilitated in my Chair role through being given remarkable liberty to do that role in paid time – because I was delivering results. Following another restructure, I was invited to move to another division and became a member of a team whose Executive Director was the Disability ERG’s new Executive Champion. I then had a role where I continued to have the liberty to devote a lot of time as Disability ERG lead as well as work on two areas that related to internal disability matters that impacted staff with disability in very significant ways. I got these opportunities because I was delivering results.

Three months after I left my ERG Chair role my successor was offered the change to go fulltime as Disability ERG Chair and take up other related roles. This was an interesting experiment and commitment – and it was the foundation of the myth that one could become a fulltime ERG lead. This was attractive to the leads at the time – but never realistic – and why that was the case was never explained to them.

I tell this story because it illustrated the utter paucity of understanding and communication among critical parties. This isn’t a criticism so much as an observation about how an organization can so utterly fail at internal communication, shared vision and agreed action on a matter all parties ostensibly agree is important.

But the key observation here must be that if an ERG isn’t delivering anticipated benefits to the organization or its members, perhaps it is no longer fit for purpose? During my consultancy I found that the ERGs who saw themselves as ‘problem solvers’ were keen to talk with me. Those who saw their function as primarily celebratory were not.

A key insight for me was an observation made by an acting DEI manager during my consultancy. They observed, in response to a report I had submitted, that maybe ERG shouldn’t be understood as an Employee Resource Group but as an Employee Reference Group. I had to look up the meaning of ‘reference group’. I am amazed how often I am unaware of great ideas, and I am grateful for the education. I am now a member of an Access Reference Group run by my very inclusive local government (have been so since July 2021 but changing our name to a ‘reference group’ didn’t happen until early 2026).

This is from australia.icomos.org:
Reference Groups
Generally, we use the term ‘Reference Group’ to refer to a group of eminent professionals with expertise in a given area that can be called on for opinions or advice on issues that arise from time to time. As a general rule, we divide these small, ad hoc subcommittees of members into Reference Groups – these are intended to include a core group of members, with specialist skills in a particular area, who are available and willing to provide advise or opinions to the Executive Committee. Reference Groups are ongoing, although membership will be refreshed at least every three years through a call for Expressions of Interest from members. Members will be selected based on demonstrated expertise and experience.

In contrast this discussion of ERGs from Wikipedia is quite a contrast:
Employee resource groups (also known as ERGs, affinity groups, business network groups, or business resource groups[1]) are groups of employees who join in their workplace based on shared characteristics or life experiences.[2] ERGs are generally based on providing support, enhancing career development, and contributing to personal development in the work environment. In the past, ERGs have traditionally been focused on personality traits or characteristics for underrepresented groups, for example women, sexual orientation, gender, etc. With the resurgence of ERGs in the workplace, ERGs are expanding to “interest-based” groups gathered around particular activities. Some of these include job responsibility, environmental advocacy, community service and volunteerism, and workplace wellness. Further, as an emerging facet of human resources and employee engagement in the business world, the existence of ERGs is important for reference and understanding in the world of business. Exploring the topic of employee resource groups can provide insightful information for business employees and young professionals seeking to understand a new business.

The key distinction is between subject matter expertise and personal ‘diversity’ attributes as primary distinguishing features of group membership. This has become especially pertinent in Disability Inclusion for two important reasons.

Identifying as a person with disability isn’t the point
As the appeal of identity politics grows, the relationship between identity and disadvantage becomes crucial. The success of the social model of disability has led to there being fewer and fewer physical, systemic or procedural impediments to inclusion in workplaces and the community in general in Australia for people with disabilities. In no way is the job done though.

Yes, a person in a wheelchair may indisputably have a disability but how is that necessarily relevant in a workplace which has addressed wheelchair accessibility? One of my former colleagues has bi-lateral lower limb prosthetics but how is his work performance impacted? I am not asserting an answer to either question. I am making the point about asking the question. A disability must be relevant to one’s ability to perform in a job for it to be pertinent to the theme of Disability Inclusion in a workplace – which is what this blog is about.

Being tone deaf or having no sense of taste are both legitimate disabilities. But unless you work as a singer or a chef, they are unlikely to impact your capacity to work or require accommodations or adjustments. I have been seeing a trend toward disability identity being a stronger attribute for leadership of a Disability ERG than any experience of the need for workplace accommodations or adjustments. I am also seeing a trend toward people who identify as having a disability using that identity to assert a capacity to act as an inclusion advocate. In a broader social sense, I have no issue with that. But in the context of workplaces where the issue is the need for workplace accommodations or adjustments this identity just isn’t sufficient. Hence the reference/resource distinction becomes vital.

I have mobility and grip disabilities that impact my ability to be included in ways a wheelchair user might not appreciate. Disabilities are neither uniform nor determinative in a work context. When I became a Disability ERG lead, I was mercilessly schooled by the blind and deaf members who rightly understood I was clueless about their needs.

Being a person with a disability doesn’t mean you experience exclusion because of your disability in every instance of life experience. Neither does it mean you automatically have the slightest clue about the exclusion realities and inclusion needs of your colleagues. And arguments about exclusion in a workplace because of having a disability are way more subtle than we appreciate.

For example, I know quite a few people with disabilities who are disliked because of their reaction to the discrimination they experience rather than anything directly about their disability. I am firmly on the side of those who are cranky because of what they have had to put up with. But, if you want to be an effective Disability Inclusion advocate or activist, the extent to which you can be effective is linked to your ability to rise above your personal feelings. Stay cranky, just use it to energise your passion, not shape it.

I recently was asked to react to a document put out by a group that wanted to create shared safe spaces for staff with disability to come together to talk about career development (and other things – to be fair). I had no issue at all with the idea. But I had a huge concern about it taking over an area that was focused on concern for workplace accommodations or adjustments – as if that was all a done deal. In a way this might have been fair enough, because a lot of those concerns have been addressed. But what remains substantially unresolved are entrenched biased and discriminatory attitudes toward staff with disabilities who don’t have the power or means to defend their rights or interests.

So, what people who have disabilities that don’t require workplace accommodations or adjustments don’t understand is that those who have those needs remain subject to discrimination and abuse. This is because changing policies, systems and procedures does not change attitudes, beliefs or behaviours.

We live in communities and cultures that have genuine goodwill and changes in legislation and policies have led to organizational behaviours which foster more inclusive behaviour. There’s a social evolutionary trend towards more inclusive and kinder behaviour, notwithstanding the current glitch. But this doesn’t mean that the job of Disability Inclusion advocacy is done.

Why intentional cultural evolution is the next big thing
One thing law enforcement tells us is that there’s a gap between what the law says and how people behave. Even most law-abiding communities have a minority of egregious offenders who persist in causing strife and harm.

We are, as individuals, tolerant of a certain amount of behaviour that offends us. In organizations this is reflected in the way we allow behaviours that would be individually morally offensive to us to pass without reaction or open comment. We would not behave that way…but.

One of the biggest problems organizations have is accountability. If you start demanding it, you will be subject to the same standard. And it can seem like disloyalty to hold a member of your own ‘in group’ accountable – and a threat, because they can do the same to you. This is a real problem in management and executive in-groups in organizations who will hold lower ranking staff members to account – but not their peers, and certainly not their superiors.

I am a huge fan of the Neuroleadership Institute (NLI) which uses neuroscience to help organizations to change their behaviour. One of their most recent formulations is GPA. This stands for Growth Mindset, Psychological Safety and Accountability. These are three organizational challenge areas that organizations must address if they want to be successful in this age. NLI has neuroscience and data-based strategies, methods and training to help organizations be successful.

In contrast the NSW public sector has a statement of values, one of which is ‘accountability’. In relation to this there is the statement, “Take responsibility for decisions and actions.” Aside from the fact that this is an insipid affirmation, there is nowhere any discussion of how this might happen against the innate psychological impulse we have to not do this at all.

The NSW public sector also has a Code of Conduct which articulates the required minimum standards of behaviour toward colleagues and members of the community. But violations of that Code of Conduct, which prohibits abusive or discriminatory conduct, are almost never policed. What is the point of requiring staff to sign a Code of Conduct document if those who violate it are not called to account? What is the point of declaring that ‘accountability’ is a primary value if it is never called upon except in extreme instances?

There are clear psychological insights that explain this paradox. It has a moral tinge to it, but it is psychological in nature. So, this isn’t an exercise in assigning blame. But there are also demonstrably effective strategies to break through this paradox – and the fact that they are either unknown or ignored should be a matter of concern for us all – especially in relation to the public sector.

The next stage beyond the social model of disability is the cultural model of inclusion which eliminates disabling beliefs, attitudes and behaviours from workplace cultures. But if we can’t/won’t uphold the contract we sign when we sign on to a Code of Conduct how is that going to happen? By osmosis? By some magical force of social evolution? If so, why do we need any kind of intentional change forms at all – like DEI teams, ERGs or government campaigns?

Enforcement doesn’t have to be about censure and punishment. It can be about learning (growth mindset) in a kind atmosphere (psychological safety). It does mean that you must put the cognitive effort in to behaving better. But surely that comes with the job and the culture you signed up to honour and support.

A Disability Reference Group might have a chance of being an antidote to the magical thinking of simply asserting an aspiration of accountability, as if doing so were sufficient to make it happen. But it needs serious backing by an executive leadership that believes what it says.

Conclusion
There are many reasons why ERGs don’t and can’t work as hoped. There are many reasons why organizations are weakening their support for ERGs. There are many reasons for organizations to back away from DEI. But a lack of goodwill isn’t one. Neither is a lack of good intent.

I am constantly hearing comments from former colleagues, and observations on organizational management from podcasts affirm that staff are overwhelmed by the demands on them. The observations on the quality of executive leadership and management are uniformly bleak. This isn’t an easy time to be running an organization or be working in one.

We have multiple demands on our attention and cognitive/emotional capacity from our personal lives as well as from work. Our capacity to be more aware of the needs of colleagues with disability is limited, and the last thing we want is to be accused of not caring.

This isn’t an environment for an Employee Resource Group. It’s the wrong kind of body now. An Employee Reference Group is way better suited. But an organization must be prepared to commit to the critical transformative change of holding discriminatory and abusive conduct to genuine account if the next stage of the transformation of our workplace culture is going to happen. It must commit to engaging with an Employee Reference Group as part of its core business activity to meet it legal and moral responsibilities. Without executive leadership commitment all else is futile. There is thus a business case to be put.

This is the tipping-point change that must be taken as the next stage of the ‘rights revolution’ of the 1960s. That tipping-point is the transition from ‘rights asserting’ to ‘rights honouring’. The argument is simple enough to assert, but, like the ‘rights asserting revolution’ it will take determined and skilled action to make it happen.

This includes a huge rethink about what Disability Inclusion is really about – your ego and sense of identity as a person with disability, or the welfare of the people whose interests you say you represent. Is it about disability as an identity or the unfulfilled hope of those seeking inclusion, access and freedom from bias, discrimination and abuse?

In 2026 our world is undergoing so many changes it is challenging to keep up with them. The rate of change shows no sign of abating. But this has been true for at least the past 25 years – way longer, but I am trying to be kind here. We can’t really use the rate of change or the level of demand on our need to adapt as an excuse. We make choices about how we use our waking hours. That’s not a judgement, just an observation. So, we chose between the options we have.

Commentators on the introduction of AI observe the importance of what they call ‘metacognition’, which is described as ‘thinking about thinking’. I have a less obscure way of describing it – self-reflection and self-awareness.

AI can make us stupid if we use it to do our thinking for us. Or it can make us smarter if we use it as a tool to help us think better. Personally, I have used AI in a very limited way, and I have no interest in going much beyond that. So, I am not promoting AI so much as the insight it has triggered from canny observers.

That insight is that AI is like any other functioning intelligence environment – like organizations, social media, or one’s culture and community. If we imbibe what we are fed with no reflective awareness, we can be made stupid because we absorb and accept uncritically what we are told is true. But if we engage in efforts at self-reflection and self-awareness, we have a chance of changing what we believe, imagine and how we behave.

It is a simple, but not an easy, prospect. It requires intentional focused effort. This is really why Disability Inclusion is so hard. It just requires more effort than those who identify as Disability Inclusion Advocates or Activists are apparently prepared dedicate. In reality, identifying as a Disability Inclusion Advocate or Activist matters more than actually delivering outcomes for the people who really need advocacy and activism.

In the end it comes down to this – is Disability Inclusion really the problem we think it is? To me it is because I continue to hear alarming and concerning tales of discrimination, bias and abuse in workplaces where it shouldn’t be happening. These reports are accompanied by confessions of powerlessness to defend and evidence of denial that these outrages continue to be perpetrated. It’s as if those who represent the interests of staff with disability lack the competence they need to perform their roles, or really don’t care, beyond their own identity and status as advocate or activist. Either way ERGs as we have known them are no longer fit for purpose (if they have ever been).

A transition to ERGs as Employee Reference Groups can unlock the evolutionary potential of the next stage of the ‘rights revolution’ – that of rights honouring. Are we up for it?

Introduction
I was checking my email this morning and opened one from LinkedIn because the subject line indicated it was about my former employer. It was announcing the launch of its 2026-2031 Belonging and Inclusion Strategy. I wanted to see what it said about disability. But the document wasn’t yet available to the public. I also wondered whether there was a report on its 2020-2025 strategy. Apparently not. I didn’t expect there would be.

I do not like these grand strategies because they give false expectations for, or, more realistically, they give no real hope to the people who are said to be the beneficiaries. Such strategies were routinely produced by my former employer, and the standard response was to sigh and never look at the things again.

Below I want to reflect on why these documents have no real value and why they add another level of peril to a climate of retreat from believing in the value of inclusion strategies. The ‘anti-woke’ dislike of inclusive policies could point to this strategy as something to scorn – for justifiable reasons.

Why we keep setting up targets for others to hit
I have been following the retreat for sympathy for inclusion with interest and alarm. While I don’t agree with most of the criticisms I can see why they are made. As I have argued in pasts posts I think many inclusion advocates have hit the limits of their imagination and capacity.

As inclusion has become accepted as a social value it has transformed from an edgy passion to a respectable position. The real change work done in the edgy passion stage has become more about affirming continuing ‘commitment’ to the values and ideals espoused than continuing the effort to drive change.

This isn’t a criticism. It’s just how things happen. An edgy passion is risky and challenging of authority – which is usually resisting the desired and just change. A respectable ‘commitment’ to the values and ideals is a safer conformist position held by people with zero interest in putting their situation at risk.

In The Better Angels of Our Nature Steven Pinker reminded me how fundamentally transformative the ‘rights revolution’ of the 1960s was. We won the right to be included, as a person with disability, in our community in ways not hitherto allowed or facilitated. But having a right acknowledged and having that right honoured are two very different things. We had a ‘rights acknowledgement’ revolution, but we haven’t had a ‘rights honouring’ revolution. That’s because the next stage is not a revolution, but an evolution. This requires a very different mindset and skillset.

But what has been happening has been wheel spinning as many inclusion advocates are stuck in the rights acknowledgement phase – relitigating and reaffirming. Inclusion plans are often the worst manifestation of this. They are a target for scorn and derision. And justly so.

Strategies are accountable action plans, not magical thinking
Public sector organisations are fond of writing strategies and plans but not following them. This is mostly because they are exercises in compliance with government policy – where the production of the strategy is the output and the outcome of the activity. In this case a government has affirmed its commitment to values, ideals and principles. This is a large return for a small investment (writing the strategy).

The 2020-2025 Strategy has a section early on that articulates “Our commitment to inclusion”. It says “Our leaders will”
• build their own and team inclusive leadership capability in order to value and actively sponsor inclusion and diversity in the workplace
• recognise the business need behind this commitment and its contribution to building stronger communities
• drive progress towards our inclusion and diversity goals in their workforce and across (the organisation) and develop performance goals and measures to track their team’s progress
• hold themselves and each other accountable for their inclusion and diversity progress and performance.

But there’s nothing about these ‘statements of will’ being accountable KPIs in employment contracts. And this is in a sector that proudly proclaims values which include:
Trust – We value the quality of our relationships and do what we say we will do
Accountability – We take responsibility for our decisions and actions
Integrity – Ethics are at the heart of all we do and we show courage by acting honestly, consistently and impartially.

Here I am not slamming my former employer, just pointing up the inherent contradictions in the gulf of difference between what is asserted and what is actual. The absence of accountability of statements of will as KPIs in contracts speaks volumes.

The rest of the strategy is likewise devoid of credible affirmations of accountability, so I won’t belabour the point. Musa Ai-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke makes the bigger point. The purpose of these strategies is only superficially intended to convey benefits to the people who are described as the intended recipients of their positive outcomes. The real beneficiaries are those who commission them, those who write them and those who approve of them.

What is absent from the strategies is any ‘how to’ that shows how progress on implementation and evaluations of outcomes will be measured in terms of stages of implementation. The 2020-2025 Strategy had “Our success measures” but these were presumed outcomes. For example, the action – “using workforce diversity information to make evidence-based decisions about our people and initiatives“ has the related success measure – “our people feel safe to share diversity information” with no indication how that might be achieved. This has been an issue across the sector for many years and nobody I am aware of has come up with an effective strategy for dealing with the issue. It isn’t difficult. It needs a real commitment to action and actually doing something.

In the 2020-2025 Strategy there’s a section under the heading: Leading an inclusive culture that says, “We will focus on engaging and developing all leaders to role model values of service, trust, accountability, integrity and respect.” It goes on to say, “We will do this by:

1. embedding inclusive leadership across all levels of management to achieve improved long-term outcomes
2. promoting an inclusive, safe and harassment-free organisational culture where our people feel valued, respected and empowered to contribute, and there are safe, inclusive practices where complaints arise
3. developing a sustainable pipeline of diverse talent for senior leadership role”
   The problems with these statements should be obvious:
4. You can’t talk about “embedding inclusive leadership” without saying very clearly how that will happen. That’s a big job that would require focused, coordinated and planned action and monitoring over a sustained period.
5. Promoting anything isn’t a strategy. It leaves open non-compliance as a non-accountable option. You could say ‘implementing’ but then you’d have to say how and what measures you will put in place to monitor and evaluate.
6. The third statement is meaningless. How would you ‘develop’ such a ‘sustainable’ ‘pipeline’? How would it work? How long would it take? This is another case of something that would be demanding to create and develop in real life.

There’s little wonder there’s no ‘How’d we do on the 2020 – 2025 Strategy?’ report.

So why bother?
An anti-DEI critic might justly call the Strategy woke nonsense and argue that it’s a waste of time and money to produce such a document since it is full of language intent on seducing the mind into a hypnotised state of believing what is being read is meaningful.

When we ask ourselves why the Strategy was written we struggle with the notion that it was to ensure that those who are said to be its beneficiaries will actually experience a greater sense of belonging and a stronger sense of inclusion.

The most compelling argument is that the sense of ‘job done’ ends with the document being crafted, published and promoted. This is why we cannot find the kind of details about implementation and accountability a real strategy would have.

So, we must acknowledge that, even given this, the document has a value because if it wasn’t crafted the signal that the ideals and values it contains are good things would be absent.

Conclusion
This isn’t a useless or pointless document. But we must not mistake it for being what it is not – a blueprint for action. We are better off feeling good about belonging and inclusion than feeling nothing or feeling averse.

But here’s the hazard. Because the document is called a strategy, it appears to be. But it’s not. It is an affirmation of positive sentiments shared by the politicians, the executives and the managers (well most of them at least).

What it isn’t is a genuine ‘call to action’. This must be understood by the ‘woke’ who will mistake it for such a call and the ‘anti-woke’ who not only make the same mistake but also find the affirmation offensive.

The biggest danger with such a document is that might be substituted for a genuine ‘call to action’ by those who style themselves as Disability Inclusion activists or advocates who are trapped in affirmation of sentiment – the affirmation of rights – phase and who cannot transition to the ‘rights honouring’ evolutionary phase.

It does nothing to further the cause of Disability Inclusion in any concrete sense because it addresses none enduring impediments to genuine inclusion – predominantly the reluctance of senior leaders to genuinely hold managers and staff accountable for entrenched discriminatory and abusive attitudes. The kind of behavioural, attitudinal and cultural changes that are necessary are difficult to implement. They require sustained committed leadership over time. And they require sustained committed advocacy.

There’s a reason Disability ERGs were created in the first place. Organisations can’t make these changes unassisted. But that insight requires a genuine commitment to change from all parties. Instead, we are seeing performative affirmations of values and aspirations that are not a conduit for action, only ‘feel good’ sentiment. This weakens the spirit of Disability Inclusion and pins a target on our backs for the ‘anti-woke’ and other critics to aim at.

If the trend toward defunding and closing staff networks/ERGs continues and organizations decide to just leave things up to such as internal belonging and inclusion strategies, the evolution toward more inclusive work culture will continue its glacial pace. This will leave many staff with disabilities without real support or representation. We must remember that Disability ERGs were created for a sound reason. But they then often fell afoul of the same preference for affirmation of values that has no genuine operational intent behind it.

Disability Inclusion is a real ‘struggle’ to ensure affirmed rights are honoured and realised. This requires an operational strategy with teeth backed by an active assurance of accountability. The most critical insight is that a Disability ERG is performing a role that is part of an organization’s core business – ensuring that the organization can meet its legal responsibilities toward its staff. It is one thing to have a policy of increasing the diversity of staff to reflect the community being served. It is another thing entirely to ensure that good intent is backed up by active accountable measures to ensure staff safety. These measures are not optional and don’t need strategies. They need effective governance.

But things like Belonging and Inclusion Strategies blur this distinction completely. Organizations prefer to maintain the confusion – because it’s easier and cheaper. I learned this back in 2011 when, at a Disability ERG meeting, I asked HR staff whether Disability Inclusion might be covered under work health and safety responsibilities. There was an immediate chill in the room. I was assured it could not. But all my efforts to discover why this was thought to be true were met by immediate deflections to another subject.

The whole point of having a Belonging and Inclusion Strategy is that there is an evident need for one. This is because belonging and inclusion don’t come naturally or easy in all workplace situations. The result is people of ‘diverse attributes’ suffer – are harmed. There’s a reason that people who are covered by DEI policies are sometimes called ‘protected groups’. They are vulnerable to real harm – mostly psychological, but sometimes physical.

Whether organizations like it or not, this is a genuine work health safety concern. A substantial number of staff in the NSW public sector go off on workers compensation because of the psychological stress caused by discriminatory conduct.

As ERGs and DEI team are defunded, diminished or disbanded in favour of organizations addressing inclusion needs of their staff through their own culture the worst-case scenario is reliance on the likes of Belonging and Inclusion Strategies as an organization’s idea of a credible and effective solution to the problem they know they have.

We must surrender the seduction of the safe fog of affirmation that can make us feel so good – and the self-induced confusion that envelopes us. And we must remember those who aren’t feeling as good as we ‘encourage’, ‘promote’, ‘develop’, ‘improve’ and ‘strive’. But not actually do anything.

Reading We Have Never Been Woke will help. You can get it as a 3D book, an audiobook or an ebook. At the very least do read my earlier blog post – The limits of caring.

Introduction
I found a poster on LinkedIn today that argued for a shift in thinking about disability – from ‘fixing people’ to ‘fixing systems’. The sentiment is familiar but this rigid binary that distinguishes between the medical model [bad] and the social model [good] reveals a perspective I would be concerned to find in a person representing themselves as a disability inclusion expert today.

To me this is ‘old hat’ thinking that isn’t helpful now. Below I want to reflect on why the medical/social model of disability is dated and no longer useful. It is still asserted by people who have limited exposure to the spectrum of disabilities and who haven’t updated their ideas.

Why the medical model is so unfairly disliked
There was a time when disability was seen as a kind of offence against the normal, the ideal. If you had lost the capability to walk up stairs it was on you to find a way to get up the stairs, not on the community to create an alternative – like a ramp.

I have observed previously that even after World War One there was no motivation to include veterans by making public spaces more accessible. They may have risked or given their lives or body parts in service of the nation, but there would be no accommodation of impaired mobility until the 1960s when the disability rights movement changed public policy.

In a sense the medical model of disability is a red herring that attracts an emotional response to a complex set of issues. For example, one of my former colleagues, who is an ardent advocate for disability inclusion, has bilateral below-knee amputations. He is remarkably active, holding records for ascending stairways the height of tall buildings, precisely because he has prosthetics – a ‘medical’ solution.

My brother has relied on an electric wheelchair for about 8 years following a diagnosis for a rare genetic condition that makes it very hard for him to recover from physical exertion [a medical insight]. The wheelchair was effectively prescribed as a solution to a medical problem. Where he can get to in his wheelchair is, however, a social issue.

I rely on Canadian crutches to make it possible for me to walk. I contracted GBS in 2008 and it took 18 months of medical care and rehab to be able to walk again. My health fund significantly covers the cost of replacement crutches. But how accessible public spaces are to me is another matter. That’s why I volunteer as a member of my local council’s Access Reference Group – so we can mesh essential ‘medical’ solutions with ‘social’ solutions.

So, my point is that ‘medical’ responses to disability are still vital, and with advances in technology even more important now than they were 50 years ago.

I love medical responses to disability. They are essential and, in many cases, make it unnecessary to rely on the social model. My former colleague with his prosthetic feet doesn’t need the accommodations I need with my original feet and crutches.

Talking about the medical model of disability in such a negative way in 2026 strikes me as either anachronistic or manipulative.

We need to re-imagine the social model
The poster is right in asserting that there is a need to change laws and rules. Legislation is in place. It is fair enough to ask whether it should be updated. There are policies in place too. They should be reviewed as well.

But in Australia I don’t think the issue is the adequacy of law or policy but how they are interpreted and implemented. This is an entirely different matter.

The social model of disability has been serving us well in the sense that it has required changes to policy, practice and funding, and those changes have resulted in significant improvements to the level of accessibility and inclusivity for many people with disabilities in our communities. But by no means has this resulted in universal accessibility and inclusivity.

The social model must continue to evolve, and it must do so in concert with the medical model. That terminology is now out of date, so let me suggest that we think in terms of personal and communal – what the individual needs and must be responsible for getting, and how the community must adapt away from universal ablism as the template for design and toward universal capability and need.

Cochlear implants are ‘medical’ interventions that transform people’s lives. I have seen videos on YouTube showing a person using a prosthetic robotic hand controlled by ‘thinking’. In fact, considerable funding has gone into high tech ‘medical’. It is nothing to dismiss as a response in isolation. These more sophisticated technologies exist because there has been a profound change in the way we think and feel about disability as a community, and as a culture.

So, we can understand that disability has a personal dimension and a communal dimension. In the past the communal dimension hasn’t been as responsive as it could have been. But now both dimensions have grown and are closer to a balance. Still so much more to be done, though.

The critical consideration of culture
Having laws, rules and policies is one thing. Creating a culture of enthusiastic compliance and conformity that includes prioritisation of resources and attention is something else entirely. And this is where a lot of advocates for inclusion fall down. Movement away from moral admonition and re-litigating battles already won is vital. But the Disability Inclusion movement is addicted to the emotionally appealing role of being an advocate rather than being a skilled guide on how to make changes happen – and then stick.

This is what struck me about the poster. It seemed like a call to action but offered no guidance on how to make any action effective and successful. For instance, there’s a speech bubble that says, “Create Equitable Opportunities”. Fair enough, but how?

This is a fundamental problem with Disability Inclusion advocacy. It stops at the ‘good idea’ stage that has a strong moral valency but does not progress into offering genuine skill and insight into how ‘good ideas’ can become sustainable realities. This suggests to me a perpetuation of a ‘victim mentality’ which allows people with disability come up with the problem and leave it to others to find the solution.

That’s so old hat. It is so unempowered. There is a lot of sentimental blather about people with disabilities not standing for being excluded and ‘demanding’ their rights to be included. It’s like the only ‘empowerment’ is a right to demand inclusion. Victim status is locked in.

True inclusivity, in our cultural context, is a stretch, an evolution. It is where we are headed and nobody has a playbook on how to make it happen – yet. The critical insights on how to make it happen are available in our understanding of evolutionary, social and organisational psychology. They are available also in texts on leadership, management, communication and relationship building.

Empowerment is a good feeling word, but it is something earned rather than granted. We can ‘grant’ a right, but it still has to be exercised competently. The alternative is to fall back onto notions of victimhood and powerlessness with nothing to do but demand rights.

There are many people with disability who are powerless and who rely on effective advocates to speak and act for them. My focus is on workplace access and inclusion. My passion for effective Disability ERGs is grounded in my experience of effective advocacy.

I am not going to intentionally shame the source of the poster that set off this piece. But I will say that it is a disservice to many when the primary qualifying attribute of an advocate for Disability Inclusion is thought to be the experience of living with a disability. That makes as much sense as insisting your defence lawyer has committed a similar offence.

Conclusion
Our world is changing/has changed in fundamental ways. The old politics of moral persuasion are gone. They did the job that got us the legislation and policy changes that we now rely on. But the next step is a shared need to become more self-aware and self-responsible – mutually evolving our culture toward intentional inclusion.

The idea that a Disability Inclusion advocate can think that moral guilt tripping is still going to work is sad. The person with a disability with unmet inclusion needs isn’t a child and their organisation or community isn’t a parent. We are peers. It’s just that some are more able than others to make things happen.

There is a tendency to imagine that effective advocates for Disability Inclusion must have a disability themselves. This is nonsense. Many of the people with disability who style themselves as advocates are not any good at that role at all in my experience. It has often been the parents, siblings, friends, allies, carers and champions of people with disability who have driven the essential changes.

This isn’t a ‘them without disability versus an us with disability’ affair. It is a shared concern about problems we need to tackle together. I have been a member of my local government’s Access Reference Group for 5 years. It is an extraordinary demonstration of a shared community commitment to inclusion. I led a Disability ERG for 3.25 years and we were able to drive significant changes. This is peer-to-peer, not victim to controller.

Effective advocacy takes skill as well as passion. It takes a sophisticated capacity for insight, for communicating and for working with others to create a momentum for steady progress. Passion without skill has ruined so many things – art, food, sex etc.

Dragging up the old medical model versus social model binary seems to me to reflect a disconnect with the reality of now.

Contemporary research into the roll out of AI tells us something vital. Those who engage with AI with high metacognition capabilities benefit far more than those who use AI as a shortcut to getting stuff done. The clue is in understanding what metacognition is and how to employ it.

This applies to any system or environment. An organisation or a community is a form of intelligence. If we want to influence its behaviour and have it act to our benefit, we must develop metacognitive skills. If we don’t, we will be disempowered and without influence. This isn’t a novel insight. But summing it up so succinctly is novel, thanks to AI research.

This is the transitional insight that effective Disability Inclusion advocates need to be successful now. No posters reliving the medical versus social model.

Now and then living with a disability and having the competence to be an effective Disability Inclusion advocate coincide in one person. But not often.
My transformation into a highly effective ERG lead was because of Kate Nash, founding CEO of PurpleSpace. I may have gotten there eventually, but Kate’s influence supercharged me. Kate lives with disability, as I do. But disability didn’t make Kate great, it was the avenue of the expression of her considerable capability for insight and action.

I have seen on LinkedIn, and elsewhere, people parlaying their lived experience of disability into a qualification to be a paid Disability Advocate. I understand the impulse to make the best of your situation, and I do not criticise those who do this. But I do caution those who might employ them to be aware of what you are purchasing. Lived experience of disability does not equal competence in Disability Inclusion advocacy any more than liking cakes makes you competent to cook them.

I have worked in disability related roles for over 30 years in everything from hands on personal care, monitoring compliance with care standards, coordinating delivery of support services, monitoring compliance with service delivery contract requirements, addressing more complex care services and coordinating responses to emergency accommodation and care needs. I also had extensive paid time to run a Disability ERG as well as coordinate my employer’s other action to address Disability Inclusion in the workplace as an overall fulltime job.

In addition, I have Masters and Masters Honours degrees with majors in Social Ecology. I have been reading in management, leadership and organizational behaviour for around 30 years. And I have a modest Associate Certificate of Applied Management which apparently cost my employer around $10k.

The point I am making here is that while I acquired significant mobility and grip disabilities [I can now type only with one finger] those disabilities are the least of the attributes that made me very good in my role as Disability ERG lead.

So, I want to close here making two key points:
• While they said once that “Clothes maketh the man.” disability does not.
• If you are serious about fostering Disability Inclusion in your organisation, demand advocates who actually do know what they are talking about.

Disability Inclusion advocacy is not what it seems. Organisations have lazily indulged in magical thinking as well. It’s not just the advocates who are at fault. If organisations better understood how complex and difficult Disability Inclusion can be, they’d be way more discerning about who they hire to assist or advise them.

I have noted previously that Disability ERGs should be professional grade collaborators and partners with their organisations as peers helping them meet their legal and moral responsibilities. They are not voluntary ‘staff-led’ amateur versions of a social club. They are part of an organisation’s core business. That means everyone involved has a professional responsibility to ensure effectiveness and success. That way staff with disability have their access, equity and inclusion needs met competently and promptly. How is there any other way to do this?

Seeing awful posters like the one that started me off is a sign of how much we still have to do to get it right.

Introduction

A few years ago, I came across a guy who was proud of the fact that he had been a Disability ERG lead for almost a decade. I was puzzled. Why? Why hold the lead role for that long? Why be proud of it? 

To me this was evidence of failure, not success. 

In 2023 I was engaged by my former employer as a consultant working with ERG leads. There was a perception that the ERGs had lost direction. Some didn’t have a strong sense of purpose. Others didn’t have a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve, or how to achieve anything. 

There were a bunch of reasons why this was the case but here I want to focus on only one idea – we should intend that an ERG becomes redundant, no longer needed, because it had addressed the problems it was created to respond to. 

Some of the ERGs I encountered were effectively redundant because they weren’t doing their jobs well. If they ceased to operate there would be no, or marginal, impact. I divided the ERGs into two types, problem-solving and celebratory. I have a strong bias toward problem-solving. If there is competition for resources and attention, I want that bias to be impactful.

I was a lead of Disability ERG for 3.25 years. I ran it as a de facto business unit. We were funded for a 2-day planning workshop. This led to an action plan which we presented to the department’s executive board. It was endorsed. We had two goals – system change and cultural change. To do this we needed a high impact presence. 

A focus on outcomes

Change is a slow business. This is partly because it is difficult to do well and partly because it competes for attention and resources with a lot of other essential activities. It is also a demanding and challenging role. 

Some ERGs have term limits for leads. Ours was 2 years. That was fine when being an ERG lead was largely ceremonial. But, when a leadership role is about driving change, 2 years isn’t enough. It takes 18 months to get really good at a role, so it makes sense to spend another 18 months at peak performance. Then its time to let somebody else have a go.

Leads must have a vision – a passion to achieve something. My goal was to end needless suffering caused by lack of access to what was needed, by discrimination, by injustice and by inequity.  That goal had an end point – systems and culture changed. Needless suffering ended. I was deeply impacted by reading that neuroscientists had found that being excluded activates the same part of the brain that responds to physical pain. Exclusion or rejection hurts and this isn’t okay. I have seen the deep emotional harm that is inflicted upon staff with disability. So, yes, my bias is toward problem-solving and ending harmful workplace settings.

The Disability ERG had a function – an objective and whether it achieved it mattered greatly. It was created by the department’s CEO in 2010 to address the unmet needs of staff with disability. He observed that the department was charged with addressing the needs of community members with disabilities, and this was often done by staff with disabilities. But nobody had been thinking about those staff with disabilities in any systematic or consistent way. As an organization we were harming the very people who were to reduce harm to community members with disability. We had the right intent but we hadn’t thought through how we were acting sufficiently.

I recently came across a commentary from some disability inclusion activists who centred their activity on disability identity and career development for staff with disability.  These are legitimate areas of interest, but they are on a different level – and it was as though the needless suffering had been addressed, and they could move on to other things. 

This raised an interesting perspective for me. One of the most potent things I did as a Disability ERG lead was to create the Guidance and Action Team (GAT) which was composed of 15 very passionate and very frustrated and angry staff members with disability. Their stories of exclusion, discrimination and abuse were startling and disturbing. On 28 February 2019 I took 6 of the GAT members with the most terrible stories to a presentation before the executive board. We were allocated 2 hours. Each GAT member had 5 minutes to tell their story of being a staff member with disability in the department. I wanted to ensure there was time for questions and discussion. The stories astonished and alarmed the board.  The attitude toward staff with disability held by the executive board was transformed. We had permission to be radically active in driving change – as a partner, collaborator and a constant spur to consciences.  

Thinking about leadership

I acquired significant mobility and manual disabilities in 2008 at a mature age. I had been employed as a Support Manager coordinating care and support services to people with disability living in privately operated ‘boarding houses’ since late 2001. Before that I had worked in disability related roles since the early 1970s. So, by the time I joined my department’s Disability ERG as a founding member in July 2010 I had a substantial background in disability. Other founding members were professionals working with families with children with disabilities in the community. The early ERG membership had a deep insight into disability but little understanding of the challenge from the perspective of an employee with disability seeking to change an organization’s systems, processes and culture.  The department was hugely and generously supportive but also naive about the process of driving systemic and cultural change. 

By the time I became ERG lead in November 2016 our membership had been depleted through restructuring and the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and it had become dispirited. This was partly because of the critical restructuring which radically depleted membership and changes in key people in HR, so that those who were part of the original energy had moved on. There was little of the early enthusiasm and commitment to be passed on. 

What I became the leader of was a weakened and depleted ERG. I was aware that getting disability inclusion on the agenda was an important step in the right direction. But the subsequent struggle to assert priority for our cause and the resources to drive the changes we needed had lost traction. 

Here the issue of leadership was critical. The ERG’s founding leader, Michael Evans, was a wheelchair user and a regional Home Care manager.  The next 2 leaders were not at leadership grades and were relatively junior. They had no leadership experience and were not capable of driving the changes needed or challenging the department when it weakened its early commitment.

Even though my initial role title was Support Manager I was more a team leader than a manager. But I had a strong background of working with business and service managers.  I also had a background as a union delegate. So even though I had a sub-management role I had a substantial background in engaging with executive leaders.   That background included building working relationships with organizational leaders. This was a fortunate background to take into the role of Disability ERG lead. 

The point of this background is to assert that what we bring to a role, such as Disability ERG lead, depends on our background and our capabilities. This is a hugely important consideration for ERG members and the host organization. It is rarely understood as the critical consideration it should be. 

Leadership skills and capabilities are undervalued in general, at least in the public sector, with which I am most familiar. I was reminded of this when I finished reading/listening to Kirstin Ferguson’s Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership. Ferguson is a leading Australian thinker on leadership, and she has produced a gem of a book. It is accessible because it is about people understanding their own potential to be a leader. 

Leadership isn’t just about formal roles in a hierarchy. It is more fundamentally situational – life circumstances where we need to act with integrity. The old command and control mentality is no longer relevant. Now leadership is more about fostering capabilities in others. 

Ferguson lays down solid evidence that this approach is where we are going. Leading global corporations are well down the path. There is, quite simply, a quiet revolution afoot. Greater self-awareness is the foundation, but, as the book’s title asserts, there is also a need to balance head and heart – theory and the human reality of practice.

The very nature of ERGs should suggest that this modern approach on how to lead should be a lifeline – to the ERGs themselves and to the organizations that encourage their formation. We need a shared theory of ERGs that is attuned to emerging values, and we need a shared theory of leadership that is understood by the ERG and its organization. An ERG is an organ within the organizational body. It is part of a system that has a common (though often incoherent) goal. The quality of leadership at ERG and organizational level is critical.

The value of redundancy as a goal

So, what has this got to do with the idea of redundancy? Something should become redundant if it is no longer fit for purpose (like command and control leadership styles) or the job it was created to do has been done.

I would like to see a time when the need for a Disability ERG would no longer exist. But what would need to be the reality for that to be something that could happen?

System change is easy.  It requires a will, an intent and a commitment – as well as the necessary resources.   But cultural change is way more complex and over a longer time. 

My sense of system change, and cultural change, meshes well with Ferguson’s head and heart – so well that her book could become a manual for driving such change.

When I say we need a shared theory of what and ERG is and what leadership is about I don’t mean a formal theory – just an agreed understanding. The ERG and the organization must agree on what the ERG is expected to achieve or deliver – and how it will do that. The ERG and the organization must agree that leadership is a balance of hierarchical and situational imperatives and there should be no tension or clash between old and modern leadership theories.

It would be great to work in an organization that has a culture of inclusion and kindness, so no staff feel excluded or discriminated against because of their identity or attributes. That is to say that it would be great to work in a culture where an ERG hasn’t anything to do, because there are no unmet needs because systems aren’t responsive and the culture isn’t kind and inclusive.

Conclusion

If I had a time machine I would go back to the start of my consultancy with my former employer’s ERG leads and insist that the ERG leads, their champions and executive sponsors read Head & Heart, and then talk. Realistically I think compliance would be minimal, but that’s what I would want to happen.

It is hard enough for folks to claim the time to read 4 or 5 pages, let alone an entire book. I get that. I listen to audiobooks not just because my disabilities make holding a 3D book a pain, but because I can listen while doing stuff I can’t do and read at the same time. My commutes to work became my reading time. Two hours a day is ten hours a week, or forty hours a month. The average professional development text I listened to was around 8 hours. That’s 5 books a month. An Audible audiobook cost me around AUD$12, so that’s around $2 a day.

My point is that excuses to not read because of time constraints aren’t real. I am entirely sympathetic to the proposition that cognitive stress is bad enough without adding another demand. But here’s a question. What will bring that excessive burden of cognitive stress to an end? Better leadership.

What will enable ERGs to achieve their objectives? Becoming redundant because we have achieved our goals is way better than becoming redundant because we have lost our way.

DEI is in crisis now because it has lost its focus and because those who lead DEI teams and activities don’t have a strong head & heart balance. There has been an abundance of head-driven research that demonstrates how critical heart stuff – like emotional intelligence is in a modern workplace. In my view DEI is a vital field into the future, so long as it is understood as a professional discipline and not the sentimental and political stuff it used to be – driven by idealism and good intent, rather than by insight.

Note: I have included a hyperlink to Amazon for Head & Heart because this includes access to ebook and audiobook versions, both of which increase accessibility. If you buy 3D books please support your local independent bookshop. These used to be like a second home to me. Now, sadly, they are inaccessible.