Category: Uncategorized

Introduction

For many staff with disability, working from home during COVID has been an unexpected blessing, for a variety of reasons.

But there are potentially hidden down sides as well. The comfort of safe isolation may have atrophied relational skills and made going out into the world feel like a dangerous adventure to be avoided when possible.

We should see the pandemic as a cause of trauma for some people

We all respond to threat in our own ways. Depending on how we assess our vulnerabilities, we will respond to a threat accordingly. Some threats arise quick and subside just a swiftly. Others arise and persist for some time. The COVID 19 pandemic is a persistent threat. Under such a persistent threat adaptive behaviours develop and become normal. When things change, those behaviours must be unlearned.

It is one thing for the pandemic to be traumatising for some people with disability because of the risks associated with infection or isolation. It is quite another thing to appreciate that a demand to suddenly end protective adaptive behaviours may carry its own traumatic implications.

We all respond differently

A uniform uncompromising demand to return to the office will be met with relief by some – and alarm by others.

A demand to suddenly abandon protective adaptive behaviours can trigger trauma at the best of times. And these are still not the best of times.

Some keen observers in the DEI space are wondering what portion of ‘The Great Resignation’ is down to people making trauma-induced decisions to quit work rather than be forced in return to office demands that fill them with dread. Faced with an ‘all or nothing’ choice, nothing can seem the safest and least traumatic.

The impact of 2 years of lockdowns, isolations and avoidance is something we can only guess at. It is an unprecedented situation. But there is evidence that bringing atrophied social and relational skills to work can lead to conflict at work, triggering acts of exclusion.

Dr David Rock, co-founder of the Neuroleadership Foundation (NLI), had a short article We Need Time to Rehabilitate the Trauma of the Pandemic published in the Harvard Business Review in February this year.

Rock says this applies to everyone. The NLI ran a webinar on de-escalation on Friday May 6. It was clear from participants across the country that there were heightened inter-relational tensions as staff came back to the office – and there was a need to know how best to handle them before they became a destructive force in workplaces. The cost of such a destructive scenario on teams and work performance – and individuals – can only be guessed at at this stage.

Conclusion

Staff with disability have been expressing anxiety about returning to the office for some time. There are two considerations to be kept in mind. 

The first is that getting to the office may have always been something of a perilous and taxing adventure for some. I have spoken with blind staff and those with mobility disabilities who described the normal stress of getting to and from work. Working from home relieved that stress.

The second is that COVID is still a serious threat to some who may not wish to contract it, regardless of their vaccination status. If returning to the office requires the abandoning of self-protective behaviours the individual believes are important to take, the sense of threat will be high.

I don’t want to buy into the return to office debate here. I want simply to observe that for some people with disability the requirement to return to the office can trigger a multi-faceted traumatic response that cannot be dismissed or ignored.

Read Dr Rock’s short article and share it widely with those who may benefit from his insights. 

And let’s ensure that insight and compassion prevail.

Introduction

I was listening to the CBC podcast Ideas, which was randomly replaying one of Margaret Visser’s 2002 Massey Lectures – Beyond Fate. I was jolted by Visser’s claim that “no way of enforcing rights has ever been found.”

The day before I had been prompted to download the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, dated 6 December 2006. I wondered, over the past 20 years, had we found a way of enforcing the rights of persons with disabilities, despite the fact they were affirmed after Visser’s lectures?

In Australia it is possible to call people who violate the rights of people with disability to account via the Human Rights Commission and by invoking anti-discrimination legislation. But such action tends to be reserved for the most egregious violations. And even then, this recourse does not assure rights are respected and honoured into the future – for the aggrieved individual, or fellow sufferers.

It’s time to rethink what is a fair thing to anticipate when asserting the right to enjoy an inalienable right.

What does a right really mean?

Rights are an interesting idea from the point of view of a person with a disability. People may agree you have them, but then may act as if you do not. You see, a right is consensual. To have it, you must act as if you have it, and so must everyone else. If you act as if you have a right and others do not – you don’t really have it. Rights are, in fact, subject to dispute and disagreement.

A right is “a moral or legal entitlement to have or do something” (Oxford Dictionary). The UN Convention speaks of “the inherent dignity and worth and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” Inalienable means something cannot be taken away or surrendered. A right must be declared inalienable by others. Even so, that does not mean it is a contract, let alone a law.

This would be good language – if it had a worthwhile meaning. But it doesn’t. A “moral entitlement” is meaningless because it requires common assent and a powerful cultural or communal commitment to which all are bound. Violation must have undesirable consequences. We don’t live in that kind of environment these days.

A legal entitlement is another matter, provided there is a will, and the means, to enforce it. There are a multitude of reasons why this is an unattractive and ineffectual option. Australians are not inherently litigious – so getting up a head of steam of moral outrage is a lot harder than in the USA. The pool of skilled litigators might be another, through want of practice. I don’t want to get too deep into this theme. It merits a more legally articulate comment than I can offer. The history of government departments defending against flagrant violations of the rights of staff members with determined passion doesn’t help either.

Violators of rights in ways that cause serious injury can escape being held to account with comparative ease. And chilling tales of the deeply aggrieved pursuing justice to the point of financial and psychological ruin offers no comfort.

I am not saying that pursuit of rights through tribunals and courts is pointless and fruitless, just that doing so can be fraught, handled incompetently, and fail. The ‘system’ is not tuned to favour the victim – from the instance of violation of a right through subsequent responses to the point where adjudication of the matter is sought.

It is safe to say that rights in any practical sense, are fragile and vulnerable. They are expressions of genuine noble sentiment. But a declaration of a right, even if expressed in legislation, is not a magic wand.

Despite efforts to the contrary, a right isn’t a real thing. It isn’t property. At best it is an agreement concerning conduct that is often imposed upon people whose goodwill and assent must be obtained for that imposition to have meaning and value.

The victimization of victims

Staff with disability who experience violations of their rights are routinely turned into accusers, not of their oppressors, but of the agency the oppressors represent. The burden of proving a case falls upon the victim, with a presumption of innocence being accorded to the manager, who is often the alleged perpetrator. This seems like natural justice, but it is not.

Part of the role of management is to ensure that staff with disability do not find themselves in a position where they are aggrieved. The belief that a grievance is most likely unjustified is favoured by managers because that forces the onus of proof on the victim. 

It is far more likely that a grievance is justified, and that the matter of concern was preventable. In the time I worked with staff with disability to find a resolution to their grievances concerning violation of their rights I encountered only one instance of the complaint being objectively unfounded. It was, however, triggered by psychological stress which had to be addressed in any case.

Vexatious complaints are rare and may be triggered by an underpinning issue that may or may not have anything to do with work. This is a far more complex matter than it may at first seem.  

The raising of a complaint is usually a signal that a situation has been ineptly managed. It is this fact that a complaint has been raised that should be the focus of concern. This shifts the focus to human-centred management, where the rights and dignity of staff matter, and away from a quasi-legal adversarial approach. Historically this approach has been designed to favour those in positions of power. It has no place in contemporary management practice.

Exactly why a manager should be more representative of an organization than a productive employee shouldn’t be a hard question. Get rid of a highly skilled and experienced worker who complains about discrimination or keep an incompetent discriminatory manager? That’s so often a no-brainer. But so often the manager is the one who stays. 

Those who manage look after their own. Management culture readily turns those below them into others – members of an out-group. This complex reality of organizational hierarchies is under-estimated in the practice and perpetuation of discriminatory conduct.

Just before I left my department in June 2021 a new approach to complaints was circulated. It was well-intended. But it distinguished between managers and workers. Really? I as a subject matter expert with near on 20 years’ experience was a ‘worker’? And a manager with far less expertise that was a class above me? They were in a different role category – performing a role I had no interest in. But they were not in a different class. This class divide between managers and workers is ancient and tenaciously persistent. This is despite the reality that managers and ‘workers’ mostly come from the same social class these days. This is a major factor in the persistent failure of organisations to honour the rights of staff (workers) with disability (and others).

Let’s think about the rights of a person with disability

In an organization – a department, business, or community the exercising of the rights of a person with disability may mean adjustments must be made to the physical and cultural environment. 

The problem is that while people may be fine with adjustments to the physical environment- because other people benefit as well – that does not mean they are going to be okay about adjusting their beliefs, attitudes, values, or behaviours. Individuals are not usually personally invested in adjustments to the physical environment. But they are personally invested in changes to the cultural environment – where that includes them. 

Many will be prepared to make a ‘reasonable adjustment’ to their attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviours – but on their terms. We must remember that there are other demands on individuals, and that such changes can be very demanding – cognitively and emotionally. 

There is interesting brain research that suggests that if an organization wants to increase the extent to which its staff respond supportively to staff members with disability it must accommodate a range of variables that can impede the desired reaction:

• Mandatory awareness training can have the opposite effect if it adds a cognitive and emotional burden, and there is no motivated personal commitment. 
• Work related stress lowers willingness to change attitudes and behaviours.
• Unconscious and implicit bias can lead people to violate rights while believing they are upholding them.

There is a spectrum of willingness to adapt, and a spectrum of capacity to adapt. At the top extreme there is high willingness and high capacity. At the bottom end is low willingness and low capacity. We are all somewhere on that spectrum.

The challenge for any organization is to determine where it draws a line on that spectrum to signal the extreme of the negative response it is prepared to live with. Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) advocates have urged businesses to respond to the evidence that high willingness to create optimal DEI conditions has a bottom line pay off. But the lure of lower cost and higher income does not always work. The attitudes of senior leaders may not be that idealistic or pragmatic. 

Public sector organizations have an obligation to treat all members of the community they represent fairly and equally, so their line on the spectrum must be toward the highest level of willingness. This isn’t a pragmatic option. There is a fundamental difference between profit and equity bottom lines that applies in relation to private and public organisations. It is that one can opt out of a shared value and the other may not.

However, a moral obligation to not opt out does not translate as an actionable duty to opt in. This is what confuses many who assume that an assertion of their rights is an affirmation they will be honoured – and then find they are not. Worse, the people who ignore or violate them persist in insisting they do, in fact, honour those rights.

The fundamental difference between private and public organisations

The private sector has a discretion about whether it agrees to abide by laws of a nation or state. It can choose to leave, or it can choose to violate the laws. In many countries it can be cheaper to violate. The right to violate can be bought at a good price. In the US corporations seem to be frequently sued for violations of rights. That suggests that there is a calculation that such violations are often successful – and this is something the organisation’s leadership culture is comfortable with.

The public sector of a country, or state, does not have the option of departing. It must choose to violate at an acceptable cost. This is what usually happens. Governments accept a burden of non-compliance against their own laws by their own sector is a cost of doing business.

Evidence that this is a real assessment is demonstrated in the fact that the cost of insurance premiums for workplace related injury is going up, despite the fact reasons for preventable injury are known. This is especially the case concerning psychological injury. The cost of prevention is deemed higher than the cost of compensation. Prevention is seen as a cost, not an investment.

Private sector businesses are constrained by investors making rational choices based on a profit motive. The public sector is shaped by less rational choices. Whether it has the means to engage in needed reforms and growth is resource dependent. And beyond that, it is a question of values and will.

Public sector problems

A morally responsive public sector must ensure equal access and participation across increasingly diverse communities. There is obviously a political dimension to how this response plays out. That’s not a topic for this essay.

In public sector organisations, upholding the rights of people with disability (and others) may not be a value shared by its workforce. It then has a challenge concerning how it is going to ensure that most of its workforce is on the high side of the spectrum of acceptance of those rights, which is reflected in a high capacity to uphold them. 

In the New South Wales public sector there is a code of conduct which requires conduct consistent with the declared rights of people with disability. But it is not specific or clear about how violations of these rights are assessed, and what penalties, if any, are imposed.

Conclusion

I am starting to think we need to move away from the idea of rights and think more in terms of obligation or duty. If we see it as a two-sided equation and recognise that one side is not keeping up its end of the deal, it all falls apart. Rights walk with 2 legs – assertion and confirmation. With only one leg, we have rights with disability – not disability rights.

To assert “I have a right…” is to essentially assert a nice sentiment, which may not be shared by those you are speaking to. They may have been told they are required to share the sentiment, and they may say they do, but their actions may not agree. What is more important is the capacity of an organization to self-police its ability to stand by its self-described and self-declared duty to treat its workforce with equal dignity.

I conclude that Margaret Visser is right – “No way of enforcing rights has ever been found.” Twenty years has made no difference to the acuity of that insight.

Introduction

The Disability Royal Commission commissioned a report from the University of NSW and Flinders University. The title is Research Report – changing community attitudes to improve inclusion of people with disability.

It is a general report that does not specifically address the employment issues that are the focus of this blog. However, I recommend a careful reading because the principles articulated here are applicable, and they are discussed in more detail than I will address.

The literature review covers academic research in the past 3 years. This is important because it lays a foundation for observations and opinion based on recognised research.

I am going to reflect on 3 ideas that struck me as most compelling.

Attitude change

“The implications for government are that attitudes and behaviour both matter, both should be targeted for change, and both should be measured. The facilitators of attitude change are:

1. Active presence of people with disability
2. Leadership
3. Targeting multiple levels and multiple types of policy and interventions
4. Long-term approaches with adequate resources 
5. Measuring and monitoring change.”

Three takeaways:

• Changing attitudes requires a sustained strategic approach.
• Active senior leadership and staff with disability are indispensable elements in that approach.
• That strategic approach must include an accountability mechanism which monitors and measures progress. 

What an attitudes survey tells us

In the Attitudes Matter survey of community attitudes towards people with disability conducted on a representative panel of the Australian population, most respondents reported positive or inclusive attitudes, with only a minority reporting overtly negative attitudes.

Nevertheless, 78% of the respondents agreed that people without disability were unsure how to act towards people with disability. It appears that, regardless of people’s intentions, actions based on uncertainty can have adverse impacts for people with disability.

However, the survey could not measure implicit attitudes or bias. Also, it could not explore intersectionality, which is the impact that different types of impairments, identities and social positions such as gender, race and ethnicity, class and sexuality can have on attitudes and behaviour.

There were 3 key takeaways for me:

1. There is a minority that has negative attitudes toward people with disability. And there is no reason to assume that such people are not in senior leadership or management positions in an organisation.
2. An absence of confidence in engaging with people with disability can lead to unintended acts of exclusion.
3. The impact of intersectionality is not fully appreciated. There is a potential for multiple biases to cluster on a single individual with disability.

The importance of leadership

When leadership positions are places where people demonstrate their commitment to change attitudes, then the interventions initiated from other levels are endorsed and gain momentum. Also, when people with disability hold leadership positions throughout organisations, the attitudes of others change, as seeing people with disability in leadership positions becomes an expectation and a common experience. 

Second, this facilitator requires change in structures, with leadership about disability embedded in organisations. People in leadership positions in government, business and social and cultural organisations need to be incentivised to communicate about the importance of attitude change, and they need to be incentivised to appoint people with disability to leadership positions. Effective leadership also contributes to resisting any counterforces to change.

Third, leadership needs to require co-design with people with disability. Examples of structures required for this type of leadership are inclusive governance and management, including employee resource groups and disability staff networks; and building campaigns and interventions from grassroots priorities. When interventions to change attitudes adopt co-design processes, they validate the collective voices and lived experience expertise of people with disability in the way the interventions are designed and conducted. These processes can effect change by joining the power of life stories to specific calls for action. Co-design activity needs to avoid risks of tokenism. Instead, it needs to connect deeply to structural change. 

My 3 key takeaways:

1. When leaders affirm their demonstrable commitment to change, other efforts at change are boosted. And it would be better if leaders with disability were seen to be committed to change – alongside those with no disability.
2. The sector must ensure that there are ‘incentives’ provided to leaders to be engaged in active support of change. What those incentive might be is another discussion entirely.
3. Leaders must require co-design with staff with disability in all reform efforts – and in sufficient numbers to avoid appearance of tokenism. This means at least 3 people with disability in any co-design exercise.

Conclusion

Academic reports can be hard to read if you are not accustomed to the academic voice. But this report does a very good job of articulating key ideas drawn from contemporary academic research. This means that these ideas are not mere opinion, but well-grounded and thought through arguments. They should become the foundation of advocacy for change.

I recommend the reader downloads the report and goes through it with a highlighter draw out the ideas that are most compelling to them. There is little point in inviting senior leaders to read a report of this size. I don’t think the executive summary is fit for purpose in the context of an organisation. The report is too broad for that. It is necessary to develop a targeted summation of the findings to fit the organisation.

Introduction

I am very familiar with the phenomenon we call mental illness, but I do not like the term at all. It is misleading and is frequently misapplied to cause harm to people who already have a psychological injury. Adding a stigma to what can be a challenging thing to live with seems cruel and pointless.

In the 1970s I worked in psychiatric hospitals, engaging with people who had severe to profound cognitive and behavioural disabilities. From December 2001 to June 2006, I worked with what are now known in NSW as Assisted Boarding Houses as a Support Manager. The resident population of these boarding houses was a combination of people with intellectual disabilities and those diagnosed with mental illness. I visited these boarding houses often and became familiar with, and comfortable in my interaction with, the residents.

In between those roles there were others that exposed me to psychiatry and the challenges of living with cognitive and behavioural disabilities in the community and at work.

I have friends and family members who live with depression and/or anxiety, and more complex conditions. And I have had my own challenges.

I have no formal learning in psychology. I have read widely for decades in psychiatry and psychology as part of my own professional development.

The mind is the brain?

The idea of mental illness arises chiefly from the idea that the brain is the source of the mind. This is a position that arises directly from empirical evidence in brain science. It is a perfectly reasonable one to hold. But it is disputed by people who hold spiritual and religious beliefs (like me).

There is absolutely no doubt that what we think, and feel, is mediated by the brain. So even if you do not believe that the brain creates the mind, you can’t escape the evidence that at the very least, brain-mediated awareness dominates our notions of mind.

The metaphysical disputes between a materialistic and religious on the nature of the mind are pointless here. Unless there is mutually admitted empirical evidence such a dispute can go nowhere.

I want to make a carefully nuanced assertion. For the behaviour we are considering here, the ‘mind as brain’ model is sufficient in most instances. Where it is not sufficient there tends to be a shared acceptance of ‘higher’ attributes of our cognition and behaviour without splitting metaphysical hairs. There is an agreeable vagueness about the language and there is a shared sense of intended meaning.

So, is mental illness a physical condition?

It seems that some are either born with, or acquire, injuries to our brain such that impaired cognition or behaviour is stubbornly persistent. That doesn’t mean the impairment causes dysfunction at a level that it can be classified as a disability. Like anything, there is a spectrum of levels of impairment – from nothing very much to serious debilitating conditions.

Beyond that, we have experiences that cause our brains to respond in ways that can impair our cognition and behaviour for short or long periods. If severe and persistent, this may result in a disability. A short-term impairment might abate in time or through an intervention. This can range from situational stress to Post Traumatic Shock.

Here I am not attempting a comprehensive discussion of the brain. I want to simply make a point that under the mind is brain model we must be talking about physical brain states. There is no thing called the mind that can explored unless the term means brain. Mind is a cultural artefact that we need to talk about our cognition and behaviour. The moment we say the mind is created by the brain we are talking about brain states – physical states.

Why does this matter? It makes mental illness a gross misnomer. And this is very important.

The problems no understanding of psychiatry create

I must declare that I am not a huge fan of psychiatry as a discipline. I don’t want to explain why here, I just need to declare a bias. This bias, I hope, will not interfere with what I want to say here.

My experience in psychiatric hospitals has exposed me to extreme manifestations of cognitive and behavioural malfunctions. I have been on wards where I have feared for my safety. There are dangerous people – in psychiatric hospitals, in prisons and in the community. But few people who are diagnosed with a ‘mental illness’ are dangerous. 

The Blackdog Institute observes that. “Common mental illnesses in Australians are: anxiety disorders (14%), depressive disorders (6%) and substance use disorders (5%)”. Anxiety and/or depression is most likely what you will find in your workplace. And we all get anxious or depressed at some stage in our lives. People who are anxious or depressed are not scary.

But for most people their exposure to mental illness is via popular culture – stories and cultural traditions. Depicting mental illness in ways that do not trigger a threat response in a viewer or reader usually is a waste of a good narrative. 

We all are familiar with the language of psychiatry – schizophrenic, psychotic – and the language of popular culture – mad, troppo, demented, deranged, lunatic, looney, batshit crazy and so on. Some of the language in popular culture is a residue from the language of psychiatry from the past.

We are mostly primed to respond to this language (from both sources) with some level of threat. This is because when we encounter it, it is most commonly in a highly negative context – and one usually intended to generate a threat response for dramatic effect. This includes news reports and entertainment like movies.

The result is that many people are not in a position to respond to the idea of mental illnessin the best manner. This is the foundation of the idea of a stigma connected with the term. It implies a sick mind and hence the risk of disordered thought and behaviour.

Bias and behaving badly

Implicit bias is a bias that has been developed through exposure to cultural and historic attitudes, ideas, and values. An implicit bias is an unconscious conditioning that will be activated even when there is conscious intent to respond in a positive non-biased way. 

But let’s add to the implicit bias a more primed response that activates threat responses in the brain because exposure to ideas about mental illness has a current and active impact. We cannot know when an individual was last exposed to negative stereotypes. Between cultural conditioning and personal experience, the impact of bias is magnified.

If your exposure to mental illness is largely negative or sensationalistic (via movies or scary stories) you will likely have an implicit bias that is triggered when you hear the term. That could be a mild threat response, but it will move you away from, rather than toward the person to whom the term is applied. That’s the stigma at work.

There’s another level. An individual with a magnified level of bias against mental illnessmay also be experiencing any number of states triggered by stressors (work pressure, personal life stressors, psychological injury) that means an additional cognitive and emotional burden triggers an adverse response to an idea already distorted by bias.

Put simply, some people cannot respond to the idea of mental illness in a way that is respectful or compassionate, even if they want to at a deeper level.

Let’s get rid of mental illness and talk about psychological wellbeing and safety

We all have times when we struggle to keep an even keel in the midst of an existential storm. Such a storm can be short lived, or it can endure for months, or longer. 

Our ability to rebound (resilience) depends on a range of factors – the nature and severity of the storm, our health (physical and emotional), and whether there are other storms around. If we are not constitutionally resilient, our ability to handle the cognitive and emotional stress triggered by responding to the idea of mental illness can be impaired.

For example, a parent whose marriage is on the rocks is advised one of their parents is dying in a problematic nursing home. This triggers issues with siblings. One of their children is being bullied at school. And a restructure at work has led to an increase in work demands. That’s a massive stress load. Normal life can do that.

I am not talking any disability here. The emotional demand on the parent may be so severe that their work performance is impacted. There’s nothing here to trigger a diagnosis of a mental illness, but the accumulated impact might be similar.

A person born with a brain state that makes a heightened sense of threat their normal state – with no functioning on/off switch – is no more ill than a person born without a left foot. Either condition will impact behaviour; and may impact cognition to some degree. True, a brain state disability may require more intentional effort to maintain effective cognition for longer than a person undergoing an existential storm, or two. But is the effort fundamentally different – or just extended in time? 

A clue might be the number of people with diagnosed psychological conditions who perform perfectly well – without anybody aware of their diagnosis, or the fact that they have one – or that they are undertaking therapeutic treatment or are using medication. Now and then they may need an accommodation or an adjustment – just like anybody else. 

Asking for that an accommodation or an adjustment, and having to give a detailed reason is where the problems start.

Conclusion

Being born with, or acquiring, a brain state that does not have an off switch for normal processes like feeling anxious or depressed isn’t an illness. It is a physical disability.  I know I can get into a serious argument on this point with some. But it’s not going to be here.

We must move to thinking in terms of psychological wellbeing and the psychological safety at work to ask for an adjustment or accommodation when the need arises. There can be no justification based on the reason or cause, only the self-assessed and expressed need. Some may wish to say why there is a need. Others may not.

The modern workplace must be a place where a perceived need for time out can be assumed to be genuinely self-assessed. There will be some who will disagree and that there may be staff who will use this freedom to wrongly seek time out when there is no need. Leaving aside the psychological condition that motivates deception and exploitation of good intent, there are effective ways of managing the conduct of the minority whose approach is demonstrably inappropriate. 

In many ways this has nothing to do with disability. A universal capacity to accommodate the psychological health needs of all will benefit people with disability who need accommodations and adjustments. It’s about treating adults at work as rational agents capable of assessing their own needs. It is not about medicalising going through a tough time to satisfy a need for ‘evidence’ beyond self-reporting. 

The NSW public sector allows for a certain number of days on sick leave without a medical certificate as it is. This is legacy thinking, belonging to times when there was a presumption that staff would ‘bunk off’ whenever the opportunity arose. In fact, current research suggests that this isn’t the case – unless the workplace is toxic and unsafe. Also, its commonplace to refer to a ‘sickie’ as a ‘mental health day’.

We need to rethink how we address the need of people who have periods of emotional and cognitive overload because of a stressful situation and need time out. The culture we have created discourages open discussion. Diagnosed conditions like anxiety and depression are manageable in the normal run of things for many people. But now and then not so much. How is that different to a person balancing a bunch of stresses and needing a ‘mental health day?’

The Blackdog Institute notes that “54% of people with mental illness do not access any treatment.” But does it mean 54% of people diagnosed with mental illness? So, about half are into handling out themselves. And what about those who haven’t a diagnosis? If you take the earlier figures, that’s around 13% of the population who have a diagnosis and are doing it for themselves. That’s around 1 million people in NSW. Yeah. I had to go back to my calculator. That’s over 50,000 NSW public servants. Why aren’t we responding to their needs?

By creating and maintaining a culture which offers psychological safety and values psychological wellbeing, the stigma connected with mental illness can be eliminated because that term is no longer in use. That may create a culture of safety and trust, in which discussing one’s needs happens without fear.

Introduction

I have asserted that inclusion is a stretch exercise for many of us because we are hardwired to be exclusive and biased. We look after our in-group members and are distant from those we see as members of out-groups.

That was all fine and good when we lived in communities made up of in-group members – and we could reliably work in work cultures made up of people like us. But we don’t do that anymore. In NSW, in the major population centres we live and work with people from diverse backgrounds and life experiences. 

We are also hardwired to crave inclusion and belonging. Some of us belong to a large group occupying a defined space, but we no longer live among them. Some of us belong to a minority group – one that does not exist together in one space as a single community, but which comes together now and then – or which connects online. Others belong to a group so small the chances of most of the members getting together are remote.

The key is what group/s do we primarily identify with? We all belong to multiple groups. We have multiple layers to our identities. Here I am not talking just about the well-recognised diversity classifications – but identities based on hobbies and pastimes or politics, to name a few. When you say “I am…” you are articulating part of your identity.

Identity means more when you are away from your primary group

Back in 1996 I relocated to the UK with every intention of staying there. One day I was sitting in a pub and heard an Australian accent. I immediately sought the source out. She was from Perth and was living nearby, just one town away (that’s nearby in England). She’d not heard an Australian accent for a long time either.

What we both discovered was that coming across somebody who understood our story had a huge psychological impact. It was a huge relief. I was surprised, and when I got home, I became aware that on every wall of my flat I had an Australian image. Even though I was in England I was still inhabiting Australia.

I was born in Northern Ireland and had always said I was Irish. I was entitled to say that, but I wasn’t. I had migrated to Australia when I was 4. The only Irish thing about me was my history. Before I came back to Australia I travelled to Ireland, and back to my birthplace. Not only did nobody know my story, it was also incomprehensible to them. Had I chosen to stay in Ireland or the UK I would have had to have developed another identity and would have had to stow my Australian identity away. Let me be clear, being an Australian and being an Aussie in the UK are not the same thing.

If you are a migrant or a refugee, and you come to Australia, you have the same challenge. It is good to be with people who know, or can understand, your story. But you also need an identity that connects you with where you are. Perhaps, to be accepted in your new identity you have to stow away valued parts of your old identity – beliefs, traditions, dress etc.

The experience of being you is what makes up your identity. Sometimes being you changes. My trans brother went from being my sister to being my brother. He can be my brother to other people, but it isn’t safe for him to be trans. In fact, it’s dangerous in some circumstances. He can be himself only if he is just that safe bit when he is away from family and friends who know his whole stroy. There are few people with whom he can be fully himself – but then, I guess, that applies to most of us too. You don’t need a radical attribute to make you feel uncomfortable about being wholly who you identify as.

My disability does not identify me, but I can be identified because of my disability – the bloke with the blue crutches. My disability is also part of my identity because I have experiences that are peculiar to it, but it does not define who I am. And yet, when I am excluded because of my disability there are times when it feels like my whole self is being excluded.

Awhile back my colleagues elected to celebrate Christmas at a bowling club, with bowling a major activity. I like bowling. I watched a lot of it on telly and had planned to take it up when I retired. These days I can’t hold a bowling ball with any control. 

I elected not to go the bowling club. This was because I didn’t want to make it obvious that I had been excluded from a group activity, by accident. I wanted my colleagues to relax at the end of a hard year, and not feel bad about picking an activity I could not participate in. I knew some would. They were my friends, and they would have felt bad.

Sometimes we can be excluded because of our disability in ways that are demeaning and offensive. Brain research shows that exclusion triggers a threat response. The same part of our brain that registers pain also registers exclusion. When that is extended over time psychological and physical harm will be done.

We all have a sense of identity that is essential to us. And we all crave belonging and acceptance. When that identity is assailed or we are excluded it hurts us.

Identity at work

There is an ideal – bring your whole self to work. Within the constraints of workplace decorum that is a fine ideal. We have multiple layers to our sense of identity from which we can fashion an identity we want to express at work. If we work fulltime that’s a substantial portion of our year – about 28% of our waking time, not including a commute.

There’s a difference between who we want to be, and who we must present as to survive with some level of acceptance and inclusion in the workplace. For some the gap between want and must is acceptably narrow. For others it is a wide gap. What widens the gap comes down to several things:

• A dominant workplace culture that does not accommodate alternative or diverse expressions of identity, and which is not expressly hostile.
• A dominant workplace culture that does not accommodate alternative or diverse expressions of identity, and which is expressly hostile.
• A leadership culture that fosters and allows discrimination or bullying by a minority, including managers and team leaders.
• A leadership culture that espouses inclusion but does not facilitate it or practice it in any consistent or coherent way.

The people most vulnerable to adverse experiences are members of minority diversity groups. They possess personal attributes that are critical to their identity because of their membership of a diversity group (or several) and which cannot be readily concealed. It is notable that the 2021 NSW State of the Sector report identified people with disability and Aboriginal people as the two groups most susceptible to bullying. Embodied attributes cannot be concealed, and that exposure renders individuals vulnerable to unintended and intended acts of exclusion – of which bullying is the worst.

How does it feel to be excluded?

In the workplace we have an innate need to belong to a group or a team as a valued member – with our preferred expression of identity embraced and honoured. When that doesn’t happen, we are distressed, and that can lead to emotional, or psychological, injury.

Over my time as DEN Chair, I was involved in a number of interventions to support staff with disability experiencing discrimination and bullying. Some of those staff were at breaking point emotionally. They had made attempts to end the bullying; and matters only got worse. All are injured, some badly. Here are a few quotes from a few:

A: Because of my disability I have been the victim of bullying many times. Bullying is counterproductive; it robs the victim of their dignity; it affects their health and emotional well-being.  After I was bullied, I used all my leave and because of this I lost financially.  I was an emotional mess for many months. I have been to several Counsellors, but I can’t seem to move on. I feel like I have to try to do something about this so nobody else has to be humiliated and hurt like I have been.

B: The unjust treatment perpetrated against me by my manager and the inactions of (their) direct line manager had a significant impact on my emotional health and safety.  The long-standing mistreatment disturbed and interfered with my usual functioning and happiness; and impacted my professional reputation. What was worse than that was the response of the very people and processes that are supposed to be there to protect staff by fairly investigating complaints. 

The failed response by senior management (and other areas responsible) has had a greater impact on me than the long-standing mistreatment and actions I endured by my (then) manager. I don’t know if I’ll ever heal from the loss of faith in the system and people that were supposed to ensure I was safe. 

C: I have become obsessive about trying to stop XXX from bullying staff. XX is a serial bully and usually picks on people that XX considers vulnerable. I have witnessed XX harm so many people over the years.  This “haunts me” and keeps me awake at night. Also, I live in fear that XX may start to bully me again.

D: This pain caused by discrimination and bullying is not something that is healed by the well-intentioned announcements about inclusion and equity, at times rhetorically, by the Department. It is an injury that for many lingers, for some decades or a lifetime. A heartbreaking thought to suppose that for others, too much to bear living.

Exclusion is a form of assault

Bullying is an assault, psychologically speaking. It is the worst form of exclusion because it entails emotional violence. It says the victim is unworthy of respect, or compassion. They do not deserve to maintain their dignity. This is a terrible thing to do to an adult person who, outside of work, will be a valued member of a family or community. That aspect of their identity cannot be submerged at work.

Passive exclusion is less violent, but no less damaging. Small acts of exclusion accumulate, and it does not matter whether they are intentional or inadvertent. If you exclude, you can contribute to an accumulation of harm. 

I don’t mean for the reader to feel an obligation to be a friend to everyone. That’s not what inclusion means. It means in the context of a workplace that there is equal freedom to engage and participate – and everyone knows it and feels confident in engaging and participating.

Today’s diverse culture means that in our workplaces we will encounter people who are unfamiliar to us; and who would once have been an outsider to be avoided and shunned. I grew up with the legacy of a Northern Irish Protestant hatred of Catholics. I had to reject my father’s influence. My mother thought the Chinese market gardeners were “dirty” and warned me against eating Chinese food. My parents were raised in a culture that excluded with righteous certainty. It didn’t translate well in the world I was growing up in.

Things have evolved. Now we share the same in-group – as colleagues and maybe as team members in the same agency and the same sector. It doesn’t matter what group you are from outside of work. At work you form a new in-group randomly made of people whose background and origins have nothing to do with whether they are entitled to be a full member of your work in-group. That’s the difference. That’s the stretch – embrace the diverse and the unfamiliar.

The duty of equity

As we evolve as a culture, we transgress against and violate old truths that affirm it is okay to reject another because of some attribute that marked them as a member of an out-group.

My stepfather cannot accept his trans son because his Christian community does not. He had to choose between his child who has ‘violated God’s law’ and a community which supports him at a deep existential level. He has chosen his community. His community of faith is free to make a distinction that excludes others.

The NSW public sector is not so free. It must accept everybody. This is a profoundly novel state of affairs. Discrimination was routine, and the acceptable norm not so long ago. Now it is not. This change places a huge demand upon sector leaders, and I don’t think the magnitude of that demand is fully comprehended. It places a huge demand on staff in general too, but in a very different way.

The NSW Premier’s Priorities include increasing the proportion of women and Aboriginal people in senior leadership roles. That is because white Anglo middle class males have long been the majority of senior leaders. That’s not a demographic group highly exposed to the demographic diversity of the NSW population. But you need some significant degree of openness that comes from such exposure to comprehend what exclusion is, and what it does.

Sector leaders and managers must embrace this evolution, and in fact lead it. They must ensure their actions exclude no one; and do no harm. Unless they do that change is going to be slow and painful, if not catastrophic, to many.

This isn’t a matter of choice. The obligation of the public service is to serve the whole community with equal justice, respect, and compassion – whether staff member or service user/recipient.

The power of the bully

Inclusion isn’t a ‘nice to have’. At its fundamental level it is an inalienable right built into the moral fabric of our culture. We have done this via legislation and policy. 

So why do some members of the public sector feel they are exempt from an obligation to conform? More importantly, why do we accept a public sector leadership culture that accommodates instances of such self-exemption as fair and reasonable?

Studies show that most bullying is perpetrated by line and senior managers. Bullying by peers is possible only when management is weak or complicit. So, we can safely say that bullying is perpetrated or facilitated by managers/leaders.

That means either a lack of awareness of the duty of care, or a decision to assert personal exemption from it. Lack of awareness can be addressed by providing developmental opportunity. Though why one would imagine that such lack of awareness is acceptable in manager or executive grades is beyond me. 

Self-determined exemption from required standards by managers or executives strikes me as being utterly indefensible – especially when it results in psychological injury.

Conclusion

Exclusion is either intentional or accidental. Accidental exclusion can be remedied by interventions and support. Intentional exclusion cannot be placed in the same category. An act of intentional inclusion by a manager or executive demands a deeper look. Ineptitude or deliberate self-exemption? 

None of the voices I quoted above concerned ‘accidental’ or ‘inadvertent’ exclusion. The bullying was perpetrated over time. At best it was reflexive, suggesting an unconscious underlying psychological state. At worst it was intentional, suggesting the manager was on the toxic end of the psychopathy spectrum. 

In any case the perpetrator is not fit for purpose in a management/leadership role. The resistance to holding these perpetrators to account comes from more senior managers. The evidence this is the case is beyond dispute. When a manager becomes a member of the management in-group, the group will protect its own. Staff members below the manager class become the out-group. This is a hierarchical complexity that is insufficiently recognised.

It is also a recipe for disaster. There is a remedy, which will be resisted with great determination up the ladder of control. Change must come from the top. Until, and unless, it does abuse of the non-management out-group will not abate.

Introduction

This was a webinar by the Australian office of the Neuroleadership Institute (NLI). Its primary function was to drum up business. The content is freely available in books and on the institute’s website. The how to element at an organisational level is what you pay for – and I would pay for such a service.

The webinar was on Zoom and participants were sent recording with impressive promptness. The session was only an hour, so while it did not get into the depth necessary, the key concepts were outlined – and they are valuable. I will discuss the key ones below. I sometimes quote directly from what was on screen.

What is allyship?

To quote the slide. “It’s when someone is aware of and uses their advantaged position to actively support people in less advantaged positions.”

There is a difference between being a sympathetic individual and being an ally, and this can be summed up as:

• Don’t expect to be taught – Do your own research
• Don’t view the desire for change as a personal attack – Listen non-defensively
• Don’t self – victimise – Recognise systemic inequality

Allyship is an activity, not a sentiment. The NLI is strong on the need to develop habits of thought and action, and came up with 3 essential habits for effective allyship:

• Identify Inequity
• Increase Equity
• Drive Change

There is a gulf of difference between sentiment and impact. Research on attitudes of staff conducted by Deloitte in 2019 showed:

• 92% already see themselves as allies in the workplace
• however, only 29% say they actually speak up in the moment when they perceive bias,
• and nearly 1/3 ignore it.

There are 3 myths about allyship:

1. Myth: Awareness is enough             Fact: Allyship must be coupled with action
2. Myth: Allyship equals friendship     Fact: Allyship directly addresses inequity
3. Myth: Once an ally, always an ally   Fact: The goal: exercise allyship continuously

Acts of exclusion have been shown to trigger threat and pain regions in the brain. Six reactions were identified, and they include all contexts, not just work:

1. Reduced intelligence & reasoning
2. Poor choices
3. Antisocial behaviour
4. Less self-control
5. More defensive
6. A lesser level of well-being (physical and psychological)

It is important to observe that exclusion can begin in one’s family of origin, one’s cultural setting, and the community as a whole. This may be true, for example, of a transgender person. In relation to people with disability there may well be support from family, but not in a cultural or wider community sense. What happens at work can be a perpetuation of exclusion begun elsewhere.

There has never been so much energy devoted to supporting acceptance of diversity. But without inclusion and belonging it has little meaning. Allyship, as an intentional act, is a great way to harness that energy and make it more effective in creating and maintaining real change.

Knowledge of what triggers our behaviour is essential

Our brains function on a threat/reward binary. Threat is the stronger impulse, but reward is the preferred impulse. The NLI has developed the SCARF model to help us think about how we respond to a situation. 

• Status
• Certainty
• Autonomy
• Relatedness
• Fairness

“Unconscious bias: Accidental, unintended, subtle and completely

unconscious choices, made by everyone, all the time”. Essentially, “If you have a brain, you have a bias.”

Bias is a field that merits deeper examination. I have just finished Jessica Nordell’s The End of Bias. There is a lot of superficial commentary that is intended to be helpful, but in fact ends up being somewhat misleading. A fuller picture is better. Nordell’s work is the most comprehensive exploration of the theme I have come across. Your Brain at Work, by David Rock, co-founder of the NLI is an excellent exploration of the brain science of bias, and other themes.

According to the NLI, the science of driving change has 3 essential steps:

• The development of an ethical conviction that exclusion is wrong
• An empathic and compassionate identification with those who are excluded (discriminated against, bullied)
• Activation of an intent to drive collective action to bring about the needed changes.

One slide struck me as being deceptively potent. In simply said: Power dynamics – Hierarchy can add another layer of complexity and threat. Your Brain at Work touched on this to some extent. However, wider comments about the importance of Leaders in the webinar suggest a far more complex discussion on this theme is available from the NLI.

The other theme touched on in the webinar was “a growth mindset”. This is from the NLI blog – “growth mindset is the belief that skills can be improved over time, rather than being fixed from birth. You may never be the best at something, per se, but with a growth mindset you do believe that you can get better. Not only that, using a growth mindset compels you to focus on improving, not proving, yourself to face all future challenges.”

This idea is key to the approach taken by the NLI. You can read the full article here.

Conclusion

I am a huge fan of the work the NLI does. I like data that puts some arguments beyond disputation by people who are resisting the notion that there is a need to do better – and here’s a way that works.  By framing key areas for organisational and personal change in terms of brain science we avoid the messy moral discussions framed by sentiments and passions. Once you develop an ethical conviction that exclusion is wrong, you want to express that in ways that are rational, rather than emotive and dependent on sentiment.

Brain science on the side of the ‘good guys’. It helps us calmly see the complexity of the challenge, and the rational responses we can take to bring about enduring change in the most effective and efficient way.

I am not saying you have to go off and hire the NLI to run something for your org – and if you don’t do that you have no chance of ending exclusion. Obviously, for some orgs affording that option isn’t going to be on the table. But I could imagine several orgs getting together and having key people exposed to the depth of knowledge and opportunities for change that is available. 

Finally, the more we understand what drives us to behave badly or well, and what impedes the manifestation of good sentiment, the better chance we have of making the changes we want stick in an effective way.

Introduction 

The End of Bias: How We Change Our Minds by Jessica Nordell was published in September 2021. The Amazon blurb notes that the book was shortlisted for a couple of awards and named a ‘Best Book of the Year’ by several organisations: 

It’s not often I agree with blurbs without reservation. The book is a beautifully written overview of what is known about bias – which is a lot. The insights are subtle and deep, and the stories compelling. It’s as solid a grounding on the subject of bias as you will find. 

What is bias? 

The Neuroleadership Institute says, “If you have a brain, you have a bias.” It’s a shortcut, and hence unconscious, way of making choices and decisions based upon data gleaned from nurture, culture, and experience. That data is classified according to whether it is a threat or a reward. It is a fast and energy efficient process. 

But that process now lacks several important attributes. The data may be wrong or out of date, and it is not context sensitive. There were times when the relatively simple bias-based process provided a quick, accurate and appropriate basis for a choice or decision. That is why such a process is hardwired into our brains. 

However, things have changed. Our social groups, especially in a work context, have become more diverse, and our overall environments more complex. The simple binary mechanism isn’t the best tool for delivering optimal choices and decisions anymore. 

We must reprogram our capacity for bias to avoid, or favour, a different set of attributes. For this to happen we must want it to happen; and be prepared to put in a reasonable amount of effort to make the reprograming stick. 

What can you do? 

I have been reading/listening to material on Inclusion and Diversity for the past 8 months pretty much as a fulltime occupation. Some things are very clear. Changing attitudes takes effort. It’s about building habits of thought and feeling. The best approach is little and often over a long time with a certain level of consistency. It’s like how you learned to drive. You started off with a massive cognitive and emotional load, and over time the essentials of driving became unconscious. But you still have to maintain conscious awareness of circumstances and contexts. 

Treat reading/listening to The End of Bias: How We Change Our Minds like a really great driving instructor. Effort will be required, but the experience could even be enjoyable. Afterwards, it’s up to you to take advantage what you have discovered, but you have gotten your bias L plates. 

Conclusion

I come across a lot of books I put into a ‘good to read’ category. There are a few that make it to my ‘must read’ category. The End of Bias is one of that few. 

Because of my disability I prefer audiobooks and ebooks. I can do both on a smartphone. Both are way cheaper than hardcopy mostly. For example, I bought my copy of The End of Bias audiobook for AUD$11.65. The current paperback price on Amazon is AUD $21.64. That doesn’t include postage. An audiobook can be 1/3 the cost of a paperback. 

I walk very slowly with the aid of crutches. That’s time I can waste on ‘monkey mind’ chatter, or I can spend it listening to something more intelligent and worthwhile. I listen to audiobooks and walk – it’s one of the few times I can do 2 things at once these days. If you are not a fan of audiobooks, please reimagine the benefits and opportunities they bring – whether you have a disability or not. 

Introduction

I have been playing with this idea for about a month, after finding out that movement toward the 2019 NSW Premier’s Priority target for employment of people with disability (5.6% by 2025) has been scarcely discernible. There was a +0.1% growth only because of a dip from 2.5% in 2019 to 2.4% in 2020 and back to 2.5% in 2021. That’s zero growth, really.

I was reminded of Martin Luther King’s “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I want to substitute ‘Inclusion’ for ‘justice’ – they are the same thing in many respects. And then I wanted to see if we could reimagine the arc as much shorter than King imagined. Change still takes time, but I keep coming back to the Neuroleadership Institute’s assertion that change can happen in months, not years. Whether this change includes Disability Inclusion I am not sure. But the Institute does demonstrate that rapid behavioural change at an organisational level can be achieved if the task is approached in an intentional and strategic manner. So, maybe.

The ARC

I see the ARC as the first steps in breaking down the challenge of increasing the proportion of people with disability employed in the NSW public sector.

• Attraction – Attracting people with disability to apply for roles, recruiting them and then having them record their disability on internal diversity records (you must bring them the whole way for an act of attraction to be successful).
• Retention – Retaining staff with disability who might otherwise quit because of inaccessible systems and physical work circumstances, or because of bullying and discrimination.
• Counting – Encouraging staff with disability to report their disability on internal diversity data records, and then using that data to make statements about how successful an organisation is in its efforts to be inclusive and safe for people with disability.

Each has a set of complexities associated with it. Each has an outcome for effort equation. And each has a strategic priority value. This wasn’t thought through in 2019 at all. 

There was an immediate leap to recruitment as the primary focus. In 2019 the sector workforce stood at 407,999 and disability employment rate at 2.5% – 3.1% off target. That meant recruiting around 50 people with disability a week for the next 5 years. How doable was that?

Moving on Attraction was no doubt important. But the higher priority was to establish a baseline of actual numbers. In an effort versus reward calculation a focus on Counting would have provided the best value for effort. An effective campaign to encourage current staff to report their disability to the internal diversity recording mechanism would have increased the reportable number of staff with disability employed within the sector at a far higher rate, and for less effort, than any other action.

It was entirely possible that some agencies already exceeded the 5.6% target in fact, but not in terms of official records. The most important question to ask was “Are we there already?” Then it would be possible to know how much off the target an agency was, and hence, then, to think about how best to go about hitting the target. 

Retention plays a vital role in ensuring that a workplace is accessible, inclusive, and psychologically safe. Resignation from public sector roles by people with disability because of bullying and discrimination is a leak that can and should be stopped. This is not just because it needlessly reduces the number of staff with disability employed, but because it is a clear issue of justice and fairness.

The response to the Premier’s Priority in 2019 was not strategic in any way. It produced the ineffectual Age of Inclusion campaign, and little else is apparent. There were some much needed improvements to recruitment practices in some agencies. But they were needed in any case.

In short, there has not been a sector-wide coordinated or strategic approach to hitting the 5.6% target.

The ARC must be seen like rainbow, but with 3 colours only, and with each colour having a spectrum of subtle tones. Nothing is simple and clear cut. No colour works alone. Let’s look at each a bit closer.

Attraction

Letting people with disabilities know they are welcome in the public sector is important. Getting them to apply with confidence is the first step. Making the application process accessible is the next step, but one that is not always done well. This is despite some obvious accommodations being made.

An example is that while applicants are asked if they have a need for an adjustment during the recruitment process, they can only ask for what they know or anticipate. Overly complex questions and a very short question preview time prior to interview can be a surprise to a candidate with a cognitive or psychological disability and derail their performance at interview. It’s too late to ask for an adjustment at that stage.

Decision-making bias is a major concern. Unless recruitment panels are well-schooled in decision-making hygiene methods a candidate with a disability can be eliminated from consideration because of unconscious bias. Training in unconscious bias does not appear to work and can create an illusion that it is effective simply because an individual is aware of the idea. Being aware of bias isn’t the same as countering it.

Recruitment by untrained panel members is commonplace, and it is rare to find a skilled inclusion specialist being included on recruitment panels. This means that genuinely effective inclusive recruitment may be a hard goal to achieve without an ongoing investment interview skills development.

The NSW public sector workforce is made of a diverse array of roles, some of which have limited capacity to accommodate a range of disabilities. Some agencies may have little motive and few resources to undertake an audit of roles to assess which may suit people with an array of disabilities – and then recruit. 

In the absence of such an audit, and a targeted commitment to employing people with disability, using recruitment to grow numbers as a primary strategy will fail. And if there is no assurance that recruiters and selection panels have the skills needed ensure recruitment processes are genuinely inclusive, and bias is kept in check, the level of success will remain low.

For equity reasons an effective Attraction methodology is essential. It may maintain an inflow of staff with disability, but it can’t be the main solution to the challenge of meeting the Premier’s Priority target.

Retention

Retaining staff with disability means addressing an array of physical, technological, and cultural issues. Failure to do so will have two main consequences:

• Staff with disability will exit for a variety of reasons concerning limitation of career prospects and discrimination and bullying
• Staff with disability will not comply with requests to complete diversity data survey accurately, or at all.

Retention concerns not only staff who enter the workforce with a disability, but those who acquire a disability while at work. Other than those acquired in the performance of duties, these can include disabilities arising from accident, illness, genetic predisposition, or ageing. 

Meeting the physical needs of staff with disability – in terms of accessibility and ergonomics is an WHS requirement; but addressing accessibility issues may not always be possible in older buildings. There are limits that are imposed because of cost. Sensitivity around location is essential.

Addressing technological needs is more than responding to requests for accessible devices; and includes legacy software that maybe too expensive to replace. An example may be a core business application that is not accessible to a screen reader. There will be issues about recruiting a person who uses a screen reader; but is then unable to access key software – which limits roles that can be performed, and hence career progression may be blocked.

An essential element of retention is the workplace culture, and especially the leadership/management culture. If bullying is not effectively checked staff with disability may elect to quit; or be ‘managed out’. While the character and quality of the workplace culture involves everyone, it is the leadership culture that enables or disables its expression in creating inclusive and safe workplaces.

Retention is a complex area that is fundamental to getting to, and maintaining, the minimal level of representation of staff with disability on a sector-wide basis, as well as per agency. All agencies should have the 5.6% target, not just the sector as a whole.

Counting

This is the bedrock of the challenge. It is last only because Attraction and Retention must do their bit first. The first action of the sector, on the announcement of the Premier’s Priority target should have been, “Okay, we know the 2.5% is wrong, because that’s what the anonymous PMES tells us. Let’s figure out what the actual percentage of staff with disability is. How do we do that effectively?”

There is a ‘trust gap’ between the reported data and the actual data. Staff do not trust their HR teams to keep their data confidential. And they have never been persuaded there’s a benefit to taking a real risk. Removing the risk and selling the benefit is an essential first act.

It is true that some staff are unaware that their agency wants their diversity data. Others, who figure their disability has no impact on their ability to perform in their role may not think their disability is relevant. Still others elect to not identify as being a person with disability. There’s a lot to do to get the numbers up. Developing trust is the key.

A critical area to be addressed is mental health illness. Staff diagnosed with a mental illness are the most likely to fear revealing their condition. The stigma associated with such a diagnosis is keenly felt. This is a complex area, and the trust gap extends beyond HR to include managers, and sometimes colleagues. Mental illness is not the only invisible disability that is not discussed out of fear of discrimination and bullying, but it is assessed as the most common.

A culture of psychological safety is essential if a worthwhile count of staff with disability is to be made and used as a reliable guide to the constitution of an agency’s workforce.

Good numbers when they are counted, are an indication that Retention is working. When staff feel safe, they are happy to provide their data and happy to reward their agency by helping it show how well it is doing on disability employment – and inclusion more generally.

There are some complexities about defining what a disability is for the purpose of the count. This is necessary because wearing glasses can be a sign of a vision disability. At what point does an impairment become a disability? A more useful definition is needed.

Conclusion

The NSW Premier’s Priority for the employment of people with disability is a numbers game. It is an important game because the numbers translate into human beings and the purpose of the target is to find an expression of a fair representation of disability in the public sector workforce in a way that reflects the community it serves.

But because the numbers are signifiers of people, we must remember that the human reality is deeply complex and subtle. Attraction, Retention and Counting make the ARC that bends towards Inclusion. Without skilled intervention that ARC has a long bend, stretching way beyond 2025. We can make it way tighter and shorter, with knowledge, skill, and commitment.

Introduction

Your Brain at Work is a book by Dr David Rock, a co-founder of the Neuroleadership Institute. It’s also the name of the Institute’s podcast.

The Neuroleadership Institute is dedicated to “Making Organizations More Human Through Science” and helping organizations “become smarter through more adaptive, resilient and inclusive leaders at all levels.”

Using brain science to achieve these goals is relatively new, and certainly not something I had come across before – other than the occasional references to scientific research in the more general conversations about organisational psychology and management practice.

Who is it useful for?

This content would suit readers who may have a psychological injury or disability; or a person whose disability makes working in a stressful work setting that much more difficult.

The book has a great deal to say about how to manage stress through developing an understanding of what is going on in your brain in a variety of scenarios. Being able to be aware of when built-in reflexes are being triggered gives the reader an opportunity to disrupt the reflex with a more intentional response.

The key message is that some experiences that trigger a ‘threat’ or ‘pain’ response don’t have to be responded to by just letting the brain follow a pattern rooted in its ancient past. At a basic level we have a binary response – away from or toward. We move away from danger and toward what is good.

These responses are unconscious to us because we have developed ‘explanations’ that we tell ourselves to justify how we reacted. We don’t know that we are responding to basic sensations of threat and pain.

We can learn to be aware of what is driving a reflexive response and we can choose to create a conscious evaluation of the level and nature of the threat or pain. This can begin with naming the feeling – “I feel threatened” or “I feel hurt”. That’s not something we may be good at doing – men especially.

Also useful for handling exclusion

I was interested to learn that the brain sees being excluded as something that causes pain. It is injurious. It is also a threat to our wellbeing. The extent to which brain-based senses of belonging and connecting are fundamental to our feelings of wellbeing was a surprise to me. 

Nobody likes feeling excluded, we all know the emotion that is triggered, even briefly. It is a flash of emotional distress that originates in our brains. Knowing this means we have a chance of better self-managing how we respond, and how we feel.

This isn’t a panacea to make exclusion okay. It’s a way of making an experience less painful than it might otherwise be. Its’s self-protective.

Conclusion

Your Brain at Work is a fascinating insight into the way in which our brain responds to challenges at work. Allowing a response to progress unmodified can set in place a chain of unintended consequences. Other people respond to a threat response with a threat response – and an unfortunate situation can escalate into an awful one.

The book is structured to take the reader through a series of scenarios that demonstrate what can happen when a response is unchecked, and then what can happen when checks are put in place.

It helped me to better understand my responses to stress and threat. And it made me more aware of the importance of the conscious choice between going with an instinctive flow, and taking responsibility for my reactions. It also helped me understand why inclusion is so important – for the psychological and physical health of ourselves and our colleagues.

Introduction

I was sent an email announcing that the NSW Public Sector Commission is setting up a talent pool for Grade 9/10 roles. As these roles are where team leaders and managers often come from. I was keen to learn more.

The email from the Deputy Public Service Commissioner said in part, “Following a rigorous assessment process, the pool of successful candidates will be available from 1 July 2022 for 18 months. Recruiters and hiring managers in the sector can access the talent pool and browse for suitable candidates for ongoing and temporary roles, full time or part-time, in both greater Sydney and regional NSW.”

It looked like a good idea – until I looked at the focus capabilities, and then I was disappointed. I want to discuss why.

The Capability Framework

I love clear, well thought out methodologies, and the NSW Capability Framework is a very useful tool. At least, it would be if it was used as intended.

In sum, it has 5 groups of capabilities, each with 4 members, and with one of four levels of competence to be assigned to each capability. A capability is described as the knowledge, skill and ability required to perform a role.

For each individual capability there is a list behavioural indicators for each level. These briefly describe the behaviour that indicates performance at the desired level of competence.

Position Descriptions for a role specify focus capabilities and their levels. These are the required knowledge, skills, and abilities for the role. They replace the essential criteria of the traditional recruitment method. There may be some additional occupation-specific requirements in some instances.

Capability frameworks are in widespread use globally, but there is a common observation that they are frequently not used effectively, or beyond a mere ‘lip service’ level. In NSW the framework is employed in the development of a Position Description, and then frequently completely ignored in the rest of the recruitment process.

Why does this matter for staff with disability?

There are several issues to be considered:

Source of confusion and stress

If the capability framework is employed in a haphazard manner in a recruitment process, a candidate cannot reliably guess whether the panel will be using the framework, and to what degree. Hence crafting responses to the focus questions and preparation for the interview may generate needless stress and anxiety.

For example, a focus question response is usually a standard A4 page, and that is around 540 words at 12pt Arial. There are 2 such questions, giving around 1080 words to articulate how you meet the focus capabilities. Now and then a job ad may allow a 2-page cover letter as well.

If the panel is using the capability framework to evaluate applications, this means that an applicant has 2 pages plus their CV to indicate ability to meet 30 or so behavioural indicators. If it is not, and merely playing lip service to the framework by having the capabilities in the position description – because that is what is required, there will be far less pressure on an applicant. But how would you know? Not everybody asks.

For candidates with a psychological disability, and/or, a predisposition to be highly particular, this could generate a high level of uncertainty and stress. And if the application is culled – why was that? If it was because the focus capabilities were not addressed sufficiently, is that a useful guide for the next application?

A uniform expectation that the focus capabilities will be assessed in a methodical manner is surely preferable.

How is an applicant assessed?

Absent reliance on the capability framework, what has a panel to go on, other than to fall back on old ways of doing things? This usually means the application gets you the interview, and the interview gets you the job. Instead of the interview being just one step in the selection process it becomes the determining element. 

This creates two problems. The first is that the focus capabilities can be applied erratically and selectively to support a decision made on other criteria. The second is that bias is likely to have influenced the decision-making.

Research on bias indicates that it is very hard to avoid. Decision-making hygiene proponents argue for a structured approach to assessing candidates. The capability framework should provide a foundation for enabling bias-free recruitment decisions. An assessment table using the focus capabilities would allow for a capability-by-capability assessment across all candidates – a methodology recommended to reduce bias.

One size does not fit all – especially when its undemanding

The PSC grade 9/10 position description lists 7 focus capabilities, all at Adept level. To me that sets an underwhelming standard to “attract new, high quality talent”. I noted when I began this blog that I have grave concerns over the low level of demand made on senior staff. Adept level may sound good, but it is bang in the middle of the 5 levels – Foundational, Intermediate, Adept, Advance, Highly Advanced.

There is overwhelming evidence that very well-developed personal attributes are critical in effective leadership. This is part of a growing trend as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion become increasingly important across the globe. If the NSW public sector wants to be a World Class public service it must do much better in what it expects from its senior staff. For instance, a Position Description for recent grade 9/10 vacancy in the People Culture and Talent team in the Department of Premier and Cabinet listed 7 focus capabilities – 2 Intermediate, 3 Adept and 2 Advanced. The two Intermediates were Value Inclusion and Diversity and Deliver Results. 

I have been looking a Position Descriptions for the past 6 months, and this was the first time I have come across any focus capabilities at such a low level as intermediate. Even uniform Adept is not okay at a senior level in my view. This is certainly the case when it comes to personal attributes.

The greatest risk to staff with disability comes from managers and leaders who lack empathy, self-insight, and a commitment to ensuring psychological safety. The PSC Age of Inclusion manifesto asserted Today leaders inspire with self-awareness and empathy, and then it develops a generic 9/10 Position with such soft requirements for the Personal Attributes? The Position Description nominated only one Personal Attribute – Display courage and resilience.

Personal Attributes in the Capability Framework

The Capability Framework lists 4 Personal Attributes:

• Display courage and resilience – Be open and honest, prepared to express your views, and willing to accept and commit to change
• Act with integrity – Be ethical and professional, and uphold and promote the public sector values
• Manage self – Show drive and motivation, an ability to self-reflect and a commitment to learning
• Value inclusion and diversity – Demonstrate inclusive behaviour and show respect for diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives

Which of those capabilities would you edit out of a selection for a team leader or manager role? It is rare to see more than 2 listed, which invites the question, “Which are optional two?” It is also rare to see the level above Adept for 9/10 and 11/12 roles.

Below are the Advanced level behavioural indicators for each of the 4 Personal Attributes. Which would you consider an unreasonable expectation of a grade 9/10 senior role – or higher?

Display courage and resilience

• Remain composed and calm and act constructively in highly pressured and unpredictable environments 
• Give frank, honest advice in response to strong contrary views 
• Accept criticism of own ideas and respond in a thoughtful and considered way 
• Welcome new challenges and persist in raising and working through novel and difficult issues 
• Develop effective strategies and show decisiveness in dealing with emotionally charged situations and difficult or controversial issues

Act with integrity

• Model the highest standards of ethical and professional behaviour and reinforce their use 
• Represent the organisation in an honest, ethical and professional way and set an example for others to follow 
• Promote a culture of integrity and professionalism within the organisation and in dealings external to government 
• Monitor ethical practices, standards and systems and reinforce their use 
• Act promptly on reported breaches of legislation, policies and guidelines

Manage self

• Act as a professional role model for colleagues, set high personal goals and take pride in their achievement 
• Actively seek, reflect and act on feedback on own performance 
• Translate negative feedback into an opportunity to improve 
• Take the initiative and act in a decisive way 
• Demonstrate a strong interest in new knowledge and emerging practices relevant to the organisation

Value inclusion and diversity

• Encourage and include diverse perspectives in the development of policies and strategies
• Take advantage of diverse views and perspectives to develop new approaches to delivering outcomes
• Build and monitor a workplace culture that enables diversity and fair and inclusive practices 
• Implement practices and systems to ensure that individuals can participate to their fullest ability 
• Recognise the value of individual differences to support broader organisational strategies 
• Address non-inclusive behaviours, practices and attitudes within the organisation 
• Champion the business benefits generated by workforce diversity and inclusive practices

Conclusion

Somebody makes choices about the Personal Attribute capabilities for a role – how many, which one/s, and at what levels. These choices are expressed in Position Descriptions for senior positions. What are they thinking? What is their rationale? What are their values?

I think I can confidently say that very few are thinking, “Let’s ensure we select people who can be leaders who inspire with self-awareness and empathy. Let’s make sure we have leaders who can foster and maintain safe and inclusive work cultures and work practices.”

The Capability Framework is a great tool. It’s not hard to use. It doesn’t take long to get comfortable using it. But great tools are not much use if you do not have a vision and purpose for using them.

The PSC has shown such a lack. But that’s across the sector too. A failure to use the tool as intended leaves applicants with disability exposed to the perpetuation of bias; and it can make the application process far more challenging than it should to be.