Elephant in the room: the diversity gap
25/08/2011
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HR is not doing enough to drive positive changes in creating truly diverse workplaces, according to industry experts.
At the annual Think Women and WomenOnBoards seminar series hosted in various locations across Australia this month, a range of speakers addressed issues related to diversity in workplaces, the role of HR to this end, and strategies to bridge the gender gap.
Dr Margaret Byrne, a member of the Oxford Business Alumni and honorary advisor on leadership and change at Wollongong University, said there is lots of talk about creating more diverse workplaces, but questioned whether organisations are really driving change.
Dr Byrne likened the lack of diversity in workplaces to an ‘elephant in the room’, and said there is a responsibility on organisations, and indeed HR, to drive change and increase the quality and number of vacancies open to diverse societal groups.
Byrne said that change is only possible by “Building a culture where diverse groups can thrive and contribute”.
Adding that Australia is a diverse society simply by nature, Byrne said its high time women and people from diverse backgrounds are afforded more opportunities to contribute, and to have their contributions recognised.
During the Sydney seminar, the notion of a ‘virtuous cycle’ was referred to by several experts- that being if contributions are welcomed, people will be implicitly encouraged to continue making contributions, and therefore want to contribute more frequently.
Cara Morton, managing director of Accenture Finance and Performance Management Consulting Asia-Pacific, said that with 55% of university graduates being female, there is the reasonable expectation that the statistic would be reflected up the career level – but it’s not.
Morton said that having diversity constituted “collective intelligence” in theworkplace. In order to leverage diversity, she said the first step is to build an inclusive culture by instituting protocols which will assist moving beyond unconscious bias.
In her research, Dr Byrne found that women are continually under-represented in high level categories, and said such practices are akin to “homogenous mediocrity”.
Byrne added “If you level the playing field, the cream will rise to the top. That is to say, if you have diversity properly implemented, it will be easy to have diversity at the top level.”