The University of Sydney Business School says Australian businesses can do more to promote diversity and inclusion.
It conducted a survey, one of the largest of its kind, containing 90 questions, answered by 281 executives, mainly from companies with more than 1,000 staff.
While it found most businesses had a diversity and inclusion budget, 39 per cent did not.
One of the biggest concerns is around cultural diversity, with less than one-third saying they addressed cultural needs.
6,500 people work at accounting company Deloitte and senior partner Margaret Dreyer says they don't all look and think the same.
Margaret Dreyer, Deloitte Senior Partner Source: Ricardo Goncalves
"We want our people to have a sense of belonging, we want people to be respected and valued. We want to value their individual differences rather than what makes them the same and from a client perspective we want to take to them the best solutions and how do we do that? Through diversity of thoughts."
"There is a strong business case for diversity and inclusion; it leads to contributions to the bottom line so there is confounding evidence that if we have cultural and linguistic diversity that represents the broader Australian population, it's representing your customer base, it's representing your client base it leads to a business outcome."
Deloitte has been running a diversity and inclusion program since 2003 which Margaret Dreyer says initially focused on gender balance.
"At intake it varies - 45/55, 40/60 give or take gender wise - and as we move up we lose a few of our women for various reasons and really that's why we've put this in place. How do we get that unfair share? And if you look now at the partnership level, 23 per cent of our partners are women, and 30 per cent of our board are women."
While large companies do have a greater capacity to fund such initiatives, Associate Professor Di van den Broek from the University of Sydney's Business School says not all companies do.
"I think the budget issue is quite a complex one. Sixty per cent of our respondents said they had a budget but a lot of those who had a budget said it was inadequate to push through the diversity and inclusion agenda that they wanted."
Despite that, many organisations are doing things right when it comes to certain aspects of diversity and inclusion, says Dr Dimitria Groutsis also from the Business School. But she says some areas need work.
"We have a focus on a variety of different diversity and inclusion initiatives like gender, harassment and bullying, disability access, flexible work and work-life balance, but less than a third of our practitioners focus on culturally and linguistically diverse groups."
"Asia is becoming more and more important for us from a business perspective and understanding Japanese, Chinese, and other Asian cultures is important as it enables you to understand what is required and how you deliver that".
Deloitte's Margaret Dreyer says the growing importance of Asia makes cultural diversity hard to ignore.
"Asia is becoming more and more important for us from a business perspective and understanding Japanese, Chinese, and other Asian cultures is important as it enables you to understand what is required and how you deliver that. I service a number of Japanese clients, and understanding the culture and how they communicate enables me and my team to effectively deliver what is required."
But while cultural and linguistic diversity is represented at a non-senior level, Dr Groutsis says there is a critical drop off when it comes to senior management.
"When we break this down by main English speaking country backgrounds and non-main English speaking background, the main English-speaking background representation is far greater so what we need to do is start having a discussion about why don't we have more people from non-English speaking backgrounds in those senior leadership positions."
Dr Groutsis adds, the challenge is to convince senior executives that the investment in diversity and inclusion flows through to the bottom line.
"There is a strong business case for diversity and inclusion; it leads to contributions to the bottom line so there is confounding evidence that if we have cultural and linguistic diversity that represents the broader Australian population, it's representing your customer base, it's representing your client base it leads to a business outcome."
That change has to come from the top.
