A new study reveals businesses can - and arguably should - do more to promote diversity and inclusion. The University of Sydney Business School conducted the survey - one of largest of its kind. Its 90 questions drew 281 responses, mainly from companies with more than 1,000 staff.
What it found was that while most businesses had a diversity and inclusion budget, 39 per cent had no budget. One of the biggest concerns is around cultural diversity - fewer than one-third say they addressed cultural needs.
6,500 people work at accounting company Deloitte and senior partner Margaret Dreyer says they don't all look the same and they don't all think the same.
"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."
It's 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 gender-wise. 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? If you look now at the partnership level, 23 per cent of our partners, CEOs, are women, 30 per cent of our board are women."
Large companies have a greater capacity to fund such initiatives, but Associate Professor Di van den Broek, from the University of Sydney's Business School, says not all are doing so.
"I think the budget issue is quite a complex one, 60 per cent of our respondents said they had a budget but a lot of those who had a budget said that it was inadequate to push through the diversity and inclusion agenda they wanted."
Despite that many organisations are doing things right when it comes to certain aspects of diversity and inclusion, says her University of Sydney colleague Dr Dimitra Groutsis. However Dr Groutsis says some areas still need work.
"We have a focus on a variety of different diversity and inclusion initiatives like gender, harassment and bullying, disability access, flexible work, work-life balance but less than a third of our practitioners focus on culturally and linguistically diverse groups."
Deloitte's Margaret Dreyer says Asia's growing importance to the world economy makes cultural diversity hard to ignore.
"Asia is becoming more and more important for us, from a business perspective and understanding cultures - Japanese, Chinese, and other Asian countries - is important and 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 up the talent pipeline, Dr Groutsis says, as with the gender balance, 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 represented 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 linquistic 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.
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