HOW INCLUSIVE IS YOUR WORKPLACE? AND WHY IT MATTERS

AND WHY IT MATTERS

There is an evocative statement on the Rainbow Tick website which seems to encompass what diversity and inclusion, in all its forms, really means. It says: “Diversity is being asked to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance.” Annie Gray asks if New Zealand’s corporate sector is asking all their employees to dance and what it means from both a personal and business perspective.

There is an evocative statement on the Rainbow Tick website which seems to encompass what diversity and inclusion, in all its forms, really means. It says: “Diversity is being asked to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance.” Annie Gray asks if New Zealand’s corporate sector is asking all their employees to dance and what it means from both a personal and business perspective.

THE STATEMENT THAT says that inclusion is being asked to dance is attributed to Verna May, a United States expert who has spent the last two decades helping eradicate barriers of race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation at global businesses.

In an article she penned for the Harvard Business Review last year she says that: “Diversity is here to stay; it’s not a fluke. Leaders who are not fluent in the language of inclusion are liabilities to their organisations.”

So how is New Zealand’s corporate sector stacking up? There has been a great deal of prominence given to gender equality in recent years and that of embracing different cultures and ethnicities but is this fairness and equality translating through to the Rainbow community?

If the 2018 Auckland Pride Parade in February is anything to go by, it is certainly resonating with some of New Zealand’s corporate sector. It seems the parade was awash with corporates – banks, insurers, government institutions, the NZ Police, St John Ambulance, pharmaceutical companies and political parties were all represented.

And it has been so for some years. Gina McJorrow, the senior HR manager at ANZ Bank in New Zealand, says the bank has been involved in the parade for at least five years.

As have other New Zealand corporates and organisations. But momentum does seem to be gathering apace in the past few years says Rainbow Tick’s Michael Stevens. He set the organisation up four years ago and says while their timing appears to be good, more still needs to be done.

The term “Rainbow” encompasses people who are LGBTTI or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, takatāpui and intersex, according to the Rainbow Tick website which says that while the idea of ethnic and gender equality matters to New Zealanders equality for the Rainbow community “is a work in progress”.

So who is asking their staff and customers to dance? In February this year Rainbow Tick had 35 certified organisations, another 15 or so were signed up and going through the evaluation process and Stevens said they were talking to another 10 or 12.

Rainbow Tick’s first client was Simpson Grierson which was quickly followed by SkyCity, ASB and CocaCola Amatil (NZ).

Amongst those listed on the Rainbow Tick website are Auckland Council, BNZ, Fletcher Building, KPMG, Mercer, NZ Rugby, Sovereign, Spark, Vector and Westpac, to name a few.

ANZ’s Gina McJorrow agrees that Rainbow Tick seems to be gaining real momentum. And while ANZ has been involved with the Rainbow community for many years, going through the Rainbow Tick evaluation process in 2014 provided an external formalisation and objective audit which added weight to what they had already been doing.

Another emphasis for the bank has been the “Hold Tight” programme it introduced after internal research found that not all their staff felt comfortable holding hands with their partner in public. McJorrow says the resulting video, in which ANZ staff talk about how important it is to hold hands, was viewed millions of times.

The feedback from third parties has been 100 percent positive and she says that at the recent Pride Parade as the ANZ float went past customers were lifting their hands in the air and waving their ANZ cards to show support.

“We have been blown away by the level of positivity. We hope that by us taking a stance with such a visible thing [as holding hands] it gives people a bit of a shake-up and makes them think about diversity and inclusion.”

She emphasised that ANZ ensures its LGBTTI staff are involved in all its Rainbow initiatives and that they drive all the inclusion activities the bank undertakes.

A recent move also saw ANZ change its corporate wardrobe policy so uniformed staff can wear corporate clothes that best fits their gender identity.

McJorrow says the bank wants to ensure that it’s an organisation that stands up for diversity and inclusion “and we feel that is really important to our customers and to the community”.

As to the business case McJorrow says it stacks ks up from different angles. From an engagement perspective pective – engagement with the Pride community rises year-on-year r-on-year and staff engagement means people feel they can an be themselves at work, they are not having to be one e thing at work and another at home.

“Our customers know that and with staff feeling ng they can be themselves, this reduces staff turnover er and also reduces absenteeism as both internal and external xternal stresses and challenges are reduced.”

McJorrow says there is a growing appetite in corporate New Zealand to embrace wider diversity and she says fewer people are able to get away with putting ng their heads in the sand, although there are many different levels of progress being made.

“This is not a tick-the-box exercise for us – it is an ongoing process where we constantly look at what else we can do.”

She is also heartened by a recent staff engagement survey asking if the organisation

Initiatives that Cigna has undertaken include a transition policy for staff who would like to transition gender while working at Cigna. This outlines their commitment to working with the individual and consulting with them throughout as there is no one way to transition. They have trained the leadership team on sexuality and gender identity and why it’s important in the workplace and made this training available to all staff as well as having gender neutral bathrooms available on all floors.

Also amongst the corporates taking a stance is the New Zealand arm of GSK, a global healthcare company. Its general manager, Anna Stove, says more needs to be done to encourage Rainbow diversity in the workplace.

She says in a media release that while the local movement to introduce gender equality at managerial level is gathering momentum, it's important that other sectors of the workforce are not overlooked. And notes that achieving organisational diversity means more than just a token effort and businesses need to make a public statement of support for this part of the community in the workforce.

“Achieving company-wide diversity is a process which requires a significant investment in training and policy making. We want to attract talent from the broadest spectrum of the population to ensure we get and retain the best people.”

She says a demonstration of how effective making the inclusion process can be is that one of her team felt comfortable enough to ‘come out’ to their colleagues during the diversity audit and training process.

“Although GSK NZ has a very open and honest culture our staff member had concerns that ‘coming out’ could potentially affect their career progression within a multinational company.

“Because the company was committed to being Rainbow certified it gave them the confidence to discuss this more openly,” she says.