Published works

‘Diversity and inclusion: building strength and capability’ is a three-year project commissioned by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, which commenced in July 2017 and has just completed its third year of exploration. It has been a challenging year in terms of delivery, and the project has had to adjust its research plan to accommodate the unprecedented bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic, which have impacted the university and the stakeholder organisations. As a result, the project will now deliver the final outputs for the project in the second half of 2020.

During the third phase, we have focused our activities around consolidating key findings in the organisational stream and testing these in another industry to look for commonalities and points of divergence. New needs that emerged from the second year review highlight the necessity for further indepth review in relation to the economic and community areas. Activities have continued with a case study approach and three reports have been completed.

Key areas of focus for this phase have been as follows:

• Undertaking two economic and community case studies
• Testing and refining the framework concepts and processes
• Collation of case studies to highlight key areas of research for delivery for the final documents that focus on management and measurement
• Collation of measurement sources.

Key findings from this phase of the research are as follows:

• Investment in D&I varies considerably between different programs. How well they can be assessed relies heavily on the data available and the current economic tools that can be used for assessment.
• Measurement in relation to diversity has increased over the last three years in organisations, but aspects such as culture/spirituality and gender identity remain indicative as they are optional and can only be assessed at a community level through the census data.
• Measurement for inclusion is still in its infancy in terms of measurements used in organisations. In terms of measurement of inclusion within their communities, there were no specific tools found to support this type of measurement being used in the sector.
• Awareness as to how to manage diversity within organisations inclusively is growing, but there is still considerable work to do in relation to the development of capability and support tools.
• In terms of capability, organisations have pockets of skills and capabilities, but there is a need to strategically plan for and build capability, particularly in relation to the management of human and social risk.
• There is need for organisations to value and formally reward those who invest in the development of D&I skills and capability.

Stakeholder engagement has been limited during this phase, as it was put on hold between November 2019 and April 2020. Where possible, we have maintained contact through individual interactions. We have also had a reduced level of outreach such as presentations due to the cancellation of a number of conferences, however the project team was involved in three presentations at the 2019 AFAC conference.