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DCA Diversity Leadership Program 25 May 2017

LISA ANNESE:

Thank you. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Lisa Annese and I'm the CEO of

the Diversity Council Australia. I welcome you all here to these beautiful premises. And I thank

Gilbert + Tobin for their hospitality. They are a proud member of DCA, and have been for a very

long time.

I'd like to welcome you to this very important event on enhancing workplace access and

inclusion and achieving disability confidence. I think we're going to have a great discussion. We

have some wonderful guests here today.

We have representatives from some wonderful members who are doing great work in the area. I

will introduce them a bit later, but firstly, we would like to have our formal Welcome to Country.

And I would like to invite Aunty Millie Ingram to the podium.

AUNTY MILLIE INGRAM:

Thanks, Lisa. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and distinguished guests and any of my

own people that may be in the room. I welcome you. It is my honour to be here today to give

you a warm and sincere welcome to a very important forum. I thank you for inviting me.

Welcome to Country is a protocol practised by my people for thousands of years. The protocol

is for traditional owners to welcome visitors to their country and give safe passage across their

homelands.

I'm happy that government, NGOs and corporate recognise the value of Welcome to Country,

which in a small way brings First Nations people closer together with our fellow Australians. I

believe the gap between us has been too wide for too long.

I welcome you to the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. For those of you who may

not know, the Eora Nation is bounded by three rivers – the Hawkesbury to the north, the

Nepean to the West and the Georges River to the south. And of course, the Pacific Ocean to

the east.


I'm a descendant of the Wiradjuri nation in New South Wales and I'd like to acknowledge the

traditional custodians, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, as the traditional custodians of the

land on which we're meeting today. And I pay my respects to Elders past and present.

For over 40,000 years, our traditional owners and custodians cared for the lands that make up

the wonderful country of Australia. It is my view that even though each of us may own a little

patch of our country, as Australians, we are all custodians of our lands, responsible for caring

for it and all the people on it to protect it and preserve it for future generations.

There are many different nationalities that have settled over here in the past 229 years, and I

like the diversity of our Australian society today. However, we the Aboriginal people have the

unique distinction of being the first, the First Nations people. Despite this uniqueness, we were

very much excluded from many things in our country. Up until 50 years ago, on Saturday, 27

May, we were first counted as Australians in the Census. And this took a national referendum to

have this inclusion. Many of you may have been citizens of this country before we, the

Aboriginal people, were given citizenship.

We all share this great country of ours. We have all built today's Australia together. We should

always coexist with mutual respect for each other, no matter our cultural background and

heritage. We should support the many people that may be worse off than us. There could be

many reasons for their place in life. Poor physical or mental health, poverty, poor education,

unemployment, dysfunctional home life or no home life at all or bad government policies. We

must not sit in judgement on others.

We are not all equal in our society. People like yourselves today that support organisations that

help people throughout their lives, I salute you. Because many people, especially women and

children and people with disability, would be more deprived of a good quality of life without your

help and support.

But that is what is good about many Australians. We are always there to help others less

fortunate than ourselves. We have come a long way but we certainly have a long way to go to

ensure that all Australians have equality and a good quality of life. Let's not work in silos but

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work together, share innovation and good practice. Let's strive for excellence in all we do. Strive

for great outcomes that will benefit all Australians.

May I wish you a long and happy and healthy life for yourselves and your families. I wish you a

safe and trouble-free journey home to your homes today, and may you always walk in safety

when you walk on Gadigal land. Thank you, everybody. And welcome.

(Applause)

LISA ANNESE:

Thank you so much, Aunty Millie, for that beautiful Welcome to Country. It's always shocking to

hear again how late it was for our Indigenous brothers and sisters to obtain the same status that

we have in terms of our voting rights. And we still have a way to go in terms of all other rights.

I too would like to acknowledge that we meet here on the traditional lands of the Gadigal people

of the Eora Nation. I pay my respects to Elders past and present.

The event today is an extremely important one. DCA has also, like many organisations, been on

a journey to become more accessible, to become more inclusive of individuals who need to

access our information in different ways.

And many of you may have noticed that we launched a new website almost 2 months ago. That

website has been launched with a focus on accessibility. And even though we still have a few

things to sort out, I'm very proud of the work we have done in creating a website where all our

information for members is available to all of our members with equity of access.

In the same line, this event is also being accessed by people in lots of different ways. So we are

gathered together in the room, but we also have 93 separate lines dialled into this event at the

moment and people joining us via live stream audio across the country. And gathering wherever

it is convenient for them or wherever they need to be.

So the event is being recorded as well. And it will be available on our website following the

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conclusion of the event. We'll do a bit of editing and then put it onto the website. Again, if you'd

like to revisit the event or share it with people that aren't here, that is something you can also

do.

We also live caption our events. And this particular event, as you can see, can be followed on

www.ai-live.com and you can see there is a session ID on your screen and also on your seats if

you need to follow the live captions. We then create a transcript of all our events and upload

that to our website together with the recording of the event. So we hope we are continuing to

make our events as inclusive as we can to as many members of the community and the

corporate sector as we can.

Now, of course, I have to mention the people that are not here in the room today. We have a lot

of people here representing communities where they need to represent people with disability, or

people who identify as having a disability themselves.

Lots of our events are very broad in the sense that if we were to run an event on gender, we

tend to get mainly women attending the event. If we run an event on Indigenous identity, we

tend to get a lot of people working in that area. But I long for the day when all types of people,

whether they require accessibility, are here because we all have a responsibility in creating a

world where everyone has to live. And it is just as important that the mantle is taken up by

people who don't have an identifiable disability.

You also don't know where your life will end up. As we have an ageing population, we have

increasing numbers of people requiring accessibility options. Anyway, we are here to talk about

that today. We are here to talk about how to create workplaces that are more inclusive, how to

become more confident in terms of having discussions around disability. And then we are even

going to talk to a panel of experts who have designed workplaces where their staff and

customers and clients can access and be active participants, and then people with the lived

experience of having a disability.

So I would like to start by welcoming Darren Fittler, who is a partner at Gilbert + Tobin, to the

podium. Darren, many of you probably know him. He has been a very active voice in the

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disability space. He joined Gilbert + Tobin in June 2004, and is the lead partner in the firm's

Third Sector Advisory Group. He has specific expertise with respect to charities and not-for-

profit organisations.

But he is also sitting on the New South Wales Attorney General's Disability Advisory Council. He

attends meetings at the UN in New York, helping in the development of an international

convention of rights for people with disability. And he is a member of the DCA Board of

Directors. So, welcome.

(Applause)

DARREN FITTLER:

Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us here at Gilbert + Tobin today for a very important

and what I hope will be useful and entertaining time as we explore disability inclusion and

diversity together. For those that can see it, apparently we have fabulous views. So enjoy those.

There are bathroom facilities out past the reception desk, including accessible toilets. And I'm

not going to stay here for too long because we're probably already a bit behind in time and I will

have a chance to talk to you a bit more being part of the panel. But welcome, thanks for coming,

and I look forward to sharing the afternoon together with you today.

(Applause)

LISA ANNESE:

Thanks, Darren. Thanks for the gentle reminder we are a little bit over time as well. I get

enthusiastic about topics. And I can talk about them for quite a while.

Our next speaker is Edward Santow, from the Human Rights Commission. Ed is the fairly new

Human Rights Commissioner. He was appointed in 2016, August 2016. He was a previous

lecturer at the UNSW Law School and a research director at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public

Law.

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Thank you for not being at Senate Estimates today. (Laughs)

(Applause)

EDWARD SANTOW:

Thank you very much, Lisa, for that warm welcome. I would like also to acknowledge in

particular Aunty Millie Ingram as a representative of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander communities. More specifically, I would also like to acknowledge that we are meeting

on land the traditional owners of which are the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.

Thank you, Darren, for having us. Your offices are nicer than ours and that probably shows you

that all is right with the world. But I would like to thank DCA who are running this event.

I'm standing in today for my friend and colleague Alastair McEwin, who is detained at Senate

Estimates. I am tempted to pause briefly on the word 'detained' at Senate Estimates, as there is

undoubtedly a pun to be made there but it is not worth my life or career to make that pun.

But Alastair McEwin is Australia's Disability Discrimination Commissioner. It is hard to think of

anyone who combines his decency, his intellect, his integrity, and his love of puns. Who could

ask for more in a colleague or a Commissioner? In his work as Disability Discrimination

Commissioner, Al has a focus on unconscious bias.

In my view, and I think I speak for Al and the Commission more broadly, unconscious bias is

especially insidious as it is ingrained and it rarely involves any active or conscious intent to treat

a person less favourably.

Unconscious bias can arise in many different scenarios, in respect of different situations and

categories of person. We have seen recently a number of examples of unconscious bias arising

in a different context to the one we are talking about here, but let me pause briefly on that. That

context being race or ethnicity. There was a piece earlier this month in 'The Atlantic' that started

with an analysis of two photos that were published in the media in the aftermath of Hurricane

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Katrina, in New Orleans.

In one of those photos, a black man was depicted carrying provisions under his arm as he

waded through chest deep water. In the second photo, a white couple is carrying provisions

through water up to their elbows. Fundamentally very similar photos.

The photo of the black man is captioned, "A young man walks through water after looting a

grocery store." By contrast, the white couple is captioned, "A couple wading through water after

finding food and soda." On the one hand, the use of the words 'looting' and 'finding' might

appear insignificant. But it is not. If that choice of label reflects common assumptions in this

case about black people in the United States, we should not ignore it or pass over it.

We know, the research on this is utterly clear, that those assumptions are fundamentally guiding

behaviour. They can have a significant effect on choices made by police and prosecutors, by

employers and others. Those choices in turn have serious consequences that when you follow

them down the line, you can end up in a series of crossroads that could be prison on the one

hand or happily in your own home on the other. In a job, on one hand, or struggling to find

employment on the other.

Turning to the subject matter of today. The Human Rights Commission report last year, the

'Willing to Work' report talked about unconscious bias against people with disability. The

Commission has countless stories, I will refer to a couple. One was from people with disability

applying for a job, being asked questions about their impairment, where those questions were

completely irrelevant to the performance of the job itself. The material that potential employers

were getting may have felt relevant to them, but it was not. The problem perhaps stemmed from

inadequate understanding of what a person needed to be able to do to do the relevant job and

what was just irrelevant detail about that individual.

Similarly, the Commission heard stories about basically disclosed ignorance. Sometimes well-

meaning ignorance but nevertheless ignorance among employers about what a person with

disability can truly achieve.

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To make this very personal, very briefly, my father was a lawyer, and then he was a judge. We

almost never talked about the law. I think he would have been happy to talk more about it than I

was, but anyway we almost never did. But I once asked him, "Dad, what makes a good judge?"

His answer always surprised me and stuck with me. He said, "I think..." I think he was referring

to wisdom he had gleaned along the way, he said, "I think the best judge is someone who can

suppress their prejudices."

I like that idea because it is realistic in its acknowledgement that we all come into the world with

what might be empirical knowledge when we think about Homo sapiens being intelligent life.

And on the other hand, we also bring with us a series of things that are not based on close

academic or empirical study. Sometimes they're just heuristics and innocuous but sometimes

they are worse. Sometimes they are things that are both wrong and damaging to ourselves or

other people.

By acknowledging that we have within us that mix of good and bad, and being conscious of the

fact that we are likely to start in the world with some prejudice, not just being conscious of it but

taking the active step of suppressing the prejudice, that is not just the hallmark of a good judge

but the hallmark of good decision-making more broadly. And all of you are called upon in your

daily lives to make good decisions. And to make the decisions particularly that affect the

diversity of people in our community including people with disability. If you are able to identify

where the gaps in your knowledge are – we have understandings that may not be accurate and

you can address that – you are more likely to contribute to a happy community and one that is

truly diverse.

The last thing I wanted to mention is some work that I did prior to coming to the Commission but

I’m going to start with another paean, in this case a former Disability Discrimination

Commissioner, Graeme Innes. A wonderful speaker, a wonderful communicator. The first

thing... It was a great speech from his former organisation. He is blind and I won't do justice to it

but he began by saying, "You bloody able-bodied people who can see, you don't realise how

much you are costing me, you have all of these lights on the whole time and you expect me to

dip into my pocket to keep those, to contribute to the cost of running the lights."

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And he pointed to one of the attendees at the dinner who was in a wheelchair and said, "You

expect Sally to contribute to the cost of all the seats. Lovely seats, I'm sure they are expensive,

but she has been kinder than the rest of you and brought her own seat. So I don't think it is fair

that she should be expected to contribute to the cost of the seat."

He could go on and on but the point is you start with a series of assumptions of what are costs

that should be borne across the entire community. Those assumptions are themselves, on the

whole, not particularly inclusive. And so when we come to the second part of what I want to say

in respect to Graeme’s experience, we need to be more inclusive about the more obvious

adjustments that we may need to make in categories of people with disabilities.

Graeme in his personal capacity was a former client of my former organisation. He is blind and

catches the train to and from work each day. Many of you would be aware of the case we ran on

his behalf. For those who are not, let me give you the short version. Graeme catches the train to

and from work each day and the problem with catching the train in Sydney, at least when we

took this case on, was that Sydney trains did not have reliable audible announcements. That is

effectively saying when you get to the relevant train station there should be someone saying,

"Town Hall," or whatever the train station is.

If you are blind or dyslexic or you have vision impairment, whatever reason you want, for a

quarter of a million people in Australia who rely on audible announcements and it is not reliable,

that makes life really difficult. The time that Graeme took this case, the failure rate was 20%.

That means one in five trains. Twice a week on his daily commute on average, there would not

be a reliable audible announcement.

That means that there was a strong chance Graeme would get off on the wrong stop which is

not just inconvenient but downright dangerous. We had a client in a similar position to Graeme

who ended up falling on the train tracks because of stuff-ups through the process.

So we thought, oh well, it is great to have Graeme as a client because he is an amazing

communicator but this is not, in a sense almost sadly for me as a lawyer, this is not a case that

will go to court because no one will be silly enough to want to litigate. They will settle.

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How wrong I was. As obvious as it seems to me that this was a matter that just needed to be

resolved practically, taking into account the fact that when you look at this issue worldwide, any

major city in the world they would have a failure rate at the maximum of 2%. In Sydney the

failure rate was 20%. Nevertheless, the response that we kept on getting was essentially it is

too darn hard. It is too hard to train the guards on the trains to give an announcement to say,

"Town Hall."

(Laughter)

EDWARD SANTOW:

That really shocked me. It was claimed it would cost $1 million to train the guards to say, "Town

Hall." It was indefensible stuff. The truth, of course, is it was not that difficult and the truth is, in

the end, my former organisation had to litigate the matter, had to get the positive result in order

to enforce the rights on behalf of Graeme and all the other people behind him.

It is not just a human right as important as that is, it is also a right that enables Graeme to, as I

said, go to and from work each day. To live a productive life, to contribute as an economic agent

in a community, which does not just benefit Graeme, it benefits all of us because we live in the

era of homo economicus where our lives are so intertwined that we want the most amount of

people to be able to work and contribute wherever they can.

And indeed, that is exactly the experience of the vast, vast majority of the population, that most

people want to be able to work and contribute and have the measure of control over their lives

and dignity in their lives that that brings with it.

So, I wanted to steal just a couple of really quick lessons from that experience in running

Graeme Innes's case. The first is that we all have an interest in organising at the macro level,

through our government, and also at the micro level, ourselves, so that the most diverse parts of

our community are able to participate meaningfully.

What that means is that we all have a part to play. Yes, there is a very important part to play by

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government and large corporations like Rail Corp, now known as Sydney Trains, but we as co-

workers and employers and people who make decisions in respect of employment, we also

have a really important part to play.

Secondly, there is some creativity that we need to show in that. That means putting ourselves in

someone else's position. Asking ourselves the question, what is the reasonable adjustment that

we need to make in order for this other person to be able to participate and contribute in the

same way that I have always been able to take for granted?

That creativity is not, I don't think, a particularly big ask. It really stems from that simple

expectation on all of us that we teach our children, which is to put yourself in someone else's

position. I think when we do that, we tend to surprise ourselves in a really positive way that we

are able to be much more inclusive of diversity than perhaps we imagined.

The third position, sorry, the third lesson I would distil is perhaps a broader one. And that is we

all have perhaps some people in our orbit that we have particular sympathy for because we truly

understand their position. We may have a parent or child or sister or brother with a particular

illness and that means we will be a champion for people with that illness.

That is important because the personal connection means something and makes you a really

effective advocate. But I want to put the pressure on, the same pressure on myself as I put on

all of us, and that is don't leave it there. If you can see how difficult are the challenges of that

particular category of person, then again, have the creativity to see how the problem might also

be experienced by others in a similar position with a different illness or with a different

challenge.

Because I think that brings together one of the things I think is one of the best things about

DCA, and that is that diversity is at the heart of it. It is not just one particular element of society

that we are trying to mainstream. It is relishing in the wonderful diversity of all of us.

That's all I wanted to say. But I can't sit down without making one more acknowledgement and

that is that we are meeting at Gilbert + Tobin, a law firm I have affection for, for so many

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reasons. It is a firm with such amazing leadership with Darren and others sitting towards the

back of the room, maybe trying to hide in the back of the room, who have really lived out their

values and have been a beacon, I think, to staff at the firm.

But it also permeates right through the firm as well. The values, the human rights principles, the

valuing of diversity. For me, I think it is particularly significant and important that we are meeting

at Gilbert + Tobin, and I would like to pay tribute to the wonderful work that the firm does.

(Applause)

LISA ANNESE:

Thank you, Ed. As you were speaking, it made me remember just how funny Graeme is. I had

quite a long history, initially I worked in the same organisation that he was at when I was a

young graduate. And it was my first exposure to someone who used a guide dog. He had a

guide dog at the time. It was a great process of learning for me to be exposed to someone who

was so funny about the learning experience.

And also, I'm very thrilled to hear that Alastair is into punning. One of the criteria for working at

DCA is that you are a keen and enthusiastic lover of puns. Anyone who has anything to do with

our organisation will know that's a big one for us.

OK, so just another comment. It never ceases to shock me. It is so simple. It looks simple. If you

take the tube in London, all the pre-recorded audio announcements on the trains, even on some

of the buses there – I just don't understand why it is such a drama, why it is not standard

practice that is part of designing public transport.

I hope that we never stop resisting and that we never stop highlighting when we believe that

things are inaccessible for others, or it puts them at risk or in danger.

Now I'd like to introduce Samantha Dancey for our keynote presentation. Samantha is the

Senior Relationship Manager at the Australian Network on Disability. She joined the team as a

relationship manager in October 2013, and delivers quality member services, continuous

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improvement and the development of their learning offering.

Samantha is going to present to us information about AND's Access and Inclusion Index, and

the suite of online tools they have developed for organisations such as yourselves. So this is

going to be a great learning opportunity for all of us. Thank you.

(Applause)

SAMANTHA DANCEY:

Hello. Thank you. Just want to make sure that you can hear me at the back? Wonderful. Thank

you.

Thanks for the introduction, Lisa. As mentioned, my name is Sam Dancey. I am the Senior

Relationship Manager at the Australian Network on Disability, and I'm here today to talk to you

about AND's Access and Inclusion Index.

Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today

and pay my respects to Elders past and present.

For those of you who don't know, AND is a for-purpose organisation. We are a member-based

organisation and our mission is to create a disability confident Australia.

We believe the best way to do that is through employers and we focus on people with disability

across the whole of business, as candidates, employees, stakeholders and customers. I'm

going to talk about AND's journey to create the Access and Inclusion Index and the results of

the first submission and next steps.

The Access and Inclusion Index is a suite of tools for Australian organisations to use to

understand, assess, benchmark and improve their disability confidence to meet the needs of

their customers and employees with disability.

These tools will help organisations review their policies, procedures and practices to establish

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their progress in being accessible and inclusive for people with disability. It will increase

understanding of access and inclusion and provide opportunities to receive guidance on how to

be welcoming for people with disability across the whole of business.

I'll see if I can get this to work, yes, fabulous.

The creation of the Access and Inclusion Index has been a five-year journey for AND. AND

identified there was a need for this suite of tools to enable organisations to understand, assess

and improve their disability confidence.

AND collaborated with the Business Disability Forum in the UK, to learn all about their Disability

Standard. The Access and Inclusion Index is based on the Disability Standard, which was

designed by BDF in 2004. AND has a strong relationship with BDF with learning and knowledge

strengthening the resources both organisations have. Therefore, the index is based on the

BDF's Disability Standard and 16 years of Australian experience.

AND ran a pilot of the Disability Standard to test the tool with multiple organisations in Australia.

Following this, AND worked with Department of Defence, Westpac Group, New South Wales

Family and Community services, and NDIA and IBM.

The Centre for Workplace Leadership at the University of Melbourne undertook validation of the

Access and Inclusion Index. This included user testing with various organisations prior to

finalising the assessments.

In 2016, AND launched the Access and Inclusion Index. For the first time in Australia, there was

a way for Australian organisations to measure their maturity with regards to disability

confidence. 22 members participated in the first submission. At the annual conference on 16

May, this year, AND launched the first Access and Inclusion Index benchmarking report.

The photograph on the slide was taken at our conference and is of our CEO Suzanne Colbert,

our Chair Peter Wilson, member representatives and our keynote speaker, all holding our

freshly launched benchmarking report.

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As mentioned, the tool helps organisations to assess disability confidence. This is across 10 key

criteria areas. Commitment, workplace adjustments, premises, communication and marketing,

products and services, ICT, recruitment and selection, career development, suppliers and

partners, and innovation.

As you can see, it spans the whole of business. The questions within the 10 key criteria areas

are grouped into three sections. We look at framework, implementation and review.

Organisations can complete the comprehensive self-assessment. You can elect to have AND

evaluate your assessment and go through the benchmarking process to help identify where and

how to improve, and to monitor progress.

Evaluation and benchmarking is optional. The suite is there to be used as an optional tool

internally within your own organisation and organisations can self-assess. There is the option to

submit for evaluation and benchmarking.

You must be a member of AND to access the full suite. But non-members can undertake the

quick 10, it is a quick self-assessment. A set of 10 questions to assess your organisation's

accessibility for people with disability. So there will be one question across those key areas to

give you an idea of your strengths or where you may have opportunities to improve.

The Index is not an award based tool. It's about helping organisations to look at your own

policies, practices and procedures. And to see how you are progressing in being accessible and

inclusive for people with disability, and to see how you can improve.

Just a side note, the Access and Inclusion Index is confidential so AND do not share any of the

benchmarking results unless you want us to.

I will share some of the outcomes of the benchmarking report with you. The full benchmarking

report is on the website:

www.and.org.au

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My lovely colleagues Nathan and Emily are here with hardcopies if you would like one. Some of

the outcomes of our first submission, we are pleased to announce the 2016 Access and

Inclusion Index identified IBM, the Federal Department of Human Services and Westpac Group

as the most mature on their journey towards access and inclusion.

On the slide, we have the distribution of index scores at 100. Two organisations scored between

11 and 20 out of 100. Two organisations scored between 21 and 30, 4 between 31 and 40,

three between 51 and 60, two between 51 and 70, two between 71 and 80 and one between 81

and 90.

The average score was 47/100. Five organisations scored 61 or higher. AND considers this to

be a solid outcome for the first year. The distribution of the varying levels of maturity recognises

not only the organisations that are performing well but provides encouragement for others that

there is a clear path to follow.

Across 10 key areas, on average commitment and Workplace Adjustments performed well.

While organisations performed well on average for commitment, you can still see work to do to

ensure this translates to recruitment as recruitment scored lower. The commitments framework

achieved the highest overall average score, which might be expected from organisations that

have allocated time and resources to undertake the Index.

The individual benchmarking reports given to the participating organisations provide a roadmap

to assist you to make clear choices about where to invest your resources. For organisations that

have been investing in this area for some time, now they know how the investment translates

into success.

I would like to share with you some of the case studies that have emerged from the index. One

of the outcomes of the index is the sharing of innovative practice. Over time AND will collate

innovative practices from member organisations, which comes out of the innovation section of

the Index and I'm starting with a case study from the ATO around Workplace Adjustment.

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The ATO is making good progress in the area of Workplace Adjustment. On International Day of

People with a Disability, they launched their Workplace Adjustment Passport, which allows

employees to describe their disability, illness or injury and how it impacts on them in the

workplace and detail any adjustment required.

This is owned by the employee. The option to hold a passport is voluntary with the objective of

giving employees with disability the opportunity to document any specific requirements that can

impact them in the workplace. It insures any workplace adjustments that are required are

documented so if the line manager or the job role changes, including transfer internally to

another team, information is still readily available. It supports continuity of any arrangements

required for the employee.

Regarding the ATO's participation in the index, Ed Holicky, Assistant Director for Workplace

Diversity said, "We wanted to look at our entire service offer for people with disability and

determine where our gaps are so we could work on rectifying them. We also want to

acknowledge the areas we are doing well in and find out how we can further improve those

areas."

A second survey is from AND and HealthShare New South Wales. They have a practice

example called the food packing project. The aim of the project is to make singleserve portions

of food given to patients as easy as possible to open.

HealthShare NSW wanted to make it as easy and dignified as possible and worked with Arthritis

Australia, Nestlé and the Georgia Tech Research Institute to develop an accessibility rating. It

works on a scale and estimates the consumers who can open the packaging. It is leading

towards creating a national standard for accessible packaging and is mandatory for over half of

public hospitals.

Bronwyn Scott, Disability Employment Leader, said, "The Index gave me a framework in which

to document achievements and highlight things that we said we’d do but hadn’t managed to

action. For example, we committed to including information about adjustments to the

recruitment process in all our job advertisements. Since actioning this, we have had an increase

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in calls from people with disability interested to apply."

A third and final case study is from Life Without Barriers. They have marketing and

communications, they explain the importance of their accessibility inclusion employment plan

and the approach they took to employ this plan and how this has helped set the tone internally

with Life Without Barriers. It is Margaret McCarron, National Manager from (inaudible), and how

Life Without Barriers communicate the message and how sharing and telling stories with people

with disability is important.

It is important for Life Without Barriers to have accessible digital materials and ensure

adherence, to content accessibility guidelines. But Life Without Barriers readily review economic

documents for accessibility and easy English. A quote from Fiona Davies, national manager,

"It’s measurable. There are real figures and real data to work from. I think it will be a powerful

tool to help us move forward. We don’t see diversity and inclusion as a one-off event. It’s part of

our business; it’s what we do and we’re including it across all of our areas."

What is next? One call to action might be the quick 10, available on our website, you may want

to do the 10 quick questions to assess where your strengths lie and the opportunities for

improvement may be. What is next for AND, we want to raise the tools for organisations to use

internally or submit for evaluation. We ultimately want a greater number of organisations that do

submit for benchmarking to help continue to map the material of Australian organisations.

On the side we have the logo the participating organisations can display on their website if they

choose to. To demonstrate they're on a journey to access and inclusion and have participated in

the Access and Inclusion Index benchmarking.

There are many benefits, it is an educational tool rather than competition, the maturity model

provides a pathway for success and the tool provides additional resources. As I mentioned the

full benchmarking report is available on our website and we do have some hard copies here

today and I'm happy for you to speak to me or my colleagues if you have any questions about

the Access and Inclusion Index or the benchmarking report. Thank you.

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(Applause)

LISA ANNESE:

Thank you, Samantha. I will continue to refer to you as Samantha because I'm about to

introduce another Sam. I will introduce a final panellist who is Sam Turner Head of Inclusion and

Diversity at Westpac Group. We had great things happening at Westpac and one of the reasons

is that Sam Turner is the Head of Inclusion and Diversity there. She also recently stepped down

as the chair of GLOBAL, Westpac's LGBTI employee action group.

During her time as chair, Sam led Westpac to be Employer of the Year for LGBTI Inclusion at

the 2016 AWEI Awards. She is passionate about equity. Last year Sam was the overall winner

of the 2016 internal Westpac Women of Influence award. Welcome to all our panellists.

Now, I'm going to move there because it is a bit strange to be asking questions from here. I will

grab a handheld mic.

Thank you, OK, thank you, everyone...

(Inaudible)

SAMANTHA TURNER:

Thank you, Lisa, there are two key aspects and one is an enabler to the other, disability and

accessibility has to form part of an overall inclusion strategy. One of the things that we are, with

its incredible importance at Westpac, is making inclusion part of our DNA. I think one of the

things that has been critical in our success is around having a very strong inclusion and diversity

strategy that also ties into a people strategy and ties into a green strategy because that makes it

clear that everybody can see where we are going and why we are going there and how much

importance we place on this.

In terms of where we are going in the future, I hope we get to a point where we don't need roles

like mine, we don't need heads of inclusion and diversity because it does become part of our

DNA, however, I do think that is quite a way off. I am also conscious at Westpac Group we often

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speak from a place of privilege from, not having a large corporate, but having money, having

facilities to be able to enable accessibility more so than for example smaller and medium

employees.

So I believe that as one of the key corporates in Australia and one of the largest employers, we

have an obligation to make our workplaces accessible, but also to make our environment as

inclusive as possible because what becomes acceptable inside the workplace, you know, filters

into outside the workplace. The more awareness we can create and the more inclusive

leadership we can enable throughout the group, the better we’ll actually be in Australia in

general.

LISA ANNESE:

Darren, could you provide some something about your leadership at Gilbert + Tobin around

accessibility?

DARREN FITTLER:

Maybe getting some better chairs. (Laughs) Anyway, I'm going to take a step back first in

answering that question and forgive me, Lisa, you know what I’m like. I think it is important for

us to reset our thinking on disability in the first place and forgive me if we are all well-honed

disability advocates in the room.

We need to extract and separate the concept of impairment from disability. My disability is not

that I can't see. My disability is that I can't use touchscreens. Get rid of the touchscreens,

disability gone. My disability is not that I can't see, it's that I can't drive. Give me a driverless car,

the disability is gone.

I can go on. My disability is not that I can't see, it is that I can't do my own banking online if the

website is inaccessible. Give me an accessible website, the disability is gone. What this means,

there is actually a potential to envision a world with no disability at all. Where every single

person, no matter their ability, can function and contribute and participate just like everybody

else.

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I guess if you're asking me what my vision is, certainly not 20/20, it is a Gilbert + Tobin and a

world where from a recruitment phase to the employment phase, to the progression, to

leadership, makes no difference one single bit whether or not you have whatever disability you

might be calling a disability. That is my vision.

LISA ANNESE:

That was a very powerful way to begin your commentary here on the panel, Darren. I hope

everyone tweeted out those messages. I would like to share that far and wide and I'll probably

be borrowing that at future presentations. It should not be a lofty ideal, it should be something

achievable and particularly organisations, as Sam said, that have the resources to be able to

access accessibility, that should be a matter of course for business.

It is interesting that Australia still ranks quite poorly out of the OECD countries when it comes to

the employment rate of people with disabilities. We are 21st out of 29. Why are we doing so

badly? Perhaps we can start with you, Samantha?

SAMANTHA DANCEY:

I guess to address what can be done or the poor performance. Thinking that it might be too

hard, putting it in the too-hard basket, employers need to start. We work with 180 employers

across Australia at various levels of maturity on a journey towards access and inclusion. But for

employers if we are looking to address that result, that statistic, it is to make a start, and

organisations who are listening in, watching today, if you start with a quick 10, just to assess

where you are today and make a decision about what is your first step forward. That would be

AND's recommendation.

LISA ANNESE:

And, Ed, you might have some comments on this with a global perspective on human rights. We

are the land of the fair go and equal opportunity and we pride ourselves on that, what could be

the reasons behind our reluctance to start?

EDWARD SANTOW:

We are pulled in different directions. My colleagues read something recently, we launched a

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couple of months ago a report with a number of Australian and multinational corporations

looking at how a more inclusive approach affects their business.

The more innovative of those organisations tend to be more inclusive and tend to be able in a

measurable way, because it is important to measure the things, in a measurable way achieve

improvements in the bottom line by being more inclusive.

They can be reaching out to the customer base, having a more diverse employee base. If you

have a more diverse employee base, you have a more textured understanding of the customers

and people, so I guess, the short version is not enough of that opportunity is being grabbed.

If I can give a practical example, while Darren was speaking, in my former organisation we ran a

case, a disability discrimination case against one of the top two quasi-duopoly supermarket

companies in Australia about their website. Their online shopping website. It was not accessible

by screen reader technology.

The actual cost of making that sort of website screen reader accessible is really low. And the

barriers to doing that, certainly not cost, it would pay for itself with customers using it. It is more

the kind of, I don't know, irritating problems in a big corporation that is slow to move and change

and deal with things that are not right in what they would see as the mainstream.

Challenging that and getting on the front foot on that, I think can be greatly effective and without

being Pollyanna-ish, the fact that we are 21/29 means that there is a lot of upside. Looking

overseas, I see companies already doing that.

LISA ANNESE:

It's a fascinating example. Designing a website for a large organisation with a customer

interface. I hope going forward, it becomes part of the design process.

Sam, what we have noticed, especially at DCA, is that organisations and corporate Australia

have been very focused for many years on gender diversity, in particular, women as opposed to

women and men or the broader definitions of gender.

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And there has been a focus, increasingly so now, on cultural diversity and Indigenous

employment. Why have we not been as progressive on the topic of disability and inclusion, do

you think, when it is such a significant proportion of the work force and especially for

organisations with client facing interfaces?

SAM TURNER:

I pondered this question for quite some time and there are two parts to the answer, I think. One

is there are definitely visible and invisible differences. A lot of the time, gender or gender identity

is quite visible. And I'm really conscious, and you know this about me anyway, when we say

something is hard or challenging, we instantly make it damaging and hard. And I think we have

done that with accessibility. We have said it is hard and challenging. So we need to think about

the language we use.

In terms of gender, obviously, working for an amazing organisation like Westpac, who are

currently sitting at 49% women in leadership, one of the things we have been able to do and

one of the reasons there has been this focus on gender is that it enables greater social change.

A lot of Diversity & Inclusion practitioners will talk about, and I don't necessarily agree with that,

but they talk about you have to get gender first. And I think that is not to challenge that and say,

do you really? Because to me inclusion is all-encompassing. When we start getting under the

bonnet and talking about intersectionality, what happens when you have a woman of colour with

a disability? Or what happens when you have a man with a mental illness, who is Aboriginal, for

example?

So it's that type of intersectionality that we need to turn our focus to. I feel proud that I work in

an organisation where we can do that. But the one thing that we have been able to enable from

the gender diversity discussion and from pushing that 49%, and we will hit 50% this year, is the

'what else' or 'what next'?

And what have we learned from that? Like Darren alluded to earlier, our recruitment practices.

Taking our talent acquisition team through unconscious bias training because not only does that

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open up the door around gender, it opens up the door around accessibility and all the other

types of diversity.

So one of the lessons we have learned on the gender journey is that we can then lift and drop,

but also expand, as we get into other spaces.

LISA ANNESE:

It is certainly true that skills and attributes people develop to be inclusive in one area can be

applied in many areas. So we need to seize the moment with those learnings. Darren, do you

agree?

DARREN FITTLER:

I do. And part of the difficulty or part of the reason is, really, attitude. And this unconscious bias.

It wasn't all that long ago where even parents would think, well, my child has disability, there's

no point sending them to school because they cannot learn. Or if they do go to school, they

have to go to a special school which may involve travelling hundreds of kilometres away from

home and your support networks.

Or if you actually get to school, university is out of the question. Or if you get to university, the

traffic system or the public transport system was not accessible so how do you get to and from

work if you use a wheelchair?

So the design, the visibility, the attitude still permeates so that when it gets to employment and

getting a job, part of the attitude is, unconscious or otherwise, that the person with a disability is

not going to be as good at their job. Or it will be too hard to accommodate them for the job.

And very few people... I have been challenged on this before because some people do get out

of bed and make life difficult for people with disability on purpose…

LISA ANNESE:

No one here.

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(Laughter)

DARREN FITTLER:

No one here. And so, I think there is a number of areas where one needs to focus when thinking

about inclusion. We've got our environment, both internal, external. We have tools and

equipment, and we have policies and procedures. But in my mind, the thing that glues all those

things together is maybe captured a little bit by what Sam was telling us about commitment, but

I guess I call that attitude, and willingness.

An organisation that is willing to hard-bake into their policy and procedures manual the fact that

next time they go out to procure microwaves, they will make sure they are not touchpads, they

actually have physical buttons, even if no one in the firm is blind, because it is just what you

do... Just like DCA has captioning and Auslan interpreters at every event regardless of if deaf

people turn up, the point is it is just what you do. If we can get to that point in attitude,

everything else will flow.

You get given a brand-new building. The attitude could be that the building code says build it to

this and if we will do that, we will be fine. But a truly inclusive attitude would say, how do we

raise the bar? What is beyond the standard that will really make this environment accessible not

just for people that work here but for those that visit?

In my view, the answer to why disability is still down the rung... And to be honest, a lot of

organisations, when asked what their diversity requirements or preferences are, don't say

disability. Not because they are not interested but because they don't even think about it.

LISA ANNESE:

Yeah, we need to increase awareness.

EDWARD SANTOW:

Can I add an analogy? There is this fantastic legal scholar in the US called Lawrence Lessig,

and he gives this great analogy about how you change behaviour. And the example that he

gives is driving.

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If you want to make people drive to the speed limit, how do you do that? For the first 60 or 70

years of the age of driving, you would have speed limits and there would be signs and there

would be police who would try to catch people speeding. And that was the only method that was

being used. You knew as a driver, there was a chance you could be caught. It was a low chance

but you could be caught and that might stop you and others may not speed because that was

the right thing to do. But actual compliance was relatively low.

Then the idea came about, what if we just make it impossible to speed in certain areas by

putting in speed humps, roundabouts and so on? That will change compliance at least in those

areas to 100% as no one wants to ruin their car. And that is exactly the case. Where there is a

speed bump, no one drives over the speed limit.

But the point I'm trying to make is that leadership is really important as a piece of the puzzle.

But this builds on what Darren was saying and if you want to have structural change, you need

to change the architecture of the environment in which you work so that it is not just dependent

on one fantastic person who happens to be in a leadership role as CEO or head of diversity or

whatever, but instead it permeates right through the way the organisation operates.

It's part of the architecture, it is part of the policies and programs of the organisation. It becomes

acculturated. And I think it was the words that Darren used, "It's just what you do."

SAMANTHA DANCEY:

The way we work with some of the large organisations we work with at AND is talking about

making things business as usual, so they are not add-ons. They are not additional to what you

do, it is aligning it with core business. And it makes business sense to attract and retain skilled

employees with disability, and it makes good sense to attract customers from your entire

customer base.

I think you were saying this, Sam, it is putting it into the DNA of your organisation, which is why

we work with different teams across the whole of business because disability is one of the

diversity groups that can be impacted across the whole of business. It could be a showstopper

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for example, if you cannot get through the front door. Or you can't apply for the role because

your website or the job application form is not accessible.

When you get a role, you could be on-boarding and your private information, if you can't access

those systems, what is a dignified way to start your employment journey with your organisation?

You can take that through to career development.

We were talking about assumptions in terms of aspirations that people with disability have when

they join your organisation. So making that part of your business's DNA, business as usual

throughout the whole of your employee life-cycle or your customer experience as well.

Many of our members have large customer bases. Or they provide services so looking at how

you can make it business as usual so everyone can access the information, the products, the

people they need to speak to about your products and services.

DARREN FITTLER:

I would like to take Ed's driving thing one step further. Just bear with me, a bit of fun for a

moment. Another way to control people's behaviour is to gamify it. So if you abide by the speed

limit, you get your good driver badge, then your A+ badge etc. and then you get discounts on

petrol or electricity or whatever.

And I'm saying this because I'm hoping you might take away that lots of different things motivate

people differently within your workforce. What I've been doing over the last couple of years is

not moving away from a human rights approach and an economic approach when it comes to

inclusive design and disability inclusion, but to add to my toolbox of approaches the idea of

tapping into other people's passions.

So the example would be to encourage the people in your organisation that are responsible for

application design, website design, computer design, physical design, to say, "Here is a

challenge. Can you design for this?" And it tweaks their design passion, their problem-solving.

The thing that really excites them is not necessarily that a person who is blind can do something

they could not do before, but they have solved a key problem that no one else could solve

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before.

It is this designing at the edges where really exciting things start to happen. Where things like

Siri and talking phones go away from being a device for blind people to use. When I was

learning to type in the mid-‘80s, I got given a computer that would speak out what I typed. Text-

to-speech, it is called. Try calling a call centre now and not getting a text-to-speech engine,

almost a human voice, reading a script to you based on the buttons you pressed.

So designing at the edges becomes mainstream, becomes innovative, and that can excite

people, where if you said to them, "You're going to get sued because of the Disability

Discrimination Act," that probably won't worry them. But if you put it in another way, you have

yourself a Disability Inclusion Champion by stealth.

LISA ANNESE:

We've certainly learned that a lot in the work we do at DCA.

Now I'd like to open up for questions, both in the audience here, if you could indicate to Carla

who is walking up if you have a question and identify yourself by name and organisation, and

who you are directing the question to, that would be great. And for those people who are dialling

in, if you could use your process to send in a question to the team in Melbourne, who will send it

up here.

While we're waiting for the first question, I am interested, we had members ask this, anyone can

jump in, the idea that mental health as an issue or as something that people are experiencing,

should it be something that is included in the disability framework or should it be treated

separately? What are your views?

SAMANTHA DANCEY:

I can talk to that. Some of the work we do with our members is around disability confident or

having confident conversations. It does need to be part of your business as usual that managers

feel confident to ask the right questions, to maybe notice if things are changing. For example,

someone might be late unusually, missing deadlines unusually, and feel confident of the

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conversation and ask the right questions, for example, "Are you OK?"

Go into your architecture, your business as usual, what systems and processes do you have in

place to support your employee who may be experiencing mental illness. And to retain them as

a valuable resource rather than the situation deteriorating and they leave the workforce for your

organisation.

So talking about it as embedding it is business as usual, you obviously refer to your EAP

services, for example, and depending on the scenario, assisting them to gain support

elsewhere, so it is important to have that embedded within your systems.

SAMANTHA TURNER:

For us as well, it comes back to inclusive culture, we talk a lot about this, but how you create the

environment where we have psychological safety so that your leaders are able to have the right

conversation at the right time. But also I think that needs to be underpinned by a culture of

flexibility because there is one thing to be able to have the conversation, it is another to be able

to enable that particular employee to be flexible.

One of the things we did a few years ago was to make all the roles flexible which enables the

conversations. Encouraging our employees to tell us what they need in terms of flexibility and

that investment is incredibly important because we have to face the fact that in some point in

our lives we’ll have mental health challenges, like when we lose a loved one, the different life

stages that we go through. Underpinning that is to be a culture of flexibility as well.

SAMANTHA DANCEY:

Disability overall, asking all the employees annually or periodically if there's anything that they

need and asking if anyone needs any adjustments. Whether you suspect someone may be

experiencing mental illness or anything else, asking all the employees if there is anything they

need, because people’s circumstances change. Since they joined organisation, things may have

changed.

SEAN MURPHY:

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My name is Sean Murphy from Cisco. I applaud what you are saying, some of the comments

about the stealth approach is a very good approach, in actual fact, and one of the issues I have

got going. My comment comes from two points or two areas, firstly talking about talent. The

other thing is, I'd like to wind back a bit, education. If you have people with disabilities going

through the education system, they do not get equal access, how will they get the job when they

can't get the education?

LISA ANNESE:

Who would like to start?

SAMANTHA DANCEY:

I can talk about the things we do with the employers at AND. We work with employers within

Australia, we have intensive program for students with disability. This program started a long

time ago specifically for law actually, specifically for law students and our grant is for all types of

disciplines but the purpose of the program was to close the gap between students with and

without disability when they leave the university and the work experience that they have.

One of the problems that we run into at AND was a need, we identified a need with employers

to attract graduates or to attract students into entry-level roles within their organisations. So we

are up-skilling students with work experience, paid internships with our member employers but

also up-skilling managers and increasing the disability confidence in recruiting and retaining

people with disability in their teams.

LISA ANNESE:

Thank you, any other comments?

SAMANTHA TURNER:

One of the things we underestimate in large corporations is influence in terms of suppliers, we

have incredible extra relationships, all of the banks do, with the major universities. For example,

we have an amazing STEM program with some of the major universities so that is how we

influence the education system, how we use that influence, as Sam said as well, how we

encourage internships and things like that.

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One of the things we are doing next year, it is definitely not an accessibility play, it is around

acquiring talent, is to bring three people with autism into the cyber security space. Not because

they have a disability but because they have amazing minds. How do we as a large organisation

think a lot more laterally and think differently about the school system, influencing the school

system but in some ways almost circumventing it as well and enabling and encouraging.

LISA ANNESE:

That is an amazing example and I know some of the tech companies are making inroads in that

area as well. We have another question here.

ANNABELLE WILLIAMS:

My name is Annabelle Williams. I am a lawyer and a person with a disability. It occurred to me a

couple of years ago that in my line of work I have never come across another person with a

disability on the other side of the table or a client or anything like that. I know recruitment is a

huge struggle for organisations, recruiting people with a disability, and I have a lot of friends of

disabilities. I was a Paralympian in a previous life and I have a lot of friends who are disabled. I

am missing my left hand and it's not a huge barrier and I have a lot of friends in wheelchairs.

Whenever I am with them, I am shocked by how awkward a number of people are engaging

with them. They lean on the wheelchair or they don't know how to talk to them or they pat them

on the head. I wonder, I thought perhaps that is for recruiters, perhaps people who have not had

a lot of exposure to people with disability, they will have someone who wants to work for the firm

and they think, I'm a bit awkward, I don't want to talk to this person about whether or not we

have the right facilities for them.

I'd be interested in whether or not you think that is a potential barrier and how it could be

overcome?

LISA ANNESE:

That was a great question. I might ask Darren to comment on that but before you do, I'd like to

direct all of our members to DCA's Words at Work program. We have a particular brochure, a

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set of guidelines around language and inclusion focusing on people with a disability. Please

refrain from patting people on the head, and go to our Words at Work guidelines to understand

how to talk from one human being to another. Thank you, Darren.

DARREN FITTLER:

We were talking a lot today, and I think we still need to, about Band-Aids or about the

ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. We need to be conscious about working, about putting the

fence at the top of the cliff and I will come back to attitudes again and then the previous

question and the one asked now. I used to be a social worker and I'm still one so I can say my

favourite joke which is, how many social workers does it take to change a light bulb? The

answer is none because the light bulb has to want to change.

(Laughter)

DARREN FITTLER:

Universities, schools, parents, employers and people with disabilities themselves, there needs

to be a shift in their own way of approaching things and in their own attitudes because we can

talk about the things that can be done, but wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to have those,

and we wouldn't have to have those if universities were naturally inclusive and had inclusive

curriculums, systems, environments and campuses and schools were the same.

I think the awkwardness around disability would dissipate and disappear, the more visible and

the more people with disability that are just naturally included within a natural environment and

in all that we do on our buses, on our trains, in our pubs and restaurants, at universities and

schools, in supermarkets, just participating in life. It would not be so unusual or weird and

awkward.

But that is probably a long way off and in terms of the ambulance and the Band-Aid, I think

these sorts of events are fabulous although the fact you are here probably means you don't

need to be here. Your job is to make sure at one of these things you bring a whole bunch of

people who don't want to be here, that is what you have to do.

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And somehow through training, to organisations like AND, through amazing initiatives and

Human Rights Commission and everything we do in everyday life to try, and those academics

will shoot me if I say this, to normalise if you like, disability. Just part of life, part of the diversity

of life.

SAMANTHA TURNER:

I think one of the things we do, to Darren's point, one of the things I noticed across all disability,

all the spectrums around diversity is the more people tell stories, the more people tell their own

stories and share an experience, the more people start to relate.

There's definitely a conversation we had a bit of today, things like the Index are absolutely

important and measures and things like that but there is also a heart conversation that we need

to enable and the heart conversation is your brother, your sister, your next neighbour,

humanising people's experience, that comes through storytelling.

Sometimes the stories are hard to hear. But we need to recognise that if you are in a privileged

position, you need to hear the stories and to Darren's point, bring someone who does not want

to be here along because in my experience of that, 99% of the time they tend to be amazing

advocates because they've never heard the stories before.

DARREN FITTLER:

We need to change people thinking from it is too hard to a solution-based focus, problem-

solving focus. How many people have been into a service provider, maybe even a bank, not

Westpac, another person at the other end of the phone that tell us, “You can't do that.”

If you see the word 'can't and you take away the 't and put in 'if', ‘can if’ – I would like to strike

out the word in the dictionary and replace it with that – you have gone from ‘it can't happen’ to ‘it

can if’ something, what can be done to make this happen? The more that we can do that in our

own way we approach everything that we do but also instil that in the workforce, we’ll have a far

better time of it.

LISA ANNESE:

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I should have a notepad for Darren's anecdotes. (Laughs) Spread the word, they are brilliant.

We have two final questions, one online and another one in person. Unfortunately we can't take

any more but we have the room until four o'clock. So feel free to... Come up and talk to our

panellists. Can we have the question from the Web?

QUESTION FROM FLOOR:

If an organisation is to be inclusive across a number of aspects of diversity which is important,

how do you give each area its importance? I work with one that has scant resources and Sam

mentioned working as a whole which sparks my question.

SAMANTHA TURNER:

It is always a challenge when you’re a non-profit or corporate, you are dealing with scant

resources for the people you’re actually dealing with. One of the things I am incredibly proud of

and that has been incredibly successful is employee action groups.

I'm sure a lot of organisations have a version of these and I think there is a few reasons why

they are successful and one of these is that people can identify with whatever they are

passionate about. You also get an immediate effort for people who are passionate about making

a difference.

There is definitely opportunity whether you are corporate or not-for-profit. It's so incredibly

important because it is the case that the more senior you are, the more filtered information you

get and the more filtered a view you have of your organisation. For me, enabling employee

action groups and devoting resources – and they also run like mini not-for-profits – how do you

enable those groups to get things done?

SAMANTHA DANCEY:

And your Able group at Westpac has achieved a lot of things.

SAM TURNER:

Each of those is supported by an executive sponsor, so someone from the executive team is the

sponsor of that. They are the sponsor not just from a physical perspective but more from a

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visibility and voice perspective. Giving that particular EAG space at the table, at the decision-

making table, the power table.

We developed a whole bunch of resources called Breaking Down the Barriers with AND, with

our Able group. And a lot of our ideas, Able are testing that so having those resources in the

group and they are made up of people with disability but they are also incredibly strong

advocates.

LISA ANNESE:

Thanks, Sam. Last question.

QUESTION FROM FLOOR:

Simon Most from the recruitment company, a question for Samantha Dancey. Your index score

chart, what was the demographic of that chart in terms of the size of companies? How many

SMEs are in there?

We have limited resources in comparison and 25 people as opposed to Westpac. Ed, you

mentioned low hanging fruit, the upside of being so far behind. So what are the low hanging fruit

for a smaller company with less resources to take those first steps?

LISA ANNESE:

That's a great question and if everyone on the panel can comment on that, then we can close.

SAMANTHA DANCEY:

I'll address the first part. The demographic of the 22 members that participated. A range of

organisations, not-for-profit organisations, public sector, state government and federal

government, and private sector organisations.

The size varied. AND works with large complex organisations mostly. While remaining

anonymous, our members submit anonymously, but those were the sectors they spanned. They

were more medium to large organisations.

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But in terms of the low hanging fruit question, where do you start, I think you mentioned you are

in the recruitment industry as well so some of the areas you might want to look at could be, are

you aware if people with disability apply for roles in your organisation? Do you ask if anyone

needs an adjustment during the recruitment process?

Another way to start would be to think about if someone needs an adjustment, what would the

next step be? When we work with recruiters or internal recruiting teams, the sorts of things we

look at initially will be, what are you asking? What are you doing?

One good place to start in the recruitment process is, are you opening your doors to everyone,

to the best person for that role, or are you limiting the applicants who can apply?

So your messaging on your website, that is something you may be able to look at and update

easily if you have an IT team. But looking at, are you welcoming people with disability to work at

your organisation or apply for jobs with your clients?

If you have a Workplace Adjustment policy, do you tell people on the website? Is your

messaging clear that you welcome people to apply for roles through you and you feel confident

to have those conversations?

Giving people the opportunity to let you know if they need adjustment is a good first step.

EDWARD SANTOW:

Something Samantha said before resonated with me because I was once the CEO of an

organisation with about 25 people. And that was, just make a start. Just start doing it.

Knowing what it's like to be in an organisation like that, at any one time for most small to

medium size enterprises, there will be two or three major projects you will be embarking on as a

company.

That could be building a new website, it could be moving offices, whatever it happens to be.

You'll be doing that anyway. Try and use that as an opportunity to literally ask the question, how

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can I make this more accessible, whatever we are doing? How do I use this as a practical pilot

program, how do I do that?

So if you were building a new website, how do I make sure it is screen reader accessible? If you

are moving offices, how do we make sure that we are truly accessible for people with vision

impairment? Whether it's getting up on the lift, making sure people with vision impairment can

use the lift, or if it is people relying on wheelchairs and so on. Making sure those boxes are

ticked off.

The exciting part is it is not that difficult, particularly if you are embarking on that process as part

of a broader project.

SAM TURNER:

As a smaller organisation, we have been doing accessibility action plans for 15 years. We have

plans for everything. But I always like two things. One is, steal stuff. A lot of companies have

accessibility action plans on their websites. That includes ours.

While some of it may not be applicable, there is still some really great stuff available out there.

Pilfer at will. But the thing that is really great about having an accessibility action plan is getting

businesspeople to own it. With 20 people, who would you get to own it? A couple of people that

are really passionate about it. That's a great starting point.

Because the other beauty of that is you can see your progress over the years. While you may

not have firm targets or measures, you've at least got a plan. It's a good starting point. For me, if

there is no AAP – accessibility action plan – just start somewhere. Start by stealing other

people's ideas.

EDWARD SANTOW:

Can I just encourage someone to tweet that the representative of a major Australian bank is

encouraging people to steal?

(Laughter)

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DARREN FITTLER:

I agree with Sam. Internally here at Gilbert + Tobin, I strive to help our workforce and our

workplace, our practices for ourselves and our clients, to be as accessible as possible, with so

many moving parts and disability types and moving things and different ways we could be

better, I think the Disability Action Plan is the focal point. It's the glue that brings it all together.

And that all starts with a bit of analysis of where we are not doing so well, and where we could

do better. The low hanging fruit or the place to start really is to have an assessment of your own

organisation and to put to the top of your list of questions that you ask yourself when you are

about to do something, which is Ed's point, we are about to do something, we are about to buy

new equipment, we are about to develop a new website, we are about to move offices, we are

about to recruit someone, we are about to do something so the first question is, what are we

doing with respect to disability inclusion on this matter?

And you are not expected to be brilliant and to have achieved complete equality overnight. It's a

slow progression. Even if you cannot answer that question in a positive way, asking the

question allows you to identify what needs to change. Write it down. Put it in your action plan.

Then start thinking about how you can make a change, how long it will take, the cost, who will

be responsible for it, and then check back on it and pat yourself on the back as you get better.

LISA ANNESE:

Thanks, Darren. I think we'll close with that. Thank you to everyone in the room and online for

attending today.

Please spread the word. For those individuals you think should listen to this conversation today,

when it is ready on our website, please feel free to share the link with other members of your

organisation. Or even put it up on your organisation's intranet.

Everyone within your workplace can access the information we have provided so please make

best use of your membership.

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I'd like to thank our panellists. To Samantha, Sam, Ed and Darren, could we give them a round

of applause?

(Applause)

LISA ANNESE:

And thank you, finally, to Gilbert + Tobin and the staff of DCA, who have helped put this on

today. We have the room until 4 o'clock and it appears we have a nice afternoon tea ready for

us so please enjoy. Thanks very much.

(Applause)

DCAâ€™s Diversity Leadership Program (AUDCAS2505A)

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