Diversity and Inclusion

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Inkling empowers organisations to cultivate diverse and inclusive cultures where everyone can thrive, and where everyone’s unique strengths and perspectives are celebrated. We offer tailored solutions, including inclusive leadership development, sponsorship for diverse talent, development programs for under-represented groups, and strategic advisory services.

As a complex area with no silver bullet, the work is ongoing and at times, uncomfortable. Recognising these challenges, our work focuses on education and skill-building to cultivate inclusive mindsets and behaviours that will effect sustainable change.

We meet your organisation wherever it is at on its D&I journey with an approach that offers clarity, flexibility, and scalability to meet your specific needs. Our team of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) experts work with you to identify key barriers to diversity, develop strategies to increase and retain diverse talent, and enhance decision-making across your organisation.

Using multiple delivery models, we achieve maximum engagement and impact with an approach that works across countries and cultures

  • 50%

    of participants who attend our talent programs for under-represented groups achieve a promotion within 6 months

  • 21

    the number of countries where we have delivered talent programs for diverse and under-represented groups

  • 20,000 +

    the number of participants we have positively impacted through our D&I learning experiences

Inkling's Diversity & Inclusion services

Empower your organisation to shift beyond diversity quotas by focusing on the pivotal driver of diversity: inclusive leadership. We cultivate leaders who champion inclusive cultures, foster diverse talent, and bring to life opportunities for innovation.

We tailor inclusive learning solutions that are targeted to your business, the level of leader and size of group. We offer scalable delivery that is supported by practical and evidence-based tools and strong evaluation to demonstrate ROI.

With the support of psychometric, cognitive and practical assessment tools, we work with leaders to identify inclusion capability gaps, get clarity and pursue purposeful action to drive sustained behaviour change.

Our comprehensive approach to sponsoring under-represented talent is twofold: it cultivates inclusive leadership skills in sponsors while empowering sponsees to confidently advance their careers. With a focus on enhancing their visibility, networks, and strategic expertise, our program fosters long-term retention of key diverse talent, leading to improved business outcomes, a robust diverse talent pool for succession planning, and inclusion confident senior leaders. Our approach to sponsorship tackles creating a sustainable inclusive culture from the very top levels of your organisation, creating engaged and inclusive sponsors who advocate for diversity and inclusion.

Allyship capability is critical to empowering individuals, teams and organisations to create a culture of inclusion. Our solutions develop upstander and advocacy capability and shift participants from passive to active allies. Through targeted learning modules, we address biases and stereotypes, foster psychological safety, and challenge workplace inequities, driving performance, innovation, and equity outcomes. This approach can be scaled to large groups or embedded within other learning experiences.

Our talent and career development programs for under-represented groups provide impactful learning experiences that elevate the visibility of high-potential underrepresented talent. We equip them with the skills and confidence needed to achieve business objectives, develop an influential voice and adeptly navigate change effectively. Our programs contribute to creating role models that are empowered to create a ripple effect of catalysts for positive change and empowerment for other under-represented talent across your organisation.

Increasingly organisations understand the need to provide development tailored to the needs of under-represented groups that may be specific or inclusive of a range of different groups invited to participate based on gender, cultural background, sexual orientation/ identity, neurodiversity, and disability. These groups have been shown to face barriers in the workplace that can hinder performance and progression; our initiatives work to manage and remove these barriers to unlock hidden potential in your organisation.

We acknowledge that each organisation we partner with is at a unique point in its D&I journey. Having a clear D&I strategy and roadmap can help prioritise areas of focus. We assist clients by conducting systemic audits of the organisation’s diversity and inclusion landscape, assessing existing policies and practices, and gaining independent insights into employees’ daily experiences. Our structured process, which may involve focus groups, interviews, and qualitative and quantitative data analysis, benchmarks your organisation against external best practices, enabling us to develop customised strategies to enhance diversity and inclusion.

We work to meet you where you are as an organisation; we make recommendations and design solutions that are purpose-fit and consider your context and culture to ensure you achieve meaningful outcomes and impact.

A Shadow Board is a group of high-potential employees who become an extension of the executive team to work on strategic initiatives and play a role in solving challenging problems that require diversity of thought. Executive teams find that having a Shadow Board introduces a company’s leadership team to new perspectives and insights, thereby helping to drive the strategy by improving innovation, leading necessary cultural change, and improving customer and employee experience. At Inkling, we work with our clients to design a Shadow Board experience that fits the needs of the business and the Executive Team.

AICD research has found that almost two-thirds of ASX300 company directors do not believe their Boards are prepared to meet new Australian laws enforced in December 2023 to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace.

Sexual harassment represents a pervasive and costly detriment to both individuals and organisations, often occurring unchecked and shrouded in secrecy. Fuelled by the #MeToo movement, there is a worldwide push to establish workplaces that are safe and free from sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination.

Inkling’s team of Diversity and Inclusion experts can partner with you to deliver experiential, empathy-focussed, respect-based training to equip your people and leaders to foster a respectful workplace, call out unacceptable behaviours, and manage misconduct.

Inkling’s team brings expertise in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and can deliver these through powerful keynote speaking events. Our keynote presentations delve into the heart of the business case for diversity and inclusion, demonstrating the tangible benefits it can bring to your organisation. We partner with clients to identify a range of topics that will suit your needs and audience and focus on the business case, allyship and inclusive leadership. They provide actionable insights that empower your people to create a more inclusive workplace culture.

We are the trusted partners you need to bring diversity and inclusion to the forefront of your organisation

Our clients will tell you that we have a tireless drive for collaboration, working alongside your business and senior leadership to ensure the future vision we are both trying to create is one which is scalable, sustainable and most importantly delivers on the impact you want to see. These are just some of the clients we have advised and partnered with on Diversity & Inclusion initiatives:

  • Woolworths Group logo.
  • Commonwealth bank logo.
  • Compass Group logo.
  • Australian Post logo.
  • Aurecon Logo 5.

The diversity training impact in the workplace we've delivered

  • Helping a large Financial services company foster diversity and drive career advancement for under-represented talent through Sponsorship

    Since 2020 Inkling have partnered with a large Financial services company to address a lack of diversity at senior leadership levels (GMs and EGMs) through Sponsorship. The objective was to provide under-represented groups with increased exposure, visibility and access to senior leaders, to support their career progression, while also building sponsorship capability and inclusive leadership in the most senior leaders (with all EGMs and GMs in RBS participating).

    Key outcomes of the Sponsorship program include a notable 25% of participants experiencing a career move within 6 months, and Senior Managers engaging in the program being twice as likely to secure a promotion or secondment. Across the Bank, Senior Manager-level leaders who participated in the program exhibit a remarkable 3% attrition rate, highlighting the program's effectiveness in driving career advancement, fostering leadership diversity, and enhancing talent retention.

  • We developed an evidence-based learning experience to foster inclusivity and elevate leadership potential at a global Manufacturing company

    Recognising the unique challenges faced by underrepresented groups in their career journeys, the client partnered with Inkling to create a bespoke learning experience with the objective of dismantling barriers and propelling under-represented talent toward leadership roles.

    The program has surpassed expectations, reshaping the workplace into a more inclusive environment, reflected in an impressive Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 81. Measurable outcomes include increased employee belonging, enhanced perceptions of line managers, and improved team performance, creativity, and innovation. The program serves as a catalyst for inclusivity and excellence within the organisation.

    The program received the 2023 LearnX Platinum award for Best Diversity & Inclusion Initiative.

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Great leaders know diversity & inclusion is more than a compliance exercise – it’s a major value driver.

Connect directly with our Diversity & Inclusion Practice today to discover how we can help your organisation cultivate inclusive leadership, true diversity, and transformational change.

 

Connect with Inkling's D&I Practice

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Diversity & Inclusion FAQ's

We understand that organisations are fundamentally human systems and constructs, which means that we need to work both cognitively, with the rational, intelligent brain, and also emotionally, with the heart, to mobilise action and unleash the latent potential in an organisation. We meet people where they are at, whether they are just starting out, or a long way into their journey. We are fundamentally human in our approach, drawing on best-practice research and breaking it down into actionable insight

This depends on your maturity in this space. Our maturity model helps clients asses and think about where they sit. We work with clients who are at the very beginning of their journey, right through to the very mature. The initiatives your organisation chooses to invest in need to be aligned to your maturity to ensure they add value and have a great impact within the organisation?

Because it’s the right thing to do! The structural barriers and biases still exist in all organisations (and people) so doing the work to consider how this impacts talent decisions and opportunities provided is critical.It also drives better business outcomes. We know diverse and inclusive teams consistently outperform those who are not. We know that diversity at leadership is particularly important (gender and cultural background have the biggest influence on innovation), but all dimensions of diversity are important.

Join Inkling and Inclusive Leadership Compass for an exclusive virtual session exploring the state of Inclusive Leadership today on Wednesday 27 March, 12-12:45pm AEDT.
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