Inclusion & Diversity

Building healthy, high performing cultures through inclusive cultures

All programs tailored to your context

UGM Inclusion & Diversity Support

Cultural Diversity at Work

For managers and team leaders

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Getting Ahead at Work

For culturally diverse employees

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Women in Leadership

Different programs, customised for women

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Inclusive Leadership

Leadership for inclusive cultures

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Contact us for a free inclusion & diversity consult

Inclusion & Diversity
UGM’s Contributing-Belonging Cycle

diversity needs inclusion to work

An inclusive culture is essential for diversity to deliver dividends

Inclusion & diversity are important. Most organisations now recognise, without any doubt, that diversity (gender, national culture, disability, age, sexual orientation etc.) has the potential to deliver business benefits. However, fewer realise or acknowledge that, without appropriate skills, diversity can have a significant downside. The key to unlocking diversity dividends is through developing an inclusive organisational culture, where differences in thinking and perspective can deliver benefits, such as innovation and productivity.

In an inclusive culture, all employees – each group and every individual – feel they belong and can contribute (see accompanying diagram). It provides the strongest platform for high performance. Essentially, the organisation’s external business imperatives become supported by its internal operating style. An inclusive culture is the place where external and internal elements of the overall Strategic Plan intersect.

UGM works with clients to develop approaches that have inclusion as their foundation and whatever diversity focus (e,g gender, national culture, age, sexual orientation etc) as the lens. Significantly, even though an organisation might concentrate on one or two groupings, taking an inclusion approach will mean that everyone is included.

The key to unlocking diversity dividends is through developing an inclusive organisational culture, where differences in thinking and perspective can deliver benefits, such as innovation..”

Source: UGM, corroborated by various recent studies

Contact us for a free inclusive culture or diversity consult

what are clients looking for?

Criteria Our Clients Value

Here’s what clients valUE IN UGM’s SUPPORT FOR INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY

it works!

Don’t Just Take Our Word For It

The program is full of strategies that can be easily implemented to help identify and pursue goals.
Partner
Law Firm
Very punctual. Kept to the agenda that ensured we achieved a lot in such a short period of time. Great outcomes and a fabulous group of people. Thank you!
Partner
Accounting Firm
Very informative and given good insight on how mindset can be improved to think strategically. Good resource for developing executive leadership.
Application Development Manager
Public Sector Agency
Set of tools to align the team to the strategy of the organisation.
Solution Lead – Financials
Public Sector Agency
Empowering, thought-provoking, highly active and interactive. Motivates change and drive to apply tools in work and life.
Design Team Lead
Public Sector Agency
Challenges one to take a holistic approach, ideate, collaborate rapidly, question your assumptions and paradigms. Move from thought to action.
Executive Officer
Public Sector Agency

Cultural Diversity at Work

This program is suited to:

  • Team leaders in Australian organisations, most of whom are likely working with colleagues from a variety of different cultural backgrounds.
  • Managers who are accountable for outcomes derived from the efforts employees, quite probably from a range of cultural backgrounds .
  • Senior managers and executives who are seeking to maximise ‘cultural dividends’ that can arise from a culturally diverse workforce if appropriately managed, while minimising the cultural downsides that can befall the naive or unprepared (senior managers and executives cover this material at a higher level and faster pace).

Program Benefits

  • Practical skills that will enable you be a more effective manager in a culturally diverse organisation.
  • Fresh insights about how cultural background affects thinking, communicating and behaving at work.
  • An opportunity to develop new perspectives around the influence of your own cultural background on your management style.
  • Frameworks and tools to help you maximise the value of different perspectives to deliver innovation and high quality outcomes.
  • An action plan so that you can implement what you’ve learned straightaway with your team

Interactive mini-module modules

Identify own preference and biases

Identify the preferences and biases associated with your own upbringing and background and leverage these to support your role

Recognise culture-based assumption

Recognise the culture-based assumptions and expectations that may influence your management style

Explore norms and mindsets of multi-cultural teams

Explore the wide range of norms and ways of thinking culturally diverse team members can bring to their work

Explore different communication styles

Explore different communication styles and apply these insights to improve how you lead and manage at work.

Learn about different management styles

Learn how the management practice (and doing business generally) is significantly impacted by cultural influences.

Practise cultural skills

Practise the cultural skills that will help you be an outstanding manager of high-performing teams in today’s culturally diverse workplace

Getting Ahead at Work

For Culturally Diverse Employees

  • Well-qualified employees whose first language is not English are often under-represented in more senior roles, despite their talent. From an organisational perspective, economists estimate that some $6 billion is wasted annually due to under-utilisation of migrant talent, as a result of insufficient cultural insight and skills. Consequently, there can be many invisible barriers blocking advancement. Some are the responsibility of the organisation to dismantle. But this is generally not enough and frustration persists. Organisations wishing to build an inclusive culture are committed to helping all employees get ahead, whatever their background. The aim is to ensure everyone can contribute to their full potential.

Program Benefits

  • A proven and practical module that helps you to succeed in your chosen profession in Australia,
  • A chance to focus on the particular skills you need to influence successfully and get ahead in your career.
  • A set of frameworks and tools that will enable you to communicate effectively with colleagues at all levels.
  • An opportunity to practise your new skills so that you can implement them with confidence straightaway.
  • A powerful action plan that will help you take exciting next steps in your career.

Interactive mini-module modules

Identify ways to influence stakeholders

Identify the most effective techniques for influencing your stakeholders in positive ways.

Decode norms of communicating

Decode the norms of communicating, relating and behaving that characterise the Australian professional workplace.

Discover ‘hidden’ success rules and use them

Discover the ‘hidden’ rules of success and apply them to consistently create the impression you want.

Recognise strengths of your background

Recognise the strengths of your background and learn how to leverage them in your current context.

Develop practical skills for managing teamwork

Develop practical skills for managing everyday teamwork and meetings in ways that display your talent and show your leadership.

Women in Leadership

These programs are suited to:

  • Groups of early career people who are motivated to take a closer look at aspects that have a proven impact on career progression.
  • Groups of mid-career leaders who would like to build a strong foundation but who may not have had many formal career development opportunities
  • Groups of mid-career people who may be satisfied with their current level, but nevertheless keen on broadening their perspectives and sharpening skills that positively impact their effectiveness and their career
  • Groups of women from across the organisation, regardless of their level of seniority or service.

Program Benefits

  • Focus on providing various groups of women in your organisation with leadership and management development – especially useful where commitments have been made to improve gender equity
  • Lift raw numbers of women participating in leadership and management development experiences
  • Support women in your business with skills and tools that better position them for promotion opportunities
  • Create a strong informal network of capable, motivated women who are committed to collaborating with colleagues for the benefit of both the business and parties involved

Programs / modules available

Steps to Career Success

Fresh ideas and proven tools that can be adapted for use at all levels to turbo charge your career and help you create the career you want.

Inclusive Leadership

A leadership program that focuses on behaviours, skills and mindsets that build inclusive organisations and teams, where people want to contribute and belong.

Getting to the C-Suite

A practical, results orientated leadership program for senior managers and executives, using leading-edge research and proven framework/tools.

Custom Modules

Create a leadership /management program, or one-off modules focusing on a particular identified need, that fits with the unique context of your business.

Inclusive Leadership Module

This module is suited to:

  • Team leaders and managers responsible for working with others to achieve specific business outcomes.
  • Project leaders/managers who are accountable for the outcomes of specific projects where they don’t have a permanent team of their own but must, nevertheless, still achieve outcomes through other people.
  • Middle managers whose role it is to manage a number of different groups working on projects within their scope of accountability.
  • Senior managers and executives who have responsibility for large projects, divisions /directorates or functional areas.

Module Benefits

  • Understand how to identify opportunities for inclusion, and how some traditional practices may have the opposite effect.
  • Recognise how contributing and belonging are two powerful drivers that serve the interest of both your people and your business.
  • Learn how to make meetings, most frequently where business is done, more inclusive.
  • Build skills that allow you to disagree without being disagreeable while encouraging diversity of thinking and promoting innovation.

Indicative mini-modules (interactive)

Opportunities to contribute

Explore what the culture, values and practices your organisation state (expressly or implicitly) about inclusion (and exclusion).

Contributing and belonging

Use UGM’s powerful contributing-belonging model to recognise the fundamental outcomes that individuals and businesses seek.

Make meetings more inclusive

Learn tools and techniques that will make your meetings (from one-on-one to full ‘team’) more inclusive and more productive.

Disagree without being disagreeable

Harness the great business value offered by disagreement, without being disagreeable, using specific behaviours, skills and techniques.

Contact us for a free inclusive culture or diversity consult

Inclusive culture briefings from the UGM archive

WE HAVE Answers

Ask Us Anything About Inclusion and Diversity

In an inclusive culture, all employees – each diversity grouping and every individual – feel they belong and can contribute.

In a word, no. Initially a bold attempt to deliver change in the light of few alternatives, there is no evidence to show that unconscious bias training works. In fact, to the contrary. Evidence suggests basic unconscious bias training can lead to increased bias in organisations.

The diversity dividend is the sum of benefits available when organisations ensure diversity of thinking, often obtained through a diverse workforce. However, an increase in diversity, without people also behaving in an inclusive manner, is more likely to deliver additional challenges than benefits.

Inclusive leadership refers to the behaviours, skills and mindsets that leaders hold with the intent of have their people feel they can make a valued contribution and believe they belong.

Don’t Wait

Contact Us For An Inclusive Culture / Diversity Consult

I’m Ready