Workplace Diversity Project

The Why

A poor workplace culture and environment will affect your staff’s mental health and wellbeing. It affects job satisfaction, relationships with other staff members, presenteeism, and many other factors.

With poor mental health and wellbeing – you organisation is affected overall. You’ll see a decline in performance, productivity, reputation, recruiting, pipeline, retention of valuable workers, profits, as well as an increased risk exposure to workcover claims.

So, what can we do to improve your staff’s mental health and wellbeing?

Introducing our Workplace Diversity Project.

Together, we’ll help you create a great workplace where all staff members feel accepted, supported and included. Through the Workplace Diversity Project, your supervisors have the chance to become diversity and inclusion leaders, equipped to improve the overall culture and environment of each of your workplaces, prevent mental injuries and improve mental health and wellbeing for frontline workers.

What’s It All About?

This ground-breaking, industry-first project aimed to work with organisations at all levels to improve the mental wellbeing of employees and workplace culture through diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Our dedicated project team provided universal, end-to-end solutions for your organisation, working with HR teams to develop robust policies and procedures, as well as offer one on one mentoring with frontline leaders to become diversity and inclusion champions through training and resource access.

Included in the project:

• We provided organisations with awareness-raising materials and resources to create understanding of the project within your workplaces.
• We designed a promotional campaign of partnerships with Tradeswomen Australia and commitment to becoming diversity and inclusion champions via social platforms.
• We provided full technical support in signing up all organisation participants to our Learning Management System (LMS), which allowed access to learning modules 24/7 through any computer or mobile device.
• Each frontline supervisor or manager gained full access to a database of toolbox meeting talks and presentations, a suite of resources to develop better understanding of each module, as well as advice on a range of diversity and inclusion topics.
• Through a survey we collected baseline data on the current state of wellbeing, diversity and inclusion within your organisation from leadership teams, as well as frontline workers. Throughout the training period, periodic metrics were provided to show improvement in mental health and wellbeing within the workplace through diversity and inclusion initiatives.
• Full support and mentoring for frontline supervisors and managers in navigating a range of mental wellbeing, diversity and inclusion issues through toolbox meeting training was provided.
• All data collected from the training period was collated into a full report, containing an evaluation on the outcomes of the Project and any recommendations. 

Organisation chose their own customised program for the Project to best fit their desired outcomes by including:

• Code of conduct and values support – Our Project assisted in the development of diversity and inclusion elements within their organisation’s current value system, or support in reviewing their organisation’s current code of conduct, so that diversity, inclusion, and mental health & wellbeing can be incorporated effectively.
• Network support for your female workers – We assisted in the provision of memberships and access to female trade networks
• Improving your talent pipeline – We provided recruitment and biases virtual training, as well as assisted in promoting job opportunities within the project organisations.
• Mentoring support for female workers – Within our Project we facilitated mentoring opportunities, or established an internal mentoring framework for their organisation.

Once the organisation completed the Project, they achieved:

• A mentally healthy, diverse, and inclusive workplace culture that fosters innovation, productivity, and respect.
• Competitive advantage in recruitment – being industry leaders in diversifying your workplace and prioritising the mental health of employees, as well as aligning yourself with the TWA brand will assist your organisation in generating a greater variety of applicants.
• Employees who are equipped with the skills and knowledge to be diversity and inclusion champions in their workplaces.
• Evolution of relevant policies & procedures to support diversity, inclusion, and mental health and wellbeing in the workplace (where applicable).
• Creation of a mentoring/support network that will provide your organisation with internal frameworks to support new employees, particularly diverse and/or employees in potentially vulnerable circumstances.

Our Partners

We acknowledge the support of our partners and funding body WorkSafe Victoria’s Workwell Mental Health Improvement Fund.

Our Research

In 2020, the Workplace Diversity Project Team hosted industry forums in order to gain insights into the diversity and inclusion barriers currently in the Victorian automotive industry.

Collaborating with industry experts, a research paper entitled ‘Lifting the Bonnet: Barriers to Diversity and Inclusion in the Automotive Industry‘.

View the research paper here.