It is interesting to have a look at what might be the areas of interest in 2023 in Diversity and Inclusion.
Legislation
We will see lots of work on the gender pay-gap and women’s safety at work with the introduction of two key pieces of legislation at the end of 2022, Respect at Work and the IR Bill, opening up important opportunities for women and work. In the next year there will be some big moves in the way WGEA collects data and the work in the space of diversity and intersectionality will be one to watch and engage with.
DCA Research
There will be more talk about race, racism and what it means to be anti-racist at work. DCA’s Racism at Work in 2022 has been a part of shifting-up conversations on race at work – and broadening our work from discussing ‘cultural diversity’ to actively talking about how organisations can be actively anti-racist.
In early 2023 DCA will launch an important piece of work looking at the experience of culturally and/or racially marginalised women and their access to leadership in the workplace.
The Voice
With a commitment to a referendum on a First Nations Voice to parliament in the first term of government we can expect that campaigns for and against The Voice will generate significant conversations across the country in 2023 – with a referendum likely to be held next year.
DCA has supported the Uluru Statement since 2019 and will be active in our support for ‘Yes’ in the referendum.
Other D&I work
We will conduct the 4th iteration of our Inclusion@Work Index, a nationally representative study of inclusion in the Australian workforce. We will also offer Australian employers the chance to participate and look at their work in diversity and inclusion as part of our project, Inclusive Employers.
These parts of our work will continue to benchmark the how, what, and why of diversity and inclusion at work – highlighting the business case for doing the work of diversity and inclusion at work and opening opportunities for our members to build your own data to track your progress, celebrate your achievements, and set your strategies.
Intersectionality, understanding it, and working through best practice ways to take approaches that acknowledge and recognise the sometimes-multiple areas of marginalisation we need to address to be truly inclusive will be part of all we do in 2023.
In 2023 DCA will release more in our work in the role of Artificial Intelligence in the workplace, we will develop and release a tool to assist organisations to build inclusiveness into recruitment, and we will kick off more work on the impact of social class on inclusion.
DCA are looking forward to another big year of research, events, resources and work in D&I with and for our members in 2023.