Catherine Dixon, Suncorp’s executive general manager people experience says the company started its approach to diversity approximately four years ago, and, back then, it was primarily about gender. This approach has expanded over the years to include a much broader range of backgrounds, and all of this was done without making it an official ‘HR policy.’
“Since we began, we’ve extended our focus to mature age workers and how we can get the best from our five-generation workforce,” Dixon told Insurance Business.
“We’re also focusing on cultural diversity, inclusion and people who are differently abled. That breadth has slowly developed over the last three years, and it’s been an interesting journey because we’ve done it without making it all about our ‘policies’ – we’ve done it inclusively, and with huge input from our entire workforce.”
Dixon highlighted one of Suncorp’s key partnerships, which is with an initiative called TupuToa – an internship programme aimed at bringing graduates of Māori and Pasifika descent into corporate careers.
“TupuToa works with corporate organisations to help their interns transition into a corporate world,” Dixon explained. “These young people have been identified as the leaders of the future, and TupuToa supports them and their whānau in making that move from education into the corporate world.
“The work they do is amazing, and this is the second year that we’ve been in partnership with them.”
Dixon also noted the company’s mandatory training, which is conducted across all of the mentioned aspects of diversity, along with its diversity council. She says the genuine passion staff feel for D&I means a lot of the internal initiatives have not been mandated by HR – things like its cross-generational mentoring, which sees staff from across different generations learn from each other, have all been kick-started by the employees themselves.
Since implementing training schemes and informal targets, Suncorp’s leadership team has grown from having just one female – Dixon herself – to having a 40% female leadership team.
“Our mandatory training uses real life scenarios which have occurred within the business to help staff understand the kinds of circumstances they might encounter, and where D&I is very important,” Dixon said.
“Our recruiters are also trained on the D&I lens they should use when selecting people, so that they can manage unconscious bias around who they might be looking at. Things like talent development, succession planning, etc. – we put that same D&I lens the whole way through.”
“The thing that’s been most successful is this not being an ‘HR thing’,” she concluded. “This has been something that the whole company has embraced, and that’s made a huge difference. There is a huge groundswell of activity that we don’t have to monitor – it just happens.”
