The Multicultural Training and Capability team at Services Australia is taking a simple but powerful narrative-based approach to enhance inclusion across its workforce.
Rocio Perri’s work in Services Australia as Director of the Multicultural Training and Capability team has connected her with countless individuals, but there’s one moment that has left a lasting impression during her thirty plus years at the agency.
Sitting in on a multicultural training session, she listened as a guest speaker, a refugee who had sought asylum in Australia after fleeing Afghanistan, spoke to a group of Services Australia employees.
In the crowd that day was an employee who had witnessed family members serve in the Afghanistan conflict.
“Hearing that person’s story? It totally blew our staff member’s mind,” says Perri.
“She became quite emotional and shared with us that [the session] had flipped what she thought she knew [about] what her family members in the military had been through. This gave her a whole new perspective on something she thought she knew really well.”
That’s just one example of the types of conversations that Service Australia’s flagship multicultural training program, Multiculturalism: Our Stories (M:OS), is facilitating.
In an increasingly polarised landscape for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and rising political tensions against certain marginalised communities, the program, which won AHRI’s Best DEI Strategy award last year, focuses on building connections across difference.
By adopting a storytelling approach, the M:OS program aims to foster empathy, increase cross-cultural understanding among employees to enhance Service Australia’s multicultural servicing, and, ultimately, drive inclusivity across its workforce.
“Our programs are not what you would call your ‘traditional’ [cultural awareness] training program,” says Perri.
“They are very much about centering CALD [culturally and linguistically diverse] experiences more than anything else, and, in particular, ensuring that the people who deliver the programs are from a CALD background, with their own lived experiences.
“We also acknowledge that every person who participates in one of these programs has a story. It’s about sharing those experiences in a safe space.”
Developing a ‘living program’
Perri describes the M:OS program as a “living and breathing program”, which continues to evolve through participant feedback, and is responsive to a changing socio-political climate. Currently, the community guest speakers are either of the Muslim faith or have a refugee background.
Now in its tenth year, the program takes the form of a three-hour guided discussion delivered to a maximum of 20 participants. The intimate setting is designed to ensure cultural safety for the speakers and participants, during what can be an emotionally intense experience.
Two facilitators, with at least one having a CALD background, are trained to create an open forum where participants engage with the guest speakers and their peers, learn about the challenges faced by CALD communities and ask questions.
As part of the discussion, participants are equipped with bystander strategies to apply when witnessing an interaction motivated by racism or racial microaggressions.
The current iteration of M:OS is based on a mandatory multicultural awareness program formulated specifically for senior leadership (SES program), which Perri delivers directly.
As is always best-practice before the implementation of any HR initiative, the Multicultural Training and Capability team conducted three pilots and applied key lessons from each before rolling the SES program out.
The first pilot utilised a panel of three community guest speakers to connect with senior leaders, but lacked the necessary structure.
In the second pilot, two community guest speakers were supported by a generalist facilitator who guided the conversation instead.
“It’s not just about inclusion, it’s also about feeling like you belong.” – Rocio Perri, Director, Multicultural Training and Capability, Services Australia
“I was sitting at the back of that particular pilot, and every time a question was asked that the facilitator couldn’t respond to, I would respond to that question,” says Perri. “At the end of the session, my national manager and the general manager came up to me and said ‘Okay, next pilot, you’re going to be running the session.’
“What it demonstrated was that you needed to have someone who understood the [multicultural lived] experience in order to be able to lead those conversations.
“The other thing we came away with was that one of the key success factors for engaging with participants was having community guest speakers tell their personal stories.”
The SES program’s success became the blueprint for a broader multicultural capability-building initiative.
Following these pilots, Perri’s team undertook extensive consultation with CALD employees and external community stakeholders to ensure the program aligned with CALD needs and best-practice cultural awareness training principles.
Personal stories sit at the core
DEI strategies can at times risk being seen as tokenistic or piecemeal in their efforts – particularly when it’s something conceived from the top of an organisation.
That’s why, from the beginning, it was vital that the M:OS program was driven by the stories of the people who live through it each day, says Perri.
“When you have a person of the Muslim faith coming in and talking about incidents of Islamophobia they’re faced with on a daily basis, it demystifies and blows the mis- and disinformation out of the water. You can’t dispute their experience. It becomes more real and more human.”
The input of CALD individuals is layered into many dimensions of the program – from its development to facilitators.
M:OS facilitators are employees from all levels of Services Australia who identify as having CALD backgrounds, or are allies with a deep level of multicultural knowledge and a commitment to challenging racism and prejudice.
One of the most effective components of the program has been the creation of a non-judgemental space, says Perri. All facilitators are trained to use a model of appreciative inquiry, which focuses on positive strengths, opportunities and growth.
Rather than a session where listeners are being ‘talked at’, facilitators support participants to respond to challenging statements such as those unpacking unconscious bias.
“It’s not just about inclusion, it’s also about feeling like you belong,” says Perri. “You can’t feel like you belong if people don’t acknowledge that you have a story that they haven’t experienced. That [experience] brings a level of value that they perhaps wouldn’t be able to hone in on, if you didn’t have these conversations.”
Recognising the vulnerability involved, Perri emphasises the importance of making trauma-aware and culturally appropriate support mechanisms accessible. For employees who require it, Perri’s team is on-hand for post-debrief sessions and to direct them to available support, such as employee assistance programs.
Driving meaningful change
The M:OS program is not a mandatory training initiative, but has seen an uptake of 25,000 participants since it first began.
Perri’s team have been able to extend this impact across the public sector and are regularly commissioned to deliver the training to other agencies.
Importantly, Perri’s team has addressed the recurring question of demonstrating the ROI of DEI initiatives.
Employee engagement surveys highlighted a notable increase in supervisor inclusive action reported by employees, rising from 67 per cent in 2019 to 84 per cent in 2023.
A study conducted by the Australian National University in 2019 found that the program had the potential to change participants’ attitudes and behaviours in the long term. These included measurable improvements in:
- Services designed for and delivered to CALD customers
- Identification and utilisation of anti-racism strategies
- Greater intentions to confront discrimination
- Awareness of cultural differences and greater intentions of being respectful of them
“Often, it’s not just about the light bulb moments that people have during the course of the program,” says Perri.
“It’s not just changing hearts and minds internally in the agency, but the potential for a ripple effect of what people share [with their network] once they leave work.”
For Perri, winning the AHRI award last year was a “real acknowledgement” of her team’s dedication to diversity and inclusion.
“My team goes above and beyond without even being asked to. But [receiving the award] also demonstrates the level of commitment our agency has to this work as well. If I didn’t have senior leaders who supported our work, it wouldn’t exist.
“As a migrant kid, it’s being able to do work I love that’s connected to who I am, and I don’t have to change myself to fit into a box that makes it more palatable. I can be me and I can bring those experiences and my family migration story into the fore, which I’m really grateful for.”
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