The Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional Episode 3 Employee experience

This week is Neurodiversity Celebration Week and what better way to participate in this time of recognition than to listen to a podcast about neurodiversity, bought to you by the Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional. This week I talk to Alys Barr Internal Communications Manager at ASB who also Chairs their Neurodiversity Network Group.

Listen to Alys as we navigate the world of diverse thinking and how the group creates pathways for their colleagues to learn about neurodiversity. We explore the benefits to organisations in creating space for all types of thinkers leading to innovation and creativity. Alys says that creating this space is not just a fluffy nice to have, that there are real business benefits.

We chat about creating a psychologically safe space where people can be open about their neurodiversity. Check out the show notes which includes IOSH research into how many neuro-diverse people will actually tell their employer, If the results are consistent around the world, then there is a long way to go before we crate true inclusion.

Alys talks about her definition of the employee experience, and it’s a full circle, cradle to grave story from onboarding and training to job satisfaction and leaving. For those who want to learn more from Alys connect with her via LinkedIN. 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alys-barr/

Also see the link to the IOSH Survey - https://iosh.com/news-and-opinion/two-thirds-of-workers-won-t-disclose-neurodiversity-to-bosses

Transcript

Greg: 0:02

Hey there everyone, welcome to episode three of the culturally intelligent safety professional a podcast aimed at providing a platform where by safety professionals can develop a pathway to enhance their cultural intelligence capability, which will in turn, help them function more effectively when working in a multicultural situation. I'm Greg, Dearsly your host, and I have a range of guests lined up to talk to this year. We have people with experiences across leadership, psychology, health and safety, education and of course cultural intelligence. All our guests come from a wide range of different backgrounds across the diversity spectrum, including from different organizational contexts. In this podcast you'll hear stories aimed at helping you, the listener enhance your cultural intelligence. Youll gain an understanding of how you can create trust when working in diverse environments and quite frankly, that's all the time, no matter how homogenous the place you work at might be it is still full of diversity. People with different backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs, all built on their figured world. So today's guest is someone I connected with only recently really after I saw a post that she'd written on LinkedIn, it was one of those posts that spoke to me and made me think, wow, that's really cool and interesting, I need to meet this person. So we connected and chatted over coffee and discussed some of the content of the LinkedIn article and some of the stuff that I was doing and I was really keen that she would come and be a guest on this podcast. So get ready. Safety people we're about to hear from somebody who's not in the safety field. Alys Barr is a communications connoisseur who has worked with organisations across the world in a range of industries, including travel, retail, education, and most recently financial services. She's passionate about the employee experience and engagement with a focus on diversity, inclusion, and belonging. She's currently the internal communications manager at ASB Bank, and chair of their Neurodiversity Network Group, welcome Alys, great to have you here, and I'm excited to talk to you today.

Alys: 2:28

kia ora Greg, what an intro. Thank you so much for having me join you today

Greg: 2:32

Excellent. Yeah, it's an impressive background I gotta say, I mentioned in your introduction that you are chair of ASB's Neurodiversity Network Group and I'd love to kick off our chat just simply by learning more about that. How did you become involved and what is your role with that group really look like?

Alys: 2:50

Yeah, totally. So I have my nine to five, which is my internal comms role, and then I also have my five to nine, so my voluntary role as chair of the committee there's seven of us and they're across the whole bank and across New Zealand, and everyone's got different day jobs. So before I helped set up the neurodiversity group at ASB, just in my kind of day job, I was already helping support what was then seven network groups. I've always been really passionate about this space. Advocating for, yeah, diversity, inclusion and belonging, particularly in the workplace. And I'd been involved from the start during my time at ASB and then kinda fast forward a little bit, and in 2022 I actually received an ADHD diagnosis. And so as I was navigating my own diagnosis and reflecting on how that might show up for me at work and how I would talk about it or, even if I would talk about it, I realized we had a little bit of a gap in our network groups. There wasn't a specific community focused on neurodiversity, so I was reaching out to external support groups. So I did a little bit of digging around. I found that our chief Technology officer, David Wells, had already got approval to set a group up. So I connected in with him and just offered my support and said, Hey, I'm really passionate about this I'd love to just take it and run with that. And of course he was like, go for it. So David is now our executive sponsor of the network group. So he's a dyslexic thinker himself. And he's really passionate about the group and sharing his experiences particularly as a neurodiverse senior leader. So yeah, we ended up launching the group almost this time last year. So it would've been during neurodiversity celebration week. We've grown it quite significantly over the past kind of 11 months, which is really cool to see. We're up to, I think now about 360 members and still growing. So there's clearly quite a need for this group and this community. Yeah, we had a really great first year, so a couple of highlights. We did a lunch and learn series, which was really popular. So that was over the course of about six months I think we invited a series of speakers and from a variety of backgrounds to come along online and share their knowledge and experience with our team. So we had a whole heap of people from, neurodiversity specialists, design thinkers we had Tom Little, who's a young Neurodiverse champion, so he was year 13 at the time that he did the lunch and learn with us and he talked about his experiences growing up through school with undiagnosed ADHD. We had a TEDx speaker, we had a psychiatrist, a professor in brain research. So we had this whole spectrum of people and experiences. That was really cool and we had some really nice feedback from those. We also did later on in the year, we focused 20 of our network group went through training with Hato Hone, St. John for Mental Health First Aid. And then this group went on to form what we called a peer support hub. That's an online hub that we've set up on our intranet. And so anyone across the organization can pop on and have a look through and find someone. Everyone's got a little short bio and they can connect with someone that they think is right for them. And yeah, this, I think we underestimated when we set this hub up how successful it would be. And the, underestimating, they say the power of a cup of tea in a chit chat and it's absolutely that. We've got people reaching out from across the bank, just wanting to talk about mental health or neurodiversity or simply just share interests. So that was really cool. And. I found some research actually by Synergy Health and it backed up what we were doing. They asked people if you were struggling with your mental health at work, who would you go to? And so that was really interesting to see the results from that survey. And it came out that, predominantly, and it was 40 something percent would talk to a trusted peer as the number one. Versus a manager was about 26% EAP provider, a little bit lower, about 23% an HR department sitting at 3%. So I think that kind of gave us a bit of a boost that we were doing something that would actually really make a difference. So yeah, and I think another reason we really wanted to set that group up was lots of people. And the statistics show, I think it's as high as 80% when you're looking at specifically neurodiverse people as high as 80% will experience mental health concerns at some point in their life. And that's often relating to this additional feeling of, feeling like you don't belong or trying to, constantly adapt your behaviors to fit in. And so for us, that became quite an important piece of our program for last year to really try and support the mental health side of things. Yeah. I could waffle on for hours on this.

Greg: 7:32

Hey, look it's awesome. It sounds like you and the team have achieved so much in your first year. And so congratulations on that. And you may have touched on some of these points in your answer already, but. Why do you think it's important for Organisations to consider neurodiversity in the workplace or set up groups like this? And obviously some of those statistics are quite quite interesting and revealing as to, why Organisations might wanna look at something like this.

Alys: 7:58

Totally. And we've found that the feedback that we, we did a feedback survey at the end of last year and. The comments that were coming out of that kind of really validated the hard work that the team put in for that year. cause it is, it's all side of desk, it's all voluntary work. Yeah, some of the comments were really nice to read, in terms of reducing stigma and creating that environment where people feel safe to bring their whole self to work. That came out a lot through, we did some people stories and interviews with Neurodiverse colleagues and they were really open and vulnerable about their lived experiences and that kind of opened a bit of a floodgate for others to reach out and connect and even go as far as sharing, diagnosis with their peers or their manager. And we saw that as well with our internal social media. And it started very much. It started very much one way. So it would be our community engagement managers sharing a lot of content and posting lots of really cool stuff, but not much engagement from the other side. And, one year on, you can see now people are really actively posting and someone will ask question about I'm considering a diagnosis or I'm worried about my child, and someone else will come in underneath and comment and say, Hey, give me a call. Let's grab a coffee. I've got some tips. So that sense of community has been really awesome. But yeah, I think in terms of the importance, to me it's a no brainer, excuse the pun. You think about our general population and being reflective of the general population. So some of the statistics are as high as 30% 30% of the population being neurodiverse. And so that's almost a third of our population, so that's huge. So yeah, I think it's really important that organizations are actively seeking a diverse workforce. If you think, as humans, that's exactly what we are. And I don't think that businesses can really, truly reach their potential if the people inside that are making these decisions are not accurately reflecting the customers on the outside that are going to benefit or not from those decisions. Yeah, we talk about neurodiversity within our network group it's this umbrella term, but we apply it to everyone. If you think, no two people have the same brain, no two people have the same lived experiences, thoughts, ways of processing. So it's really important that we are creating ways of working and processes within organizations that are enabling every brain to thrive. And everyone's got something different to bring to the table. Neurological differences allow for these diverse skills and perspectives and capabilities. I like to actually heard this from Rich Rowley. He came and did a talk to us back in June and it really clicked something in my brain where he was talking about the scale of people and how people like to work. And down one end you've got your BAUs who. Turn up to work. They do a great job, but they love and they thrive in consistency and they love knowing what's coming and doing the same thing every day. And then you've got far other end of the spectrum, which is people that really thrive when given the chance to be creative. And they come up with the big ideas and the innovation and yeah, they're the kind of big picture thinkers. And you'll find a lot of people with ADHD will sit at that end of the scale and they like the change. That creativity, which is definitely where I sit. And within any business you need to have a really good spread across that scale'cause if you've got everyone down the BAU end, you are gonna be doing fantastic work and your business is taking over. But let's face it, you're not gonna be doing much innovation. Whereas if you've got everyone down the other end, you've got all these great ideas, but not necessarily any of them being executed. So that kind of really clicked with me that. It wasn't just this fluffy, nice to have it's actually like really good for business. And I think a lot of people are making that connection now, which is really cool. Yeah, I think also. There's a flip side to that in terms of, if we're thinking back to those statistics and thinking about 30% of the population being neurodiverse, it's highly likely that any organization that you look into will have, a high number of their people will be neurodiverse. But I can guarantee you that 30% will not have disclosed to their manager or to their peers that would be 30%. And we've seen that within our employee engagement surveys. We are tracking. In an anonymous survey, how many people are identifying as neurodiverse and it's, the numbers are nowhere near what you would think. And that's predominantly due to fear that people will judge them or, they're worried about what their colleagues or their manager might think. And they've just really mastered that camouflaging masking strategies to get through and on the outside. Using those strategies, everything can look fine and these people are turning up to work, they're doing a great job. You wouldn't know anything's going on beneath the surface, but it can be really costly in terms of energy and anxiety levels. And, neurodiverse people are already more prone to burnout. And so this can play quite a big role within that, and that's really unsustainable. In short, these people are going to eventually hit a brick wall and they are eventually going to burn out, and that's gonna be taking sick leave, extended time off, or even, leaving the business. Yeah, I think it's just it's building a workplace that. Is inclusive where people feel safe to talk about a diagnosis, feel safe to advocate for themselves, for any accommodations they might need to really mitigate that risk of burnout. And I think that's where these network groups have a really crucial role to play because sharing our stories and building that trust and that psychological safety across the business, it's a really good first step. And that sense of communIty..

Greg: 13:41

Yeah, absolutely. And just on your point about people that will tell their boss or won't, and I think I, I mentioned this to you last time we spoke and for our listeners out there, I think IOSH, who's the health and safety industry Association in the UK recently posted on social media and basically just ask that question. If you fit this neurodivergent bucket, would you tell your employer and there was a significant, percentage would say no. And there were a range of reasons for that. From, I've had a bad experience to, I don't want to and everything in between. I'll try and dig that post out and maybe post that up on the show notes for the podcast. So you've talked in your LinkedIn profile and we mentioned it in the introduction about employee experience. Can you just talk to us about what that means and why it matters?

Alys: 14:32

Yeah, totally. So employee experience and kind of the way I think about it, it's really everything that touches a person as they go through the process of getting a job. So that's everything from how you're attracting talent to how are you, what's your hiring process? What does onboarding look like? How are they feeling engaged throughout their time, within that job? Are they getting developed appropriately? Do they feel like they're improving? And then at the other end, how are they leaving? And so yeah it's quite subjective. It's really how employees feel and perceive their potential and their ability within an organization. And also ties in with wellbeing as well. So I think pre COVID this probably wasn't talked about or thought about in the same way it is post-COVID. There was actually a survey done in 2021 that showed that, I think it was 92% of employers said that enhancing their employee experience is gonna be an important priority over the next few years. And if you think about comparing that to what it was before at 52%, that's, pretty much doubled.... its really important and if you think about, for most of us, we spend quite a lot of our time, most of our time at work. And so having that be a place that you feel engaged and you want to be is super important. Yeah, and I think again, it's to do with attracting the best talent. It's to do with retaining the best talent, but it's every step along the journey. If you think about employee engagement, if you've got a really great employee experience, you're gonna have really engaged employees that you know are productive and they love to work and they're gonna love their jobs. That's key. And that then impacts on obviously an organization's overall performance. There was another study that showed that employers with inclusive teams outperform their less inclusive peers by about 27%. And so if managers are inclusive and employees are feeling like they belong. There's this correlation to higher commitment and higher job satisfaction, and ultimately that's higher customer satisfaction because if you've got engaged employees that are doing a great job and they love what they do, that's undoubtedly going to reflect in your business outcomes. So yeah, it does touch on everything and actually linking back to the network groups, they have a really big role to play with an employee experience. So it all boils down to the sense of belonging and feeling like we belong. It's a fundamental human need. It's hardwired into all of us, whether we like it or not. And so that is a really key driver of employee experience and that's where these network groups can really influence change within an organization. So it's. It's a safe space. People can often, under represented groups as well, can connect with other like minded employees. They can seek support and advice. It's a safe environment. They can feel like their voice is being heard. They can influence change they can help drive those business outcomes. So I think also personally, it's a really great opportunity for people to grow and really develop their skills. If I think about. me before the network group, I was terrified of public speaking. I would never have done anything like this. We would definitely not be having this conversation. So I think by, pushing myself out of my comfort zone, it's really helped me to develop those skills. And yeah we've had some really nice feedback from others in the group as well about, just feeling like they didn't know how to ask for accommodations or they didn't know, didn't have the tools or the words or the confidence to talk to their peers or their manager and just normalizing it has really helped to boost that. So yeah, I think it's all interconnected really.

Greg: 18:23

Excellent. Just again, for our health and safety focused listeners. Worker engagement is a key component of, the health and safety system enshrined in the legislation, and a lot of businesses actually struggle to come up with ways of having effective engagement much past, oh, we've got a committee and we send them on a training course every now and again. But I think if we think wider about engagement and belonging, these sorts of groups have created that connection between not just between the workers and the business, but between the workers, between individual workers themselves. And get providing support and as I say, just this whole engagement thing that, that businesses do struggle with. It doesn't have to be as black and white as the legislation suggests. There are so many ways that you can engage. Can get connection, can create that sense of inclusion. Certainly when I was first in the workforce, it was, don't bring any of that personal stuff to work. Leave it at the gate. And now you've used the term of bring your whole self to work. That's what we're, that's the expectation. And also I think it applies, generally we talk about workers, but actually. Leaders and managers, have all got, to feel like they can be vulnerable. And I think that was something that came out of Covid a little bit, was that the leaders of Organisations were saying to their workers, okay. We know Covid has been tough and come and talk to us about it and we'll, actually, it was okay for the leaders to do that as well, but they, I don't know that they were these all powerful chief executives who nothing can hurt. If maybe behind the scenes, they were struggling as well, just with different things maybe.

Alys: 20:08

Yeah. I think Covid is as many negatives as it brought, there was definitely a few positives that have come out of the pandemic, and I do think it really has broken down some of the barriers that were up before in terms of, like you say, like connecting with senior leaders and showing a vulnerable side. And senior leaders were on work calls and they've got kids in the background, they've got the dog running across the laptop. Like it's that sense of connection and it's normalizing being a human being like, we, it's not we are all human and we all have different needs and I think that was really nice to break down that barrier. Also in terms of hybrid working, I think, and flexibility, like that's been a huge huge outcome from COVID and it's. It feels really strange actually, to think back to a world where working from home, this was absolutely unheard of. And when we went into lockdown and where I was working at the time, we didn't even have Microsoft teams set up we'd never used it before. So it was just a whole new world. So yeah, I do think, yeah, you're right. It's helped build that connection.

Greg: 21:15

Absolutely. Time has flown past and I'd just like to start trying to wrap this up and just wondered if you've got any tips you've got for teams or employees on making work life more inclusive for the neurodivergent community and, what are your top, top five tips or top four tips, or however many you've got?

Alys: 21:35

Oh my gosh. You're gonna, you're gonna squeeze me down to five I think I'll start by saying that people often think that by, making accommodations or making life easier for neuro diverse people, that it's going to be this huge challenge and it's going to be, making all these changes just for this one person in the team, for example. When naturally when you break it down the things that will benefit neuro diverse people actually benefit everyone. So some of the things that. Top of mind, clear communication, having clear deadlines not having vague requests communicating the why. So really working out what makes your people tick, what do they love to work on. Having agendas is a big one for meetings. We love a meeting. And yeah, having an agenda, a clear title and just making it clear basically who needs to be at that meeting is super helpful. I have a good example of this actually, or bad example I should say. So I had someone request a meeting and said, oh, your Tuesday's looking pretty busy. I said, oh yeah, I'm in meetings from nine till four. But Wednesday and Thursday are pretty free. Feel free to find some time and I get a meeting request. Popped in for four o'clock on the Thursday following my seven hours of back-to-back me that is simply titled Brainstorm with no Agenda. So I kindly went back to that person and said, I'm really happy to be there and I'm really happy to come along, but I just wanted to let you know that my brain won't be braining very hard for a brainstorm at four o'clock on a Tuesday after I've had seven hours of meetings. So that's a big one for me. Giving people an opportunity to feedback. This is one that I think does impact quite a few people. So being in a meeting and being put on the spot, we're making a decision right now. What does everyone think? That doesn't work. And often people who are slightly more introverted prefer to go away and think about it and process it and come up with their thoughts and I'm one of those people so having different avenues of for feedback and not just expecting everyone to come up with something on the spot's really important. What else can I think of? Oh, breaks. Breaks, normalizing breaks. Focus time. And like I said earlier, just generally being a human, like we're not robots. Taking a walk at lunchtime is a good idea for everyone. Flexibility we've talked about flexible working and then just general wellbeing check-ins I think is super important. Just to, keep tabs, make sure everyone is doing okay. And. There was a phrase that I heard recently that I really like that I will share, which is nothing about us without us. And so sometimes people can have the best intentions and we'll go ahead and make a whole bunch of accommodations, but without talking to that person first. And that can actually have a really detrimental impact. So yeah, nothing about us without us focus on building trust. And yeah, just building that environment where people really feel comfortable to advocate for their needs. And also noting on that needs are not rigid. So it might be on one day that one thing might be helpful and another day it might not be so helpful. And yeah, it doesn't have to be this huge piece of work. It doesn't have to be accommodations for someone might be as simple as. Hey, I work better in the office when I can have that desk in the corner that's away from the main walkway. Yeah. Again, it all boils down to building that trust and having people in your team feel comfortable to talk about. What is it that they need, where they can perform at their best?

Greg: 25:04

It's really interesting. I wanna pick up on that point. You mentioned about decision making on the spot. And in terms of cultural intelligence yeah. One of the cultural values that, form part of a suite of values is direct versus indirect communication and direct people are to the point and very direct. Whereas indirect people tend to want to focus on a relationship and within that is that need to go away and think about the response which, so that fits into that point that you made, but also, as you mentioned, that. Im sure I saw a headline recently that said, when a business asks for feedback, actually the neurodivergent community within that business are the ones that are more likely to give feedback than maybe the neurotypical, if that's the, that's the term to put people in a bucket, but yeah, neurodiverse people are more likely to give feedback than others which I found an interesting point to make. That's all super helpful. And as you say, a lot of that stuff, if not all of it, it's not about neurodiversity, it's just about. Humanizing the workplace, right? Because all of those things that you've said, wouldn't it be great if we could go to a meeting and actually know why we're going? And trust and all of that sort of stuff it's absolutely relevant for everybody. So really loved having our chat today. Is there anything else you wanna finally wrap up with? And thanks for the quote by the way. I think that, that's a good one to, to reflect on as well. But is there anything else that you want to add as we close off?

Alys: 26:42

Just thank you. Thank you for having me come and have a chat today. It's been really nice to do my first podcast. That's a take off the bucket list. But no in all seriousness, if anyone listening would like to reach out, I'm really open to kind of meeting for a chat. I think in this space it's really important that we are all sharing and learning from each other so that the more that we can yeah, learn and grow, the faster we can open those doors and level that playing field. So yeah, ultimately make work more enjoyable and productive for everyone.

Greg: 27:14

So that's all good and I'm sure we'll have maybe a connection to your LinkedIn profile on the show notes when this gets published so that those that want to connect can do so thanks very much for that offer, I'm sure as you say, there will be people out there that would very much benefit from having a discussion with you. So yeah, just thanks again Alys and it's been a great chat and thanks for your time. What a great discussion. What did you think? Alys and her colleagues are doing some great work at creating a positive employee experience for the neurodiverse community. There were some real gems in that discussion with Alys. She said that business cannot reach their potential if the people inside the business don't reflect the customers on the outside. What Alys is saying is that if your workforce doesn't understand the needs of their everyday customers, then your decision-making aimed at benefiting those customers may not be aligned. So being curious and learning about connecting with diverse communities inside your business will help you do the same with your external stakeholders. Alys talked about the challenges neurodiverse workers can have in gaining confidence. in asking for the small accommodations that it can take to create a more ingrained feeling of inclusion and belonging. Based her feedback these accommodations are such simple things and in many cases, things that everybody in the workplace might benefit from, clear communication, detailed expectations, and maybe just a little respect for people's time in terms of scheduling. We also covered an alarming stat related to disclosure of neurological conditions. And while it's totally up to the individual as to whether they disclose the diagnosis to their employer, a recent IOSH survey found that two thirds of people wouldn't. The reasons for this are many and varied, but Alys's story is one with a positive outcome that I have no doubt is proving beneficial for her employer. There's a link to the IOSH LinkedIn post about their survey, in the show notes. We've come to the end of this episode. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found something valuable that you can take away that might enhance aspects of your own cultural intelligence. I'll add the transcript from this episode to the show notes, and there will be some other resources available as well. If you'd like to talk about cultural intelligence, get in touch with me by LinkedIn. I'm posting content regularly, so keep an eye on your feed and comment if you see something that resonates. If we aren't connected. Send me an invite. If you want to hear more about CQ. You can follow and subscribe to this podcast. I'd really appreciate it, if you did that, and keep an eye out for the next episode. Next week we talked to Vance Walker. Many of, you will know Vance from his work in integrating Māori culture into health and safety. You might've contributed to his PhD research, listen to a webinar, or had a meaningful discussion with him at a conference. Until then, thanks again for tuning in. Ka kitei