It started with an ugly carrot.

And it’s a big success solution stemming from the discovery of an underutilised resource in the business: the farmers’ wives.

You can see the original story over on ABC Landline (published in 2016).

The background

Waste is a persistent problem for vegetable growers. Take carrots – even with a good crop, 10 per cent won’t make it out of the paddock or the packing shed and into a bag.

There used to be more alternative markets for what we now call ‘ugly veg’. But the tight specifications now imposed by retailers make for a lot of waste.

Growers say that it’s not uncommon for the bottom 15 to 25 or 30 per cent of your crop at times to get the chop. When that happens, it eats into the crop’s profitability.

The seconds are sold for pet food, donated to charity or fed to cattle. The cattle might love them, but as a stock feed, carrots are worth just $50 a tonne – a poor return for produce, much of which is fit for human consumption.

With rising costs, the co-owner of a large agricultural business, Kalfresh, decided to go to the US in search of ideas and answers.

The trip was worth it, for Richard Gorman returned with big ideas which led to a change in management culture, a radical new hiring philosophy and a multimillion-dollar spend on product development to target new high-value markets.

This leveraging diversity success story came down to two simple questions

The first: did Kalfresh consider the views of its mainly women customers? The answer was a sheepish no.

And the second: did the company have a diverse management team? Another no. It was clear Kalfresh had a bloke problem.

Richard reflected: ‘Our management team: all men. Our board: all men. You know, anyone who had any say in anything was all men.’

To address the diversity deficit, Richard did a skills audit of the women married to the company’s managers and its contract growers.

Richard said to his wife, “You know, it’s amazing, all these smart women I have around me that actually know what products we should have.” Five of the wives had decades of experience in a range of fields which the company could use. Richard asked them if they’d team up to solve the waste problem.

Richard’s wife, Alice Gorman said: ‘I call it Richard’s epiphany moment!’

After some market research, they proposed value-adding the waste to target the booming preprepared vegetable market.

They realised that 15 per cent of Australians buy a ready-to-go meal twice a week. Essentially these buyers use the supermarket as their fridge. They don’t like waste, so they buy smaller amounts and often they’re time-poor, so they are looking for an easy but healthy option. The farmers wives were able to tap into all of those trends.

The solution to Kalfresh’s bloke problem worked. The ‘Just Veg’ range is now available nationally and about half of the waste carrots are now being pre-cut and bagged. Sales are growing, and most importantly, growers are getting more for their carrots.

From the paltry $50 a tonne as stock feed, the value-added seconds are worth an incredible $5,000 a tonne – a 100-fold increase in value and worth even more than the perfect whole carrots which end up in a bag.

Are you leveraging diversity that exists within your organisation?

As we always say at Emberin, its not just about a tokenistic diversity target which adds more women or others who fit into diversity categories: the key to success is the inclusion of those different views even when those views may really challenge the thinking of those who have been around for a long time.

Is it time to empower your leaders to leverage diversity and become more inclusive?

Take our assessment here to determine if our inclusive leadership program is for you.

ERGs are gaining popularity as more and more organisations focus their efforts on building workplace diversity and inclusion.  

When organisations support and encourage employee resource group (ERG) programs, their employees are afforded the opportunity to bring their whole selves to work to connect with others who are like them. 

This in turn fosters a sense belonging and as we know this makes a big impact on how included employees feel and can grow a diverse and positive workplace culture. 

So, although not a new concept within the D&I field, employee resource groups are growing in numbers and are becoming more sustainable given their success. 

But what exactly is an employee resource group (ERG)?  

An ERG is a group formed by people of a common identity. They’re also called ‘affinity groups’ or ‘diversity groups’.  

For example, you might have a group of people who unite on the basis of being of the same colour or race, or religion.  

Typically, ERGs are formed based on:  

• Race, culture or ethnicity  
• People with disabilities  
• Gender: male or female 
• Religion  
• Sexual orientation  
• Age  
• Parenting 
• Other common ground  

Bear in mind that an ERG is self-organised, and not created by force by senior management. It’s usually formed because someone takes the initiative to bring people together based on some common ground, which is their unique difference.  

It is this bottom-up approach that will drive the formation of an ERG, but it’s the support from leaders and management that helps ERGs to grow, champion change, and disrupt the way diversity is included and embraced within the organisation. 

What kind of impact can an ERG have on your workplace culture? 

ERGs are like small communities within your organisation.  

When people get together based on their unique difference, they have more power to create meaningful change, voice their opinion and access senior leadership.  

They give opportunities for minority groups and underrepresented employees to come into the limelight and make an impact.  

More importantly, ERGs create a sense of psychological safety among the employees who are a part of the ERG. In this way, employees might feel a sense of belonging, and share their concerns and long-term plans more openly with their peers.  

With an increased sense of belonging, employees are more: 

• Innovative because they feel that their views will be respected and listened to. 
• Collaborative with their colleagues to achieve success for the organisation as one team. 
• Engaged with the organisation and customers alike, to deliver their best. 
• Productive and focussed on their role rather than on toxic behaviours. 
• Likely to stay in the talent pipeline for longer. 
• Safe and well because they are more likely to speak up about unsafe work environments. 

Furthermore, with the support of inclusion allys from across the organisation, ERGs can work collaboratively to win the support they need from upper management to facilitate change.  

How can your organisation support ERGs? 

Organisations can support ERGs to foster a sense of inclusiveness, diversity and equality by: 

• Formalising an ERG program. 
• Your ERG program should provide each ERG with access to senior leadership in order to propose and then facilitate any change.  
• Give ERGs the authority to decide the scope of the group, to define membership eligibility, and establish what success means to their group. These metrics should not be imposed upon them, but should be self-generated by the ERG.  
• Provide executive sponsors to ERGs that provide mentorship. For example, the CEO could become an executive sponsor to an ERG for LGBTQIA+, to support their initiatives and visibility based on his/her experience. Such sponsors have to make the ERGs success a priority for themselves, and tie its success with their own goals.  
• Provide ERGs with the tools they need for success like a platform for communication, leadership training and access to senior leaders within the organisation.  

The benefits of having ERGs 

Organisations that support ERGs have reported the following benefits:  

• Employees are more likely to stay for longer periods of time because they’re provided a sense of community within the company. 
• Employees feel more confident contributing their difference to the company, if they get the backing and support of an ERG by being a member.  
• Employees get the chance to voice their opinions, openly and clearly, in front of key decision makers who hear them out.  
• Earning the reputation of being highly inclusive, and supportive of diversity, and equality, attracting top talent.  

Keeping the above in mind, we recommend you put a formal ERG program in place. If you’re unsure of how to set up a form ERG program, involve a third-party facilitator or coach to work with your ERGs to bridge the gap between them and other senior leaders within your company. Ideally, your coach would’ve worked with ERGs at other companies on various diversity and inclusion initiatives.  

Disrupting inclusion and diversity delivery 

If your organisation has yet to set up formalised any ERGs then we suggest you take some time to research more about the groups. 

They are gaining popularity for a reason within inclusive organisations. 

If you’re interested in supporting your leaders to be more inclusive, take the first step today: complete our 2minute questionnaire to determine if our Inclusion Habits for Leaders Program suits your specific D&I goals. 

Take the questionnaire here. 

As inclusive leaders you should be constantly communicating with your diverse team about how much you value their presence and contribution in your organisation. Letting them know you care is key.  

Valuing the diversity that your team brings to the organisation helps to develop a sense of belonging. And when employees feel like they belong then you will experience a boost to the overall creativity and innovation among your employees.  

It won’t take long, believe me, until you start to notice the flow on effect to the bottom line.

But how do you show to your employees that you are in fact valuing diversity?  

In this article, I’m going to cover off on 5 ways. Let’s begin.

#1: Recognise and appreciate diversity  

It starts with learning to recognise diversity.  

Diversity in the workplace comes in all shapes and sizes and colours. The dimensions of diversity are vast and some are more obvious than others. Yes there are different cultures, skin tone, genders, styles, and preferences that many of us can recognise almost instantly.

But there are also other diverse ways of working that aren’t always so obvious.

Consider the neuro-diverse people who often mask their diversity when they interact others. Or consider introvert versus extrovert personality types and their ways of working and solving problems. And then there are LGBTQ persons who choose not to be overt in their sexual orientation.

We are surrounded by difference and uniqueness every day and yet sometimes we forget that our difference is our superpower.

So, when an employee contributes a unique perspective on a business problem, shows initiative to connect with people or a problem from a different angle, or gives you a new perspective on a work situation, consider expressing your appreciation towards them for bringing their contribution to the table.

As an inclusive leader you can begin to show that you are valuing diversity with a simple ‘thank you’. Expressing appreciation, whether publicly or privately, encourages your employees to be more open and forthcoming with their diverse opinions and initiatives. Your gratitude means a lot to your employees as it gives them a clear indication of what you value, helping promote the right types of behaviour and actions from your employees.  

#2: Invest in D&I programs with an ROI focus

When you put your money where your mouth is by investing in diversity and inclusion programs, it sends a clear signal to your employees that you are valuing diversity.  

Make sure you invest in programs that have an ROI focus, so you’re letting your employees know that you’re interested in leveraging their difference and translating it into real tangible results.  

Your employees will then view your investment in diversity and inclusion as a serious one, since it would be closely tied to your organisation’s financial performance.  

Your employees should see that you value diversity from a business context, not just as a casual way to make your employees socialise over cultural nuances.  

#3: Design and run inclusion experiments

To show you value diversity, it’s important you’re constantly designing experiments to test your hypothesis around diversity and inclusion.  

For example, you might find that two teams in your organisation are constantly in conflict, blaming each other when there’s a client problem.  

To address this problem, you could design an experiment to have a compulsory ‘Friday morning coffee’ session which both teams have to attend.  

You could set a rule for this catchup that for the first hour in the meeting, people only talk about things that are unrelated to work, like who they are, and what they like doing.  

This informal catchup between the two teams could help break the ice, and fix the communication problems between them. It could result in a massive increase in collaboration, minimising conflict and boosting productivity.  

If you value diversity, you will constantly design experiments. Experimentation will help you refine your diversity and inclusion strategy, and build it for the long term.  

#4: Educate yourself and your leaders 

Make the time to educate yourself and the leaders in your organisation about diversity. This involves becoming aware about different cultural traditions, different approaches to work, and getting to know your colleagues on a more personal level.  

We are all different and our difference is what makes us strong and unique. 

Work to encourage your leaders to move from having a ‘local mindset’ to having a ‘global mindset’. Educate yourself about world events and international politics, be open to travel opportunities, and actively seek out new perspectives from your colleagues.  

You’ll then figure out a way to build international friendships, and leverage your diverse employees more effectively, while also finding a common ground with them to connect with them more meaningfully.  

#5: Build a workplace culture that values diversity 

In all honesty, your entire organisation’s culture should already revolve around diversity and inclusion – and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be the case. 

When it comes to disrupting the way diversity and inclusion solutions are delivered within your organisation, I strongly suggest you start by removing the dimensions of diversity. 

I know this is a bold statement given that in this article I’m promoting that we value diversity – but hear me out. 

When we remove the dimensions of diversity we allow ourselves to focus on the human interactions that can and should occur despite our difference. 

Once we understand how our interactions promote inclusion then we can bring back the diversity dimensions. 

It’s the basis of my inclusion program for leaders and it’s the basis of my newest best-selling book. It’s also how I’ve been able to successfully support thousands of leaders across the globe to become more inclusive in their every day. 

Are you ready to take the next step towards valuing diversity? 

To truly assess whether your company is ready to tackle the challenges of creating a diverse and inclusive workplace, consider doing an internal audit that tells you where you stand.  

Complete this questionnaire on our website to help us ascertain whether your organisation is ready to disrupt the delivery of inclusion and diversity solutions.  

Such a program helps develop the careers of all your employees, holistically, while helping them retain their differences and bring their voice to the table.  

What type of coaching & mentoring does your company require to be inclusive?  

Leaders need to be trained on specific areas to be more inclusive. And inclusion covers a wide range of different skill sets, which includes: 

Learning how to manage people with disabilities: Leaders may have no background in leading people that have disabilities. This requires specialised training, as it takes a lot of skill, patience, empathy and care to support disabled employees find a working solution that is tailored to their unique circumstances.  

Dealing with gender gaps and other diversity issues: Each person in your organisation is different in their own unique way. You might have employees with a different sexual orientation or have more males than females working for you. Leaders must develop the skills to understand diversity issues in more detail and learn how to leverage them for the company’s greater good.  

Battling racism: An organisation that’s diverse will experience racism among their employees, especially when there are majority and minority groups involved. Because racism is such a sensitive issue, and there are so many ways in which it is ‘masked’, managing it to uncover it, and then minimising it takes a specialised skill set, which requires leaders to be coached in this field.  

Managing other cultural issues: Some cultures have specific cultural problems. While the Australian workplace may exhibit ‘tall poppy syndrome’, the American workplace might be too individualistic. Understanding the nuances of each culture needs leaders to be trained in handling the issues that arise from it.  

How can you coach & mentor your leaders? 

You should first start by embedding a culture of mentorship across the organisation. This could be by involving an external mentorship provider who trains both your leaders and employees, or simply by engaging a facilitator who encourages the formation of mentoring relationships across your organisation. Choose wisely – as the right mentorship program will impact your workplace inclusion.

If leaders are too focused on managing employee performance in isolation of their differences, they might miss out on the gigantic opportunity diversity presents.  

Building mentoring relationships enables leaders to guide and develop their employees, and makes employees feel truly valued and cared for.  

A structured inclusion coaching & mentoring program can help 

Using a structure program as part of your organisation’s mentoring collateral is different because it includes: 

• Online learning modules that your leaders and employees can do from anywhere.  
• Career development plans so your leaders and employees know which direction their career will go in in the future.  

• 1-on-1 peer mentoring circles that facilitate cross-mentoring relationships across your company.  
• Action challenges and inclusion ‘experiments’ that challenge leaders to step into the shoes of your employees and more.  
• Any other tools your leaders might need to be more inclusive.  

As a leader looking to empower the people within your organisation to understand the ‘how’ of inclusion means that you are going one step further than simply “implementing a mentoring program”. 

Not all leaders know how to be inclusive. Most will have an understanding of what it means to be inclusive but many can’t put that theory into practice. 

As in inclusion ally, you’re taking on the role of coaching & mentoring your leaders so that they too step up to champion change. 

What gets measured gets managed 

One of the most powerful ways to influence leaders within your organisation is to present the business case for the change you wish to champion. 

In my many conversations with leaders this has proven time and time again to be a roadblock to implementing a truly disruptive inclusion program. 

This is because leaders don’t know how to measure inclusion nor how to put it into figures that can show an impact on the bottom line. 

It’s important you become a partner to the diversity and inclusion success within your organisation and you can do so by showing leaders how their efforts will translate into tangible business results.  

For inclusion leadership coaching strategies and mentoring initiatives to be successful, you need to measure the ROI from them.  

It’s only what gets measured that gets managed, and that couldn’t be truer for diversity and inclusion training.  

There are a lot of metrics that can be gathered and of course some will be specific to each organisation’s goals, however consider these: 

1. How many women, people of colour, or other minority groups, within your organisation got promoted after the program? 

2. Are your diverse employees reporting an increase in work satisfaction levels after the program?  

3. What do our attrition numbers look like after rolling out the program across the organisation? 

4. What anecdotes are our leaders sharing that indicate an increase in psychological safety and wellness at our organisation? 

Apart from these questions, you can proactively gather feedback from your employees about how they think they’ve benefitted from the programs. 

Go further to embed habitual changes 

We all know how hard it is to break or start a habit. 

As an organisation, consider embedding inclusive behaviours by make diversity and inclusion training a part of your compliance.  

Everyone in the organisation should be made aware of what it means to be inclusive, and complete necessary training modules before they can truly be integrated as part of your workforce.  

Making inclusion solutions and training part of your compliance shows to your employees how seriously invested you are in making your workplace diverse and inclusive. The good thing about compliance training is that it needs to be ‘updated’ or done regularly, and the chances of your leaders and employees developing a more inclusive mindset are a lot higher when they’re continuously trained over a sustained period of time. 

Empower your inclusive leaders to influence strategy and policy direction 

A good coach or mentor can become the eyes and ears of your diversity and inclusion initiatives.  

This is especially so when your inclusive leaders are also coaching and mentoring other talent within your organisation. They have on the ground knowledge about what’s really happening in the day to day lives of your diverse employees and can influence strategy and policy direction. 

To give your inclusion endeavours a solid chance of success, consider enrolling in a structured inclusive workplace mentoring program to help shape your leaders and employees into open minded, inclusive human beings that perform for your company’s greater good.  

Positive micro actions are evident in a workplace that is focused on holding leaders accountable to their daily words, behaviours and actions. It is in this repetition of their micro habits, where the whole picture comes together for inclusive leaders with an impactful D&I strategy.  

This is because when leaders focus on their inclusive habits the impact can be felt on the company’s ROI, employee retention, development of the talent pipeline, and ultimately business revenue.

Let’s explore more about micro actions to identify the impact on your D&I strategy for greater results. 

Why create a D&I workplace?

As would be expected, diversity and inclusion as individual concepts are actually closely intertwined and often interchangeable.  

It is this decoupling of diversity and inclusion that will have the most impact on a workplace where repetitive micro inequalities go unchecked. This is because, as I’ve discovered, leaders are often unaware of the impact their unconscious bias can have on diverse hires. 

Now, I’m not saying that we should all go out and undertake unconscious bias training in order to ‘fix’ our leaders.

What I’m proposing here is that we support our leaders to better understand how to be more inclusive of difference first. Then we support them to better understand dimensions of diversity. 

Consider tokenism for a moment.  

Both D&I are equally important in creating an authentic workplace that steers away from being a token hire-centric workplace. Tokenism is “the practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly.”  

What organisations need to really focus on is the intent of their diversity hire. Are leaders purposefully hiring because they genuinely want to increase the diversity of their staff – but their recruitment process hasn’t been successful? Or is the intent of the hire one where the organisation is giving an external appearance of prioritising diversity? 

In this example, the intent is important, and when there is an absence of pragmatic and checked micro aggressions, tokenism occurs. 

Supporting leaders instil inclusive micro behaviours will ensure greater inclusion in the workplace so that macro business impact is achieved.

What are micro aggressions and what impact do they have on diversity and inclusion?

Micro aggressions or behaviours sometimes go unnoticed, largely because those who are not affected don’t consider their impact. These actions are so small, however their constant repetition can add up and leave a mark on an individual.  

Such behaviours include gestures, actions, words or tone of voice that leave those who are different, feeling left out, overlooked, or ignored. It can look like ignoring junior staff members, never thanking people, or mispronouncing people’s names.  

The impact of unconscious bias through these actions can negatively affect performance, talent calibrations, and promotional structures. Correcting our human interactions through conscious habitual change and a willingness to be more inclusive leaders helps workplaces to better reap the rewards of their D&I strategy. 

Micro aggressions can be overcome 

A recent study by the American Psychology Association found that micro aggressions are easily overcome through micro interventions.  

The study outlines two key universal strategies that apply to pragmatism when evaluating micro habits –  

1. Highlight the unacceptable – In order to see a D&I shift in micro actions and unconscious bias, we must highlight these wrong doings as they arise. 

2. Educate to create change – This is about learning and growing. It is about educating on the unacceptable and building future relationships that have a basis of respect. 

Are you ready to reap the rewards of an impactful D&I strategy? 

A truly diverse and inclusive workplace is one where staff feel a sense of belonging and commitment to their workplace. It is through employing a diverse group of people and then developing and empowering them within the organisation. This is at the heart of every successful D&I story. 

Rewiring our brains that are conditioned for bias takes conscious and repetitive effort. It requires reflection and self-awareness.  

D&I strategies that are centred around embedding inclusion habits deliver successful outcomes across the board. We know this because we’ve seen it time and time again when leaders implement our training programs.  

When leaders are more inclusive the ripple effect is huge because their teams also feel:  

• Safe or psychologically well  
• Engaged  
• Innovative  
• Collaborative  
• Productive 
• Agile  
• Talented  
• Customer focussed 

It is no longer a hypothesis! Our small and intentional inclusion habits need to be practical in nature and undertaken daily. 

Make the necessary changes to your approach to D&I 

Move towards an inclusive workplace and enrol in our Inclusion Habits for Leaders program. We have worked with thousands of organisations to educate and implement strategies that work.  

Our pragmatic approach is designed to empower your workforce to achieve inclusivity and allow you to experience the ROI impact on the bottom line. 

Find out if your organisation is a good fit by completing our disruption questionnaire. It allows us to understand your specific goals for D&I. We will be in touch directly with your next steps.