Practising diversity and inclusion in emergency management

The practice of diversity and inclusion within emergency services agencies is lacking, and the benefits it provides are not well understood. How do we effectively implement diversity and inclusion policies in emergency management practices?

By Radhiya Fanham from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. This article was first published in Issue One 2021 of Fire Australia. 

Building a diverse and inclusive workforce in emergency management is not just about drawing in people from different backgrounds to work and volunteer. It is also about bringing together different ways of thinking and approaching problems, which can lead to innovative solutions while better representing the communities emergency services serve, now and in the future.

The challenge is to unlock the full benefits that come from developing diverse and inclusive workforces, or the potential opportunities from interactions with increasingly diverse communities.

“Diversity and inclusion skills are generally not rewarded or valued in emergency management organisations in the same way more conventional technical skills are,” said Ms Celeste Young, Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC researcher and Collaborative Research Fellow at Victoria University’s Institute of Strategic Economic Studies.

“This is due to a lack of clarity as to what diversity and inclusion actually are and do.”

As such, one of the key questions being asked by the sector is: how do we effectively implement diversity and inclusion policies in emergency management practices? This was the focus of the Diversity and inclusion: from policy to practice online forum, hosted by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC in collaboration with Women and Firefighting Australasia (WAFA), Victoria University, Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES), and Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) in December 2020.

With more than 150 people in virtual attendance, the forum presented the Diversity and inclusion framework for emergency management policy and practice. The Framework, developed through the CRC’s Diversity and inclusion: building strength and capability project, is designed to provide a basis for practitioners to address diversity and inclusion issues through a strength-based approach, which builds upon current practice and expertise in the sector.

The CRC’s Diversity and inclusion project, which began in July 2017, set out to understand what effective diversity and inclusion is and how this can be measured. The research team, co-led by Ms Young, aimed to identify where effective diversity and inclusion is occurring within organisations, the characteristics of diversity and inclusion, and how it can be implemented and measured at an organisational level.

“The project’s key purpose has been to develop an evidence-based diversity and inclusion framework to support better measurement and management practice,” Ms Young said in a September 2020 blog post.

Diversity in the emergency management sector encompasses gender, race, disability, religion and culture. There are currently low rates of participation for women and those from diverse cultural backgrounds in many areas of emergency management, which has ramifications for emergency services’ capacity to modernise and build future service capability in the face of considerable change and the need to increase resilience.

The research team developed the Diversity and inclusion framework for emergency management policy and practice, the Learning as we go: developing effective inclusive management support document, and other materials to support practitioners’ measurement and management of inclusion in this complex and challenging area.

“The Diversity and inclusion framework for emergency management policy and practice uses a strength-based approach, and includes the levels which diversity and inclusion need to be measured and managed; Statements of Inclusion as a tool to clarify and assist negotiations between diverse parties; a process for integrating diversity and inclusion through emergency management, organisational planning and risk frameworks; and risk mapping to identify capability and skills needed to assist workforce planning,” Ms Young said.

In her presentation for the Diversity and inclusion: from policy to practice online forum, Ms Young challenged common assumptions about the value of practitioners’ work and how it can enhance service delivery and create safer and more resilient organisations and communities.

“Diversity is what creates the change and inclusion is how you manage it,” she said.

“Whenever you put diversity, which is essentially difference, into a system, it creates change. If you want to manage the risk that this creates, inclusion is how you manage this type of risk.”

The all-female forum panel went on to discuss the evolution of inclusive practices over the last decade, the purpose of diversity, and the critical role inclusion plays in the management of social, human and natural hazard risk in communities and organisations. The three panellists also explored what is at risk and explained why diversity and inclusion is an organisational imperative and why investment to build capability in this area is now critical.

Ms Quinn Cramer, QFES Station Officer and WAFA President, described the role WAFA plays in diversity and inclusion by discussing policies and best practice insights, including future directions and opportunities for women in firefighting.

“In 2018, WAFA set out to produce a number of legacy documents that will assist us in measuring and sharing practical solutions for inclusive operations of women going forward,” Ms Cramer said.

“One of the documents was a QFES workshop synthesis that was a collaborative piece between Janine Taylor from QFES, WAFA and Celeste Young. This measures traits, values, behaviours and systems that are in place across Australasia, and rates whether they are always, sometimes or never being displayed. It was a promising workshop that showed us that there is a lot of great stuff happening across Australasia and there is capacity to build.

“The other document that we created was the WAFA outcomes statement, a collaborative piece that measured a number of different practical solutions that are available to assist organisations and women in the future to increase inclusivity across the emergency service sector in Australasia.”

The WAFA outcomes statement outlines practical steps for recruitment, leadership and mentoring, and health and well-being. Some of these steps include:

• reviewing language to ensure it shows respect and representation
• developing social media policies and presence to recruit women directly and support them as firefighting cadets
• adopting strategy, policy and practice to reach gender equity in leadership in emergency management services
• including diverse leadership models in leadership training to ensure there is capacity to address the challenge of contemporary and future emergency management
• recognising post-traumatic stress, and post-traumatic growth, as unexceptional risks in the work
• recognising the profound impact harassment and discrimination have on top of the normalised emotional load, and recognising the role of institutional courage in confronting discrimination and harassment and its power to transform organisations
• addressing the gendered health and well-being of the job, which requires thoughtful consideration for the whole team.

The third panellist in the forum was Ms Rachael Utumapu, Manager of Women’s Development at FENZ. She spoke on encouraging more women to join emergency services agencies in New Zealand and what diversity and inclusion initiatives have already been implemented there. She also spoke about recruitment being viewed in two parts—attracting the right people to an organisation, and knowing who existing members are and what their perception and experience of the organisation is.

“Attracting diversity to the organisation is the first challenge, and the second challenge is ensuring that they have a good experience,” Ms Utumapu said.

“We need to have a good understanding of what our diversity needs actually are. We can talk about race, culture, gender, but diversity of thought is also really important. Diversity is made up of so many parts and you may actually find that your organisation is more diverse than you think, but it’s really important to know who the people in our organisations are to understand what kind of people we need to attract and bring in to reflect our communities.”

Ms Utumapu also outlined FENZ’s journey to creating a positive workplace culture, which considers:

behaviours and conduct in the office a shared code of behaviour living values support for all people a bullying and harassment complaints process policies and procedures.

“What we need to remember is, while we’re recruiting for now and what our present needs are, we also need to understand that we are actually recruiting for what our future is going to be like and so we need to know what that looks like,” Ms Utumapu said.

Diversity has untapped benefits not only for emergency management agencies, but also for the broader community. It is important to understand what the value and benefits of effective diversity and inclusion activities are, and where and how these can be quantified.

“Over the past three years, the emergency management sector has taken up this challenge [of diversity and inclusion] with government, industry bodies, organisations and researchers working alongside each other to further this agenda,” Ms Young said in her blog.

“As one practitioner commented, it has been a ’social movement’ which has shifted the focus from categories of difference to how this difference can be effectively included and leveraged to enhance organisations and communities, and to build resilience. This has been welcomed by diversity and inclusion practitioners, but they also know this is an unpredictable process where you need to be prepared to stop and hold the line in the face of adversity.”

The CRC’s Diversity and inclusion: building strength and capability project is contributing to diversity conversations across upper levels of the emergency management sector.

“In the same way it takes a whole village to raise a child, it will take everyone in the emergency management system working together for the longer term if the reality of a truly inclusive culture is to be realised,” Ms Young said.

You can find out more about this research, including the full recording of the online forum and the above-mentioned resources, here.