Meaningful D&I Strategies Beyond Checkbox Exercises

Welcome to Hire Potential with Indeed, a series of fireside chats with experts in diversity and inclusion, employer branding, recruiting, HR and more.

In this episode, we explore how Diversity & Inclusion has evolved over time, as businesses recognise the fundamental importance of moving beyond quotas, tokenism and lip-service, to true organisational change. Alissa attests to the fact that team members, when able to bring their whole selves to work, increase their productivity and innovation while companies increase their retention of staff. 

According to Indeed’s 2021 D&I Report, 81% of Australian workers say it's important to them that their workplaces promote Diversity & Inclusion. So we know that nobody wants to be a statistic, checking a ‘diversity’ box for their employer. But how do we move beyond metrics and into meaningful strategies, while creating workplaces that reflect the diversity in our communities?

Alissa believes documenting policies remains important but bringing them alive; measuring and benchmarking them is the key to truly embedding diversity and inclusion. Employee resource groups, role modelling from the top down, taking workforces on educational journeys and celebrating D&I achievements, are essential. 

Listen Now

---

Prologue

Erin: Welcome to Hire Potential with Indeed. A welcoming workplace is built from the ground up with attention to diversity, inclusion, accessibility and openness. But the way many leaders and companies approach this is full of grey areas, uncertainty and quite often, fear. Hire Potential with Indeed is here to demystify the process through the most powerful channel possible, conversations, groundbreaking ones, too. 

I'm your host, Erin Waddell, strategic insights consultant and D&I evangelist in Australia for Indeed. I've worked in the recruitment industry in Australia for the last seven years and have been in Australia for 10 years. 

In this podcast series will tackle the issues we face in the modern workplace, from diversity and inclusion to remote working, accessibility, fair hiring practices and more. This podcast is an initiative of indeed.com, the world's number one job site with over 250 million unique visitors every month from over 60 different countries. 

Introduction

Erin: Before we dive in, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are meeting today and to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who may be listening, I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. 

In today's episode, we are exploring diversity and inclusion strategies that reach beyond predictable and often harmful checkbox exercises. According to Indeed’s recent D&I report, 81% of working Australians believe that people from different ethnic or cultural backgrounds are treated equally where they work, but only 73% of workers from cultural or ethnic minority groups agree with one in five feeling that they are not treated equally at work. The statistics are a stark and important reminder that diversity and inclusion initiatives should do more than just be a checkbox exercise. In this episode, we'll be exploring why some approaches to systemic issues like racial inequity often tackles symptoms, such as demographic representation, and fail to address root causes from institutional discrimination to cultural bias, and much more. 

Joining us today to help provide tangible tools and practices that can help create real and meaningful change is Allisa O'Connell, head of people and culture at Flight Centre Travel Group, where she has worked for over 30 years improving culture and diversity at one of Australia's leading travel organisations. 

Welcome, Allisa.

Allisa: Thank you very much for having me, Erin, I'm very privileged to be with you today.

Erin: Well, great, we are very happy that you're here. 

To kick us off, I think it would be great to hear more about your work as head of people and culture at Flight Centre.

Allisa: Well, I jumped into the people and culture role just over two years ago, when the pandemic was just coming to its fruition here in Australia. And I had the illustrious opportunity to step into people and culture and have to stand down most of our workforce, and inevitably have to make five and a half thousand people redundant. So, a low light of my career, my professional career, but a massive learning journey. My roles before that had been general management roles. So, I'd worked closely with people in culture. But now if I was running people and culture, so what we're doing now is rebuilding a workforce, rebuilding all that's great about our culture, reminding people of why they loved Flight Centre three years ago, and they will love us again, and most importantly, waiting to see the world open up so we can send people around the world again.

Erin: I know that your industry was very impacted by the pandemic, that must have been a really difficult position to be in, especially like, right, as you're starting the job. So, good on you for getting through it. And I am excited for the industry and your company. Hopefully it will recover quite quickly now that we are hopefully moving further past the initial stages of the pandemic, and hopefully the world is opening up more and more. 

The biggest shifts in D&I at Flight Centre

So, I think it's really interesting that you've worked at the same organisation for over 30 years. I think you probably have some extremely unique insight into how D&I practices have evolved. And not just at Flight Centre, but in the culture in general. Can you tell us about some of the biggest shifts that you've seen over the years?

Allisa: Well, Erin, I started here as a very young woman and the travel industry is pretty blessed with having predominance of women in the workforce. So, equality of women in the workforce was always something really natural for me at Flight Centre. What I have seen over 30 years is lots of those women who started off in entry level roles become senior executives, take on really significant roles, global roles. Our senior executive here in Australia is 50% women, 50% male, which is awesome. We have a woman on our board, we have senior women at our senior strategic task force globally. So, I've seen women grow and evolve into more senior roles, which is not unusual in travel. 

What is unusual or different in our industry is seeing other kinds of diversity and inclusion become more than norm. So, LGBTQI community, always attracted to the travel industry. But now that seems to be a natural conversation in our workplace, which is awesome, different cultures. If I walk the floors in our head office here, it's a very multicultural business. We actually have more than 30% of our workforce in Flight Centre Travel Group, who are multilingual and 33% who were born not in Australia. So, that's really awesome. But to see things like LGBTQI be a normal conversation is where the greatest change, I think, to some of diversity and inclusion has happened.

Erin: That is so interesting, because it's something that I think the younger generations probably won't have to experience the shift. But it'll just always be that way. And I think that's the best part of it all, in terms of if it's changed that much, where it's just a normal conversation, I think that goes for, like you said, that goes for more than one group as well, maybe it's a little more common for people to feel comfortable sharing that maybe they're neurodiverse, or maybe they have a disability that you can't see, obviously, I think that that is a great shift. It's really great to hear the positives of all this as well. 

And then of course there's some areas that continue to need improvement. I don't think it's ever going to just be a perfect world. But I was wondering if you could help explain what tokenism is, and when it comes to diversity and inclusion, especially in hiring and in the workplace, how it might be harmful.

Allisa: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, it's become a subject of tokenism, diversity and inclusion in workplaces. And I think it's well intended and poorly executed. But tokenism is a symbolic effort that probably isn't well supported throughout the organisation, it might be a desire to reach some compliance targets that have been set by the board, or by executives. But it's really not an embedded natural strategy that people are on board with. I think it also is where you're driving an outcome for the outcome's sake rather than taking your workforce on a journey, about talking to them around the significance of diversity and the significance of inclusion, and creating a workforce where everybody can turn up and feel valued. And if we don't have strategies that are top down and bottom up, we tend to just get a compliance or metric or a need to meet a requirement around a program rather than an authentic need to have diversity inclusion. 

Look, some of the pitfalls that I've seen are when you're chasing down a metric or chasing down an outcome, you can make some really poor choices. And sometimes this can happen in recruitment. When you're trying to recruit more females into the workplace, they become a statistic. So, rather than looking for the best individual for the job, you're looking for a woman for the job, when you're trying to bring in cultural diversity, looking for a diverse racial group to bring into your business isn't a number or, once again, are you looking at the individual. And I don't think any of us want to be just a female or LGBTQI community or a different ethnicity, we genuinely want to be valued for who we are, and the background that we bring to the organisation. So, I think there can be a drive, well-intended, well-meaning, to reach some targets and to have an inclusive and diverse workforce that can end up as tokenism if we haven't brought our workforce on the journey with us.

Erin: And I think there's space for appreciation of what a diverse workforce can bring to the company, how diverse, not just from a demographic standpoint, but what thoughts or what viewpoints, people from different backgrounds can bring. And maybe there's an area that you're not thinking about that someone from a different background, than the majority of the workforce can bring in and help to clarify or to help to say, “Hey, we're leaving this group of people out or we're not being inclusive here, or in our hiring practices, we're not giving this option, which would greatly benefit a certain group of people.” I think that there's a lot of space for that as well. 

And I know that sometimes it's hard to quantify, but I hope that that is becoming more of a tract thing in terms of, “Okay we have a diverse workforce in the sense and here's some of the great things that it's brought to our company.” Have you been able to see any of that happening as well?

Allisa: I think that the more you have conversations about unconscious bias, the more you make recruiters and hiring managers aware of the fact that there is a lack of diversity that they're hiring person X over and over again, but not as a disciplinary action, but as an explanation of the richness that diversity brings. Whether it's gender, whether its ability, it doesn't really matter, the more diversity, the better thinking, the better problem solving, the richer our team environments are, the more welcoming our workplaces are. And recruitment has a responsibility, hiring managers have responsibility, but people and culture generally need to raise the conversation. It can't just be everyone is male 32, with a degree around here, that can't be how we look. We need to be measuring some of the different demography that we have in our business and celebrating that. 

And we certainly try to do that at Flight Centre with our diversity and inclusion policy, we call it ‘Come As You Are’, which Nirvana fans will appreciate, but everyone should be able to turn up exactly as they are at Flight Centre. And we want to celebrate the differences, not the sameness. And I think most workplaces understand at some level how impactful the differences are, but it's helping everyone in the organisation understand how the differences make it a better workplace.

Erin: I just love that we somehow got Nirvana into this podcast. Thank you, Allisa, for bringing that to us. But it's so true. It's so true is, I think it would be very hard for myself and people that worked at Flight Centre or Indeed who feel comfortable to show up exactly as they are to go into an environment where they feel like they have to hide a part of themselves or tamper down some of their experiences, their background, maybe their religion, you don't want anyone to feel like that when they come into work. So, I think that's a great piece of advice. 

Examples of checkbox exercise in D&I to avoid

The other thing I wanted to talk about, this is something that comes up a lot in my role with Indeed and here as well as the checkbox exercises when it comes to diversity and inclusion initiatives, when it comes to hiring people when you're trying to tick the diversity boxes. And then are you hiring somebody because of that, or are you hiring them because they're the best person for the job? It's a tough one. And so, what are some examples of those checkbox exercises when it comes to D&I?

Allisa: Yeah, as I said before, recruitment is probably the main point where that happens, we give a profile of who our current workforce are and who we want them to be. And then you have recruiters specifically looking for a type. And even though most organisations have cultural alignment people who fit our organisation, they could look very different. So, I might be a cultural fit for our organisation, but a young 24-year-old engineer who's a Muslim man from India might also be an awesome fit for our organisation. So, to think that your organisation has a type, rather than someone that aligns with your organisational values, I think is important, and ensuring that there's a panel. 

I love the idea that you don't just have a single person involved in choosing someone's destiny to join your organisation. But even having mixed gender panels to make sure that you're getting different perspectives, that you're using hiring managers, that you're using peers, that you're using someone up, that you've got recruitment, by tick box exercise is deemed, I think, inauthentic by your organisation. And employees smell that, right? They smell that that's not right. And no one wants to feel that someone's got the job based on who they are, but more the merit of the individual in all that they bring, not just, “I got the job because I'm a woman or I got the job because we need more of person X.” But it's not just recruitment. It’s team leaders, like I said before, with unconscious biases.

But I think checkbox exercises where well, an intended policy that forms a strategy for making decisions rather than a genuine desire to see a full and diverse workforce. And we have data. All organisations have data about who they are. So, the checkbox should be, “Well, we know who we are, where are there gaps, and how do we think about those gaps differently, not just to tick the box, yes, we've brought in people with different abilities.” But we actively want to ensure that our workplace is welcoming to people with different abilities. How do we do that? What is the strategy to ensure that that exists?

Erin: Yeah. And I think those strategies are really, really important. And I think equally as important as having a strategy is measuring and benchmarking the D&I strategies. 

Is it important to measure and track your D&I strategy? 

And I'm curious, from your perspective, do you think that that's really important? Do you think that it's more important to have a strategy but not track it? Or is it equally as important to actually track that strategy to make sure it's working?

Allisa: I'm a big believer that if you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going to. So, you have to have a start point, you have to understand the data around your people and understand what the makeup of your people is, then you've got to set goals, “Where do we want to go? What do we need to look like?” And I think you need to track the movement. But I'm a big believer of progress over perfection. I don't think there's a perfect workplace in Australia. This is certainly not a perfect workforce that works here. But we do work collectively on progressing. We want to be better today than we were yesterday. We want to be better next year than we were last year. So, you need to keep a metric, but not so much to promote your great deeds, but to know that you're actually making a difference, and that people internally feel the difference. 

So, the numbers should match what the people are telling you about the environment that they work in. Because if you've simply chased down a number or a goal and hired more female employees, but those females are turning over at a great rate of knots, because they can't stand your workplace, because you haven't had any genuine change, then it's just a metric for metrics sake. So, it's got to be linked to a program of work, not just a strategy, but a real program of work that you work on making progress on and expect that perfection will be a tough ask.

Erin: Yeah, it's interesting, Indeed did a recent D&I survey. And it said that 25%, which is like a quarter of Australians, didn't know what their organisation does to promote diversity and inclusion at all. And then 17% said that their organisation does not promote diversity and inclusion, and only a third said that there was a workplace diversity and inclusion policy that they were aware of. 

Tips for ensuring all of your employees are living and breathing your D&I values

And so, do you think that there needs to be some work within the organisation to ensure that all the employees are on the same page? And what are some of the things internally that a company can do to ensure that all of their employees are living and breathing these values and making sure that they're also helping keep the strategy in line?

Allisa: Yeah, that's a great question. And back to Nirvana, that's why we named our Diversity and Inclusion Policy ‘Come As You Are’. We wanted it to be a little bit different, a little bit unique. We use photos of our own people doing zany things to promote our diversity and inclusion. We have working groups in the business who actually come from the bottom up and top down to say, “Hey, I want to work on women and gender, I want to work on LGBTQI, which we call Pride, I want to work on people with different abilities and that working group.” So, we actively ask people to be involved in how that strategy plays out in the business.

One of the lessons that I had was we had an active working group around women, and we call it our Woman Wise program, which was to promote women to step into more senior roles, and the women loved it. But the men got really disgruntled about the fact that they weren't being invited to that lunch. And what we hadn't done was explained to the men how significant it was that we didn't have enough women putting themselves forward for senior roles. We had all these women in our workforce, but they weren't equally showing up in applying for senior roles. And when we went back to our men and said, “Hey, guys, this is why we're doing it. This is why it's important. This is why these lunches are women's lunches. This is the outcome we're trying to get” and then show them the outcome that we were getting, our men came on the journey. 

So, that was a great learning for me that you have to take the entire workforce on the journey, you have to explain it, there has to be a place that it's prominent. We use our workplace, which is one of our comms tools internally to promote this activity. It's well invested in we keep it alive and well, we have activities that relate to these pillars of our diversity and inclusion. And look, we don't promote it as diversity and inclusion, we promote it as ‘Come As You Are’ which is making sure everyone can turn up at Flight Centre Travel Group exactly as themselves. So, that's the outcome for me. 

When we do an engagement survey, “Do you feel comfortable to turn up as yourself at Flight Centre Travel Group?” If people say yes, then we're achieving our goal. So, I think it does need to be a holistic conversation, you need to embrace it. It can't just be a documented policy. It needs to be alive. And every organisation will have a way of making it alive. For us it was Nirvana. For other people, it might be something completely different. But how do you create a policy that has real approaches, that has real actions that your people can be involved in? That's what worked for us.

Erin: Yeah. And back to that survey, 81% of Australians currently in work or working, say it's important that their workplace is promoting diversity and inclusion. So, clearly, there's a demand for that to be happening. And it's not a trend, right, it's not a passing trend. It's something that more and more Australian employees are saying that it matters to them. It's one of their core values. And I think that you're absolutely right. I think that the fact that what you said has to be alive is fantastic. It can't just be a policy that sits there for someone to go find on an internal page, it has to be a living, breathing thing. And I think that's a really great way of putting it because I think a lot of times, again, it comes back to that checkbox, you don't want to just do something to do something to say that you did it. It needs to be something that is living and breathing in that if you walk into that office, if you join the company, virtually, let's say, you can tell regardless of where you are or who you're talking to. I think that that's great. 

How to mitigate any resistance you may receive from operating your D&I strategies outside of a checkbox narrative

Is there any resistance that workplaces could expect when they implement these strategies that are operating outside of the checkbox narrative? And maybe how could they prepare to mitigate that resistance?

Allisa: I think you need to consider all your stakeholders, the board's going to want one outcome, the executive team is going to want another, and the workforce will need another outcome. So, are you thinking about all the stakeholders and including them in how you engage them? I think resistance, like I said, if you're not explaining the why and taking the entire workforce on the journey, just simply putting a number out there about gender diversity or whatever your goals might be, if you haven't taken the workforce on the journey of why you're doing this, if you haven't trained on the benefit of inclusivity in the workforce, if you don't have role models for where that's happening, and how it looks, it's really hard for people to get their head around it. A lot of people, particularly older generations, who may have been in that organisation for a while, do the, “We've always done it this way, what's the problem?” I think our younger generations that are entering the workforce expect it, it's just a standard that they're expecting. 

So, informing our people having a rich strategy that they can read, something that they can understand and sink their teeth into and understand how we're going to measure it and how it's going to look in the workforce, that's the really important part. And remembering that each one of those stakeholders might need a different communication and a different approach to how they hear what you're trying to do. And measuring it and celebrating the successes, right. We love to celebrate when we've achieved something amazing in our organisation around our diversity and inclusion. A third of our people speak another language other than English, how awesome is that? Let's celebrate it, let's talk about it. Let's have different flavours of the world, we call it, where we allow people to bring different lunches, and we share in people's culture. 

We're talking about putting together a cookbook at the moment where people can bring different recipes from their own culture and we can sell that internally to raise some funds. All these things, help diversity and inclusion to be a normal part of the narrative in your organisation, rather than a policy that you pull out once a year when you're doing reporting and back to the checkbox, make sure that you've delivered on it. How does it need to look in each organisation to feel authentic?

Erin: Yeah, authenticity is such a big one. I think that's such a big one, as well. And I love the idea of the cookbook. And I think that there's so many opportunities, right, like a learning exchange, a language exchange, there's so many things that you can do to educate people, while including other people. I think that's fantastic. 

How to handle discrmination or microaggressions at work 

In terms of take it away from the checkbox exercise for a second, because it does factor in, I think when it comes to discrimination, I think that there's a fair amount of Australians that have experienced or witnessed certain forms of discrimination at work, regardless of whether it's a microaggression or some other form, how is that handled at Flight Centre? And what do you do from the very beginning to make sure that you've mitigated that as much as possible?

Allisa: I think that people need to understand what their rights are as an employee, and you need to direct them to a place where they can easily read and understand the policies and an organisation's position on that. You need to educate leaders from the time they have an involvement in leading people. You can't wait till they're at a senior level, it needs to be the moment you step into any interim leadership role, people explain to you your responsibilities over the people that you look after. And for now, our organisation, HR should be partnering with leaders and individuals to make sure that they feel safe in the workplace. So, it shouldn't wait till an escalated issue needs investigation. I think that's the worst outcome, right? 

If it has to be escalated that HR is partnering with you in an investigation, we've caught up far too late, it should be people raising concerns that they feel that there is a place that they can be heard and understood, and that leaders, right throughout the organisation from the very beginning of their leadership journey, understand what they're responsible for, and how they need to keep their team together and respect and honour the policies that we have around diversity and inclusion. 

And we like to do loads of education on that. To some degree, we have it easier than other organisations because at team leader level, it is indicative of some of the other diversity. So, 75% of our workforce is female, 75% of our team leaders are female. So, some of the things that will be relevant in other workplaces don't hit us but it does need to start with education as part of what is expected of me in my role.

Erin: That's a great place to start as well. 

And I'm just curious, you've been at Flight Centre for so long and I'm sure there's still work to be done, but what is one of your, I suppose, your most proud accomplishments that you've had in your D&I career, yourself?

Allisa: We've done so much with ‘Come As You Are’. I know I talk about that a bit, I’m an old Nirvana fan, but allowing people to have their stories heard about their diversity. When it came to Ramadan, one of our young men indicated that in the workplace he'd never shared what Ramadan meant to him, to his workplace. He had fasted quietly and shyly, but he wrote a whole piece for us about what Ramadan meant to him and how he celebrated and how important it was. He posted that on our internal comms and got lots of questions and feedback. 

And that made him feel fantastic. And there's loads of little stories like that, but the collective of those stories where people are able to show up just as themselves, and as an entire workforce, we can celebrate their uniqueness, that makes me feel fantastic. 

We asked our people about whether they want to be an ally or part of the LGBTI community, and hearing that 26% of our people actively wanted to be counted out as part of that community, that made me feel really proud as well. They could have stayed quiet about that, but they actively said, “No, I identify as part of that community and that makes me really proud.” Things like that allow me to feel like we are making inroads. And we're far from perfect. There's a big opportunity for us to ensure that our head office buildings and retail stores are fit for people with varying abilities. That's a big issue, right. And we've got a long way to go in that. And I would love to know that our varying abilities could be measured in this organisation and that we met people and brought awareness to people with varying abilities in our organisation. 

But one step at a time, there's some places where I think we're getting some great wins, and at least we have a view of where we need to move forward. So, we're not looking at the landscape and saying, “Wow, where do we start?” We're saying, “Well, we've got great activity here and great activity there, here's an opportunity for us to really make a difference.” So, that's where we're headed.

Erin: That's fantastic. And I'm hoping now that we're moving into a new era of things being open, the world opening up with travel, that when it does come time to take a look at or if it is now, maybe it's now maybe the retail stores themselves or the spaces where people can come in and book a trip, that is something that I forgot that you have to consider, is not just the accessibility of your workplace, but the actual accessibility and layout of the stores themselves. 

And that's a big task, because I feel like there's a Flight Centre everywhere you go and none of them are going to be identical. So, you can't just cookie cutter out a layout that's going to work everywhere, right. Like, what's gonna work in a shopping centre in Sydney might not work on a busy high street in Perth. And, yeah, that's a huge task. I did not even consider that. 

So, yeah, that’s a really big one. Because, again, when it comes to the living, breathing strategy, it has to be internal and external in your case. And so, I think that's a really large one. And on the web, if you're allowing people to book things online, and yeah, it's a big one. 

Does Flight Centre have affinity groups or employee engagement groups?

Allisa: Yes, we have employee engagement groups. And we're working on things like that right now to work out how we ensure that we're meeting the needs, generally, and we call for people to be actively involved in that.

Erin: Yeah, that's great. Okay, well, I've learned so much today, I think you've had a really interesting career within Flight Centre. And I'm really impressed with some of the initiatives that you've created, some of the ones that you've got off the ground and your advice on what strategies other companies can take away to try to move away from, ‘Let's just hit these numbers’ style of recruitment. 

So, the final question, which is how we finish every episode of Hire Potential with Indeed is, what do you think it will ultimately take to ensure a better and more inclusive workplace in the future?

Allisa: That's a really great question. And I'm going to go back to authenticity, because I think it requires everybody, head and heart, to value the fact that diversity and inclusion, just as it is in our society, is necessary in our workplaces, and buy into a strategy to create that. So, when everybody has a seat at the table, where people can look around and feel that their diversity is embraced with a seat at the table, and their voice being heard, then diversity and inclusion is there. And I think when we saw Dylan Alcott, talk about, ‘If you can't see someone, you can't be someone’ I think about that all the time in our workforce, are we displaying everything we want to with diversity and inclusion. There's opportunities for more of that yet. But if you've got a seat at the table, and your voice can be heard, and with our head and our heart we appreciate that diversity and inclusion is great for our organisations as it is for socially, then we're well on our way.

Erin: Wow, that was really great to hear, because you're right. It's making sure people have a voice, a seat at the table, that it's coming from the leadership all the way down. Allisa, thank you so much for being here today to give us your wisdom on this topic. It's been incredibly interesting for me, and I hope our listeners really appreciate the advice that you've given. I'm so grateful that you were able to come and join us today.

Allisa: Thank you so much, Erin. It's been a lot of fun.

Conclusion 

Erin: Thank you for listening to Hire Potential with Indeed. Before you go and start building a better workplace, don't forget to hit subscribe, and leave a review if you found this podcast helpful. If you'd like to read our full D&I report, click the link in this episode's description to fill out the form. 

Just a quick note, the views and opinions expressed in this episode by the guests do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Indeed. Additionally, the information in this episode does not and is not intended to constitute legal advice. Instead, all content we discuss is for general informational purposes only and you should consult with a legal professional for any legal issues you may be experiencing.

The data in this podcast references Indeed’s 2021 D&I report. 

Sources: Indeed is the world's #1 job site according to Comscore, Total Visits, March 2021.

Sources: Over 250 million unique visitors every month, Google Analytics, Unique Visitors, February 2020.

Sources: The research in the report referenced in this episode was commissioned by ThatComms Co on behalf of Indeed and conducted by YouGov. The study was conducted online between 11 - 17 February 2021, involving 2,060 working age Australians (aged between 18-64) currently in either full or part-time employment, or actively looking for work