TA 24: Building the road transport workforce through inclusion

Currently, only around five per cent of Australian road transport industry drivers are women. Also, many young people who have no association with road transport don’t even consider it as a possible career.

The ATA has been running a diversity program since 2020, with the assistance of Teletrac Navman, aimed at attracting employees from non-traditional backgrounds.

The Teletrac Navman Drive and Change Diversity Program is a training program that takes people nominated from the industry through a workshop that gives them the fundamentals of how to cultivate inclusion in their workplaces.

“(This program) breaks down artificial barriers – ‘the way it's always been done’ – because that's the stuff that gets in the way of us performing,” said Sarah James, marketing manager for Teletrac Navman.

“It's hard to create inclusive workforces and workplaces. It takes resources, it takes management, it's challenging, but it's not impossible.

“I think that creating a workplace that is inclusive seems a lot cheaper than having to buy autonomous vehicles to solve the driver shortage.”

Sarah James then introduced Caitlin Barlow, business development manager at JATEC Transport, an ATA Diversity Program champion and participant in the Volvo Iron Woman program.

Caitlin provided an example of how diversity needs to be practised.

“A couple of weeks ago, we had our March Learning Barbecue – ahead of the Easter long weekend – so I handed out chocolate Easter bunnies to all of the drivers,” said Caitlin.

“But I didn't realise that six of my drivers were in the middle of Ramadan, so not only after driving all day and fasting all day, they've come back to a delicious smelling barbecue and then I've also handed them chocolate Easter bunnies.

“That's not very inclusive whatsoever, so although no-one had anything negative to say, that's definitely a mistake that I'm not going to make again!”

Caitlin said that studies show a parallel between employees who feel like they belong and employee engagement. The results in road transport can include greater attention to detail, fewer accidents and repairs, improved communication, better job allocation, and retention of staff.

“It takes the average employer 42 days to hire a new worker,” Caitlin Barlow said.

“The first step is building a diverse workforce, by hiring people outside what your current workforce looks like and then creating an inclusive culture, embracing everyone's differences and making sure that your employees feel like they belong.”

The next presenter was quite a surprise for many ATA delegates: Leon Coningham, head of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) Inclusion Program. SBS has helped develop the Program in co-operation with universities, national peak bodies, diversity experts and people with practical experience.

The SBS Inclusion Program is currently being used by more than 100 major companies.

“We built the SBS Inclusion Program to help workplaces become more inclusive of people from a range of different backgrounds,” said Leon. “All people, not just people from minorities, but absolutely everyone … and it is available on any device.

“The course is film based. It tells real stories, is engaging and gives you practical things you can do on a day to day basis to make your workplace more inclusive.

Coningham said that SBS has built courses around eight different topics so far and is continuing to build more. He also said it was important to understand what the course is not.

“It's not woke; It's not politically correct,” said Leon.

“But we've got a lot of real stories from people saying what happened; how it made them feel; how it was resolved or wasn't resolved and what could be done about it.”

“This is why you should have a look at this (SBS Inclusion Program) and you won't be alone, because we've licensed the program now to more than a thousand organisations.

“The worldwide research in a huge number of industries is that if you have more inclusive organisations, you outperform return on investment, return on profitability and sales.

“All the financial metrics go up when you have an inclusive workforce,” concluded Coningham.