Shaping the wave: achieving success and innovation through a diverse and inclusive workforce

Prof. Benjamin Eggleton and research group, the University of Sydney.

In this opinion piece NSSN Co-Director Prof Benjamin Eggleton shares his experience in achieving success and innovation through building a diverse and inclusive workforce. The piece is based on Prof. Eggleton’s talk at the CLEO conference that took place in San Jose, California in May. CLEO, the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, is the annual meeting for the world's photonics and optoelectronics community and is regarded as the most prestigious conference on the topic. Ben was the General Chair of CLEO in 2019 and has been part of the CLEO taskforce on diversity and inclusion.

It's a great honour to be able to share my view on such an important topic that is so timely, close to my heart and a priority for this community. Diversity and inclusion is an issue of human rights and it’s vital for academic societies to be champions that will carry the torch to shed light on the benefits of inclusion for all society. There’s overwhelming evidence that shows that indeed diversity and inclusion lead to more innovation and better productivity in organisations.

As someone who has been in leadership positions for 20 years, I’ve had first-hand experience building dynamic and high-performing teams. In my current role as the Director of the University of Sydney Nano Institute, I feel very proud of the inclusive culture we have created in the team and across the broader Sydney Nano community. I note that as a middle-aged white man I don’t claim to be an exemplar of diversity, as I expand on below; I firmly believe that we're all on this journey together and it’s never too late to learn more about the topic.

Inclusion, diversity and intersectionality

Inclusion, simply speaking, refers to diversity and engagement. Diversity focuses on the makeup of your organisation, and your workforce demographics such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation, just to name a few. Inclusion is a measure of culture that enables diversity to thrive.

Diversity can present itself in visible and invisible forms. Visible diversity includes attributes such as gender, race, skin colour, and age. Invisible diversity refers to attributes that are not as obviously apparent such as sexual orientation, cognitive abilities, and so forth.

Intersectionality is an important concept that refers to the ways in which different aspects of a person's identity can expose them to overlapping forms of discrimination and marginalisation. And I really regard intersectionality as the frontier, although it's not a new topic, it’s a theme that we need to embrace as we move forward and grow.

Building a culture of diversity

A serious push from the leadership is needed to position diversity and inclusion as an explicit priority across different organisations. It's fair to say that my own leadership in diversity and inclusion has really been over the last 10 years. I’m delighted to see that my team at Sydney Nano team and the research community that we support, are exemplars of diversity and inclusion. 

We've assembled multidisciplinary, diverse and inclusive teams to address some of the world’s most significant challenges – the Grand Challenges, such as sustainability, climate change, AI, infectious disease, water management, and national security to name a few.

Through decades of experience in team building, we’ve realised that a more inclusive and diverse team, creates a more successful and sustainable community and a more innovative organisation that takes advantage of the full breadth of expertise available within society. It may be that you have to work harder to get a pool of candidates that is representative of the community — but it’s crucial to do the work required to make it easier for a more inclusive and advanced future.

Raise awareness by taking action

It wasn't so long ago that I attended workshops, and Chaired all-male panel sessions, and was not even aware of the gender imbalance, let alone other aspects of diversity. But it’s never too late to learn and take proactive action.

In Australia, we have the Panel Pledge. Inspired by the Male Champions of Change movement, the pledge requires leaders to sign up to a pledge agreeing to only participate in events where efforts have been taken to ensure women have meaningful representation.

Champions of Change don't necessarily need to come from minorities. I advocate that it’s crucial for everyone, including middle-aged white men, to proactively demonstrate their commitment to diversity by setting clear targets for diversity within organisations. As one of my colleagues says, “sometimes you need a sledgehammer, sometimes you need a needle.” In my view, we still need a sledgehammer more often than a needle.

*View Prof. Eggleton’s full speech below!