Events

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us for the Corruption Prevention and Integrity Forum. I’m David Wolf, Deputy Commissioner at IBAC, and I’m pleased to be facilitating this event today. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people here with us today. Thank you for joining us, we've had over 550 people register from across metropolitan and regional Victoria, and interstate agencies as well.

Special welcome to those joining us from the partner agencies from the integrity system, local government, office of the Victorian information commissioner, Victorian ombudsman and others. Today's forum is about building and maintaining speak up culture which is critical in developing a corruption system workplace. This is a theme that many people are interested in.

We know embedding integrity systems into your organisation is not easy or quick, and we hope that today's forum gives strategies to promote this culture. We have three speakers across local government for strategies around the topic. You will hear from – – Emily Howie, General Counsel and Director of Dispute Resolution from Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. You'll hear from Dr Graeme Emonson deputy secretary corporate services from Department of environment land water and planning. And Leanne Wiebenga executive manager for people and safety of the city of Monash. We appreciate the time they've taken today and we look forward to the insights.

Housekeeping for the event, there is an opportunity to ask questions during the audience Q&A session for the webinar, so you secured a function that you will see at the bottom of your screen. This webinar is only 45 minutes, we will continue the conversation after the event by sending you relevant resources and answer questions when we are not able to get to them.

Please note we are not able to answer questions about ongoing investigations. Recording of the forum will be made available on the IBAC website in coming weeks, and we will share presentation slides. If you'd like to turn on live captions, you can do so by clicking on the closed captions at the bottom of the desktop, or if you use a mobile device, put it on the settings in the zoom app, and tap on the closed caption option.

If you experience technical difficulties please ensure you have downloaded the latest version. We hope you will take away useful insights and learnings from today's form. As brief introduction to the topic, an organisational culture of integrity that genuinely supports people to speak up is vitally important in exposing and preventing public sector corruption. We know that corruption thrives when it is not called out, or when witnesses look the other way, or swept under the carpet.

So, when viewed holistically, corruption is seen as not just individual failure, but a reflection on an organisation’s integrity and culture. We know that building a speak up culture is challenging, and here at IBAC we continually learn and improve our own culture through workshops, strengthening processes, and ensuring consistently strong leadership to build trust and staff competence to raise issues. We recognise it is not easy, and our presenters today will share some of their own strategies and perspectives on what has worked for them in their organisations.

Now, first presentation, Emily Howie General Counsel and Director of Dispute Resolution at the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. She is a lawyer and advocate and was previously a legal director at the human rights law centre. Emily will be speaking to us today about the culture of the commission and some of the tools and strategies they use internally to build a speak up culture. Please welcome Emily Howie.

>> Thank you, David, thank you for the introduction. The opportunity to speak with you today. I like to acknowledge the traditional at owners of the lands I'm on, there will run free people of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my respects – to the – – Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to Elders past and present.

First I will give you a sense of what the commission does, and then I will discuss the barriers that are resistant to speaking up, and then I will go through strategies that I think leaders and bystanders that encourage the speak up culture. First slide. The frame that I'm coming from, which is the regulator of issues on the left-hand side of your screen. We are concerned about behaviours where all the evidence shows that victim survivors struggle to speak up. And to report what has happened to them.

We understand the importance of speaking up for service delivery, and delivery teams to accept reports from people who have been victims of violence and sexual harassment, discrimination. We know what a big step it is for the person to come to us, we know how many more do not have the wherewithal to do the same.

We also benefit in our functions, on the right-hand side of the scribe – – the slide, in the review and investigation work, the reviewer people in the workplace of inappropriate or unlawful conduct. We issue guidelines. Guidelines on equal opportunity act address things such as how to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, a key plank of which is building a speak up culture.

Finally, the education team has terrific education as to how bystanders can be a part of that work, and I'll come back to that later.

These are the barriers to speaking up. None of which are new. In a probably well known to you all today. The person affected by the unlawful behaviour, these barriers are overwhelming, and in the prospective work report really highlighted the need to move away from relying on people who have been affected by the unlawful behaviour. To report and get the address that is needed. That is the reason why, today, what leaders and bystanders can do to create the speak up culture. Rather than how complainants themselves can speak up.

So, next slide is about leadership, which is absolutely crucial to building a speak up culture. Leaders of all levels can model respectful behaviour, which is about setting the tone in the treatment of others and being intentional for others and the statement you want to set. This sets up the behaviours there. In those kinds of expectations should be communicated and very transparent through all the policies and processes, induction, training, code of conduct, performance plan. This communication is to be ongoing, and triggers for communication can be things like incidents that are reported and resolved. Reporting back to staff from the people matters survey.

It is absolutely vital that leaders support complainants from victimisation through a fair and confidential reporting and complaints procedure. This is about your advising well-being of the victim survivor in the process. This approach can be adopted while also providing procedural fairness for all parties.

Leaders should encourage bystanders, and there's another slide on bystanders which I will come back to. The last point on the leader slide, is how important it is for leaders to call inappropriate conduct when you see it. This protects a target for the behaviour and discourages the behaviour from happening again.

NATA bystanders. Bystanders are the people – next slide please – bystanders are people who witness unlawful conduct, you, and your work place colleagues. Them standing in and saying a sexist or racist joke is not funny. Or helping a person who is experiencing that behaviour to get away from the harasser. Or otherwise get help. The really important that its people who educate themselves, about right or wrong in the workplace. Bystanders, actually take action. And look after the people around them. They consider their safety and well-being.

Bystanders can challenge behaviour standards in the workplace, in much the same way that leaders can do, because we can all set the tone and expectations of what the standards of behaviour is. We have to encourage bystanders to act safely, create the space. That is critical to create an equitable workplace character. There is potential for backlash, for isolation of people who speak up, and you need to have systems and resources that assist bystanders. So, we would say it is no longer enough to have harassment policy, equal opportunity policy that only looks to protect complainants when reports are made.

The organisation needs to ask what you need to do to protect bystanders. If you want them to act, then the organisation needs to show how they can do it, and assure them how they can be protected. The commission education team runs terrific bystander training, and provide bystanders with a good understanding of how to model appropriate behaviour and tools to intervene and respond safely when inappropriate behaviour occurs.

My final slide is about putting an intersectional lens on this topic, and barriers to reporting that I mentioned before are great for people with particular types of lived experience. Sexual harassment is disproportionate amongst Aboriginal people, LGBTIQA+ people, and disabled people. So, this behaviour makes it harder for people to then speak up. And that is part of the reason why the commission has created the groups on the screen. We have the Deadly Yarns group, and the Aboriginal employees. People of colour network, pride, which is the LGBTIQA+ group, and we are building a disability group.

The idea is that having a group fear – – group forum, there is a group appears to raise issues in a safe way. And the Commissioner goes to these network meetings, and historically from people. It is nascent, and it is great to report back in a years’ time. But it is something that we are proud of doing at the commission.

I'll finish there, but it's great for the opportunity to present the commission’s work, and I look forward to seeing and hearing the other questions speakers, getting into questions.

>> Thank you, that's a great presentation with power formation surges. There are questions coming through the chat, will get them when we finish the next speakers. I would like to introduce Dr Graeme Emonson, deputy secretary corporate services at DELWP. Graeme has responsibility for the delivery people, culture, strategy, performance, legal and governance and more. He has probably easily held executive roles in local government. Graeme will be speaking about their approach to a culture with integrity.

>> Thank you for the opportunity to share our insights, and how we have been approaching how to build a stronger culture of integrity, and speak up is a key component of that. Today I will touch on three aspects. I will touch on the importance of having a strategic approach, deliberate approach to building integrity as an organisation’s foundation. I will talk about the challenges we faced in the speak up culture, and I will finish by talking on the comments of leadership, and how important it is for tone setting.

I would like to start off by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands that I am meeting on today. I would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to the Elders past, present and emerging.

I will touch on some of the challenges that represent a dispersed organisation. The first thing I will say is that the strong culture of integrity does not occur in its own right, it takes a very deliberate and coordinated effort I'm half of the entire organisation, with the leaders, and it is the responsibility of all staff. So, having a deliberate strategy and framework that sets the expectations is really important. We established a dedicated integrity unit in 2019, and one of the first tasks of the unit is to refresh our framework, and make sure it is contemporary and leading edge.

But most importantly, we wanted it to make a difference. The couple meant that we had a new strategy to consummate the framework, and that was all about reorienting our efforts to build an integrity culture and promoting a shift to a principles-based approach. Integrity, understanding, but also the management of all integrity across the department. That strategy and framework was all about greater meaning of how staff can put into practice, what behaviours are expected, and sets the framework as to why and integrity culture is important, and it really does call out the need for us to call out improper conduct. Having the broader strategic framework and strategy has driven us to drive a number of key initiatives across the department. Just a bit of evidence, I suppose, from 2009 we have seen a 7% increase in our staff who acknowledge that the department has improved its overall organisational integrity over the three-year period. That is up from 73%, 80%, and while they are small gains, they are positive gains. And we attributed a lot of that to the fact that we set out a very clear framework and strategy. We are now into the second iteration, if we can go to the next slide, of the integrity strategy. And I will not touch too much on the detail, other than to say, we have identified five key priority areas that we want to focus on in the next few years, and for the purposes of today's forum, I will highlight that the fit of those priority areas, they are not in priority order, is about building and supporting a safe speak up environment.

You can see from that the whole aspect of having a safe speak up environment is a centrepiece of our strategy, to build an overall integrity culture.

We have a way to go, so the next slide has the challenges that we are experiencing trying to promote the broader integrity culture, especially the safe speak up environment. I touched on the fact that we have a large and diverse, and regionally based work for us. We have remote regional areas, and that promotes a significant challenge for us, in reaching out to staff at all levels and all locations that resonate with them. What might resonate for people in an office based environment in SCD B is – – in the CBD is different to a remote location. One of our challenges is getting cut through messages in a way that can resonate with our broad and varied workforce. It is a work in progress for us, but we are cognizant of it that one size fits all, given the variety of work the department does is a key challenge for us.

One of the key aspects, over the last few years of COVID-19, the ability for us to drive hard in training and engagement opportunities with staff has been challenging when we know that face-to-face training of the behavioural aspects of awareness raising has been much greater. The challenge of getting cut through in the environment is greater when we are online, compared to doing face-to-face training. So, we have had to adapt, and be agile about how we keep a visible presence, and keep that level of training and engagement at the level that we need to ensure that issues around integrity do not just drop off. That takes me to the next major challenge that I will call out. And that is getting crowded out.

As a department that has a significant place-based environment, we have a number of significant and major natural events, everything from major bushfire events in 2019 and 20, significant storms, floods, COVID, we have been essentially operating in a crisis environment since late 2019. That often means that it is hard, the message is about integrity, they get crowded up because of the crisis management environment.

So, we have had to work hard in ensuring that the messages around integrity don't continue to get lost in the crowded environment. How have we gone about creating a speak up culture? One of the key things, if I can go on to the next slide, one of the key things is to have a message which is simple and can stick. And when you can continue to repeat. For us, it's a simple message. If it does not look right, or you are not sure, speak up. That is a catch line that we are trying to utilise as a brand.

It is a simple message, and our experience is that it does cut through. If it does not look or feel right, then you should say something. The other thing we have done is a disclosure approach. Being clear about expectations, confidentiality at every turn that we can, and building those foundations for supporting speak up means that people pass on word-of-mouth based on experiences.

That is a key initiative that we are trying to, I suppose, and still, if our disclosure has a better experience as they would talk about it to their peers, and remote speak up culture. We have a 'no wrong door policy' so subject matters across the environment have an opening place to share knowledge, we can make linkages and in turn go to hotspot areas and focus on those for encouraging speak up.

We have a number of alternative reporting channels. Managers, integrity unit, workplace investigations unit, or whatever. Having multiple channels for people to encourage them to use the channel that is safe for them.

We have different methods for people to be able to disclose. Whether that is email, phone, dedicated public interest and disclosure hotline as well. We have a number of information and awareness campaigns, anticorruption day, etc. We built a specific integrity component into orientation for new starters, and it had strong feedback and cut through as well. The last thing to touch on, Emily has probably touched and carried – – it's really important that we take every opportunity to keep integrity top-of-the-line. Integrity is not a behaviour that we can set aside at the end of the workday. It becomes easier to meet our special public sector expectations if we practice it, live it, talk about it, and we, as leaders, take action when something is not right. I would be happy to expand further on the importance of leadership and the tone setting, to use these words again, and the importance of building and integrity culture. So, David, that's enough for me, hopefully that gives insights as to how DELWP is approaching building the integrity culture, but also the key component of building a safe speak up culture.

>> Thank you, Graham, there was a great presentation, fantastic takeaways for the audience. One of the things that struck me as your department, in a small constraint environment, still has found it important to invest in integrity building for the organisation, and that is very encouraging. I would like to move onto the final speaker, Leanne Wiebenga from the city of Monash. She has a human resource background across organisation private sector non-profit organisation. She has worked across many organisations, and is committed to organisational development theory and has change across cultural practice. Leanne will speak to us about the many ingredients of speak up culture, and what the city of Monash is doing around behavioural change. Please welcome Leanne.

>> Thank you, David, thank you for having me, I'm excited to speak, present, and share what is happening with us at Monash. Before I do, like to acknowledge the traditional owners of all the lands we are meeting on today, and recognise the continuing connection to land and waterways, and I respect elders past, present and emerging, and any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander here today.

I want to draw out that there are themes from my presentation, and leadership is one of them, in terms of Monash, we are a local government authority and we have over 100 services with the community, and we do that, like DELWP, and some of the other agencies here today, with limited resources, and we have about 1200 people in our headcount. So, I will move quickly to the next slide in terms of my focus. The focus, slightly different, I'm coming from an organisation development behavioural lens, if you like. I like to call a speak up culture, ‘speak ability’.

Because it’s not just about culture, but the ability to speak up. That's a phrase I like to use. I will talk about the alignment of the organisation, and behavioural change. In the importance of psychological safety. It has been extraordinarily topical of late, psychological safety, with COVID, and more topical with psychosocial regulations being up for proposal with WorkSafe. So, I'm happy to move to the next slide, it's a no-brainer, but what I want to point out is, when I come into organisations, not specifically Monash, but any organisation, it has been sometime before there is work done on how policies, processes frameworks, structures, behaviours, align and interact. So, when you have cultural aspiration, or you want to build a culture of speak up, for example, one of the policies and processes that are absolutely supporting that, or, in fact, blocking that.

I've seen plenty of examples, trust, for example, in terms of value set, where policies, in particular don't lend themselves to that. So, it's a starting place, to make sure that were you have policies and procedures being developed that you have the consultation across the organisation with your people, and making sure there is alignment across the framework. I do want to spend a lot of time on that, but it's a 101, and there is a trap that we don't go back and revisit these things, and we think that they are the only things that workforce, and it is so much more than that. If we move onto the next slide.

I want to talk about psychological safety, and the work of Amy Edmonson as a Harvard professor who coined the term psychological safety. It's important that we underpin the way we are supporting speak up culture is to make sure that we have psychological safety. We hear from focus groups, employee feedback that people do not feel psychological safe to speak up. You may have frameworks in place, but they need to have the psychological safety to be able to speak up.

So, in terms of definition, the definition we are seeing is around not being punished or humiliated when speaking up. This was meant to improved innovation and inclusion, but also applies for corruption, fraud, and anything for that matter. We've heard from a speaker is that leaders set the tone. I like the show the way or get in the way, that we work on significantly from a leadership perspective. One of the traits we focus on (inaudible) and how that banishes fear. And raises grievances or reports grievances. One size does not fit all, and we are proud of the speaker framework, and the consultation of the framework. What is loud and clear is that it is loud and safe, we have to do more consultation. It's been an important learning for us.

And there is also transparency of mistakes, it is something that can be quite a hindrance to psychological safety, if we don't allow for or celebrate experiments and learning, and the making of mistakes. So, it's really important, and worth bringing to the table.

To unpack psychological safety, we will move to the next slide. There are a number of them, we use a framework, bio theorist, Timothy Clark. There are a number of them. This one is quite simple, and the quadrants of psychological safety are successive in the nature, and we can't have one without the other. What we want to do is point out the challenges to safety. The way this model works is challenge of safety is up really high when it thinks about the multiple terms of respect and permission. Without those things, you're not going to have a culture that challenges safety. I bring your attention that, because that is where we see this picking up culture.

You express ideas, changes, exposed problems, and expose issues like corruption or fraud, and I think one of the things we have done that has been quite significant culturally for our organisation is we have changed safety to be less about compliance, and more around, what does a safety culture look like? What does it need? We look at physical safety, but we talk a lot more about psychological safety, and we know that when we talk about psychosocial safety, and psychosocial health, that leads itself to the building of trust and integrity. Some of the things we have done includes – I'm conscious of time, I will run through a couple of things, we have done by standard training, and that has been done in support of and in partnership with organisations like (unknown term).

We also have champions, moving away from contact offices, traditional approaches to the way people put their hand up and talk to different people, the champions extend across a range of topics, which might be discrimination, fraud, or something that people are not comfortable about. We have champions across the organisation. We have a way to go with that, and the way to go with bystander training, particularly in terms of supporting bystanders, and we heard from panellists around that one already. That is some of the work we are doing, and we have a range of frameworks in support of it. What we are learning is the frameworks are not one size fits all. Going back to the first slide, and the first slide is about processes, frameworks, behaviours, strategies, but we have to constantly review them and get the check ins with our employees around are these working? Are they doing what they are intended to do? And it is developed from the ground up, and that's a really important part of the work we are doing. There is a lot of complexity for the model of psychological safety, and I’m comfortable sharing more material with you all, and I'm conscious that we have question time. But, that is pretty much what I would like to touch on, and that we, culturally, are trying to embed different mindsets and behaviours around this piece that is actually about speak ability, and speak ability for anything, whether that is directly related to fraud or corruption, or whether it is related to someone feeling discriminated against, sexual harassment, bullying, that's really important for us. As an overall, a holistic approach to speak ability and speak up culture. So, I will leave it at that, David, because I have sped up a bit, I'm conscious of time, and I'm happy to share more. Thank you for having me.

>> Terrific, thank you Leanne, it's a terrific presentation. With speak ability, and the rest of the presentation. We were aspirational in terms of time with today, we've gone into our Q&A period, which we generally do, but we will try to get through as many questions as we can.

Normally we say, we have questions, but we will have as once we can respond to. First question from the audience is around bystander protection. I will throw to Emily and Leanne to answer this, what would bystander protection look like, and you have practical examples of that? Emily?

>> Great question. Bystander protection needs to think about what a person who is in the situation needs to know and feel safe. It is about having policies that say if you speak up, you will have protection. You will have protection from being victimised. I think it is also about, even before that, in a preventative way, training people to be bystanders. Leanne has great expertise in this the key thing is that bystanders can do this safely.

We know that there are repercussions for people at times who speak out. So, it is important that people are trained in being safe at the moment, and that they know they can rely on the systems and that the organisation has in place that know how they will care about them, give them the same thing support services that they will need, as they go through the process again.

Leanne, do you have more to add?

>> I would just personally say, I absolutely agree with all of that, and again, I will come back to the one size does not fit all. We have generic bystander support mechanisms, anonymity, confidentiality, and that cannot always work sometimes, but the first question we ask is, what will make you feel safe, and what is important to you, and how do we make sure the individual, based on what is important to them, that we can respond to that. There is a range that we could, but it's important in terms of individualisation.

>> Wonderful, thank you for that. Next question, I will pitch to Graham. – – Graeme. There is a disconnect between senior leadership of speak up culture, and the one that exists within the operations and the staff of the organisation. Have you got thoughts about how you identify the gap, and how to address it?

>> Thank you, David. It is a perennial challenge for any organisation for leaders to get an unfiltered view as to what is happening, and leaders get a cleansed view for messages. It's about leaders being genuinely engaged with people, and that is across multiple opportunities, mediums, and to get in touch with the organisation. We have done a series of listen and learn opportunities, unfiltered opportunities in a safe environment to see what the essences of integrity. It is a genuine curiosity and creating a safe environment to listen to what the organisation is telling us.

This is not an easy fix, but we need to take every opportunity to tap into and open is with genuine curiosity as to what is happening on the ground. Dialogue is a powerful opportunity.

>> Thank you, Graham, it's a good point. We are getting to the end of our allotted time, so I will close with a final question to all three of you. I'm looking for a pearl of wisdom, what can an organisation to do for the immediate change to support a speak up culture. Leanne, if you'd like to start?

>> I'm happy to do that quickly. Have the conversation with your employees and asked them what it is they think is important for psychological safety. And speak up culture.

>> Emily?

>> My Pearl is similar to Leanne, and Graham's last one. It is actually – you have to be able to listen. That is the change, to listen, to be challenged, to feel uncomfortable and go into it with the curiosity to understand where people are coming from. And allow people to drive the process.

>> Terrific, thanks. Graeme?

>> To select something different. Genuinely, authentically, or intent – – orientate yourself to a discloser approach. Put the discloser at the centre, walk in their shoes, and genuinely reorient systems, policies, processes with that in mind.

That goes to things like multiple avenues for disclosing confidentiality, and other things that go with the disclosure focused approach.

>> Thank you, Graeme. Unfortunately that is all we have time for today, so I will wrap it up, but firstly I would like to thank Emily, Graeme and Leanne, and attendees and organisers for your contributions to the forum today. For me, the strongest point of all, which is not unusual, is that leadership component, setting the tone, and having a focus on important integrity issues within the organisation.

For a wrap up, I would like to mention that we have links to the resources mentioned throughout the session, as well as slides and recordings of today's webinar, so keep an eye out for that in the inboxes. Also, I will point you to the IBAC website where there are resources, and towards the social media channels where we have a large volume of information. Finally, as the webinar comes to an end, you'll see in the chat there is a short feedback survey, it helps us plan future events and what topics are important to you as stakeholders. It would be great if you could fill that out and provide us with feedback. We look forward to seeing you again at future IBAC events and thank you for your attendance. Bye for now.