In a rich and motivating discussion, startup co-founder and award winner Kate Glazebrook demonstrated how her global career shaped her understanding and determination to make an impact through technology. The conversation was warmly hosted by Herbert Smith Freehills in Sydney, as part of the Advance Boardroom Lunch GameChanger series.
Kate Glazebrook is a behavioural expert and the 2019 Advance Science and Technology Award winner. She is currently Chair of Applied, a platform that she co-founded to enable organisations make hiring processes smart, fair, and easy. In this discussion she shared her journey and mission to ensure HR processes achieve higher levels of inclusivity and accessibility.
Kate outlined the many challenges to achieving equitable employment outcomes, and served a very powerful ‘call to action’: to individually make changes, and get comfortable with any additional time or perceived risk associated with building diverse teams.
The lunch gathered senior and emerging leaders in the People & Culture space from our network of supporters, who contributed their perspectives to the discussion. The event was chaired by Advance Board Member Louise Thurgood-Phillips, and wonderfully hosted by Mark Rigotti at Herbert Smith Freehills.
The room shared their experiences on incorporating accountability and transparency into recruitment and promotion processes, and also noted the need to include more explicit actions to remove unconscious bias at all stages of talent attraction. Reflecting on data shared that shows cognitive diversity drives better results for teams, roundtable guest Kate Mason noted we need to hire for the future versus using a rear-view mirror approach that hires for today’s needs.
In other key lessons from the conversation, the guests noted the importance of understanding how bias can occur when recruiting for “client-readiness”, and how research has demonstrated that allowing junior team members to share their perspective can result in more client-centric outcomes.
Further resources
- The Behavioural Insights Team, also known as ‘The Nudge Unit’, from the UK Government
- WithYouWithMe and WithYouWithMe Tech Internships
- Cultural Competence in Australia – A guide
Interested in showcasing or hearing from remarkable global Australians? Talk to us today and start inspiring our next generation of leaders.