Kiwibank wants to create a fairer workplace for neurodivergent people (Image: Getty)

PartnersMay 12, 2023

Kiwibank wants to make the workplace fairer for neurodivergent people

The Bulletin editor

Kiwibank wants to create a fairer workplace for neurodivergent people (Image: Getty)

The locally owned bank has partnered with Brain Badge, a local initiative that describes itself as ‘the world’s first neurodiversity certification’.

Since the pandemic, the way in which many of us work has changed dramatically. Working from home remains commonplace and employees have a stronger understanding of flexibility when it comes to how we balance work, life and everything in between.

For people who are neurodivergent or display some neurodiverse traits, including but not limited to those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), these steps forward in workplace flexibility may help, but not necessarily solve, the challenges of employment. That’s because we now understand that there’s an endless spectrum of what may have once been described as “disorders” or “disabilities”. They’ve since been rightly framed as valuable traits that shouldn’t be a barrier to employment, but for many, and even in a post-Covid world of increased flexibility, they still can be.

Brain Badge is a local initiative that seeks to certify businesses that are a welcoming place for neurodiverse individuals. It’s partnered with companies like The Warehouse Group, Auckland Transport and now Kiwibank.

Jess Segal, Kiwibank senior manager of leadership and diversity, explains what the partnership means for the company, why they’re doing it now and how they’ll be held to account.

Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Jess Segal, Kiwibank senior manager of leadership and diversity (Image: Supplied)

Hi Jess. Tell us about Brain Badge. What is it exactly?

We are a founding partner with Brain Badge, an organisation that is doing work around how to change the system around neurodiversity so that education is a more accessible experience for kids who think in ways that don’t align to the traditional curriculum.

The work that we do with Brain Badge is around how we can create systemic change within corporates, so that people who are neurodiverse are able to thrive within the systems that exist. Our work with Brain Badge will be looking at what we’re doing internally and also what we’re doing to make sure we can bring on neurodiverse people into Kiwibank that allows them through the door.

Why decide to partner with Brain Badge now?

Neurodiversity has been around for a really long time but it’s only really recently that people have started to pay closer attention to the nuances of neurodiversity within “differentiated instruction strategies” – meaning tailoring instruction to meet individual needs – and wider accessibility strategies. The reason we are partnering with Brain Badge now is because we are in a position where we are able to start doing this work, with the help of an outfit that has the expertise around neurodiversity. They have the resources to be able to do a lot of the research and provide the support we wouldn’t be able to do internally.

It’s a bit like the Rainbow Tick, right? But this has been criticised by some when businesses haven’t really ‘walked the talk’ in terms of demonstrating support for their rainbow staff.

The partnership we have with Brain Badge is quite different to the kind of partnership you’d have with something like Gender Tick or Rainbow Tick where they are an already established company. They’ve already set up their criteria for getting the tick.

Brain Badge is still doing that so we have come in at a founding partner level… where we have the opportunity to work very closely with Brain Badge to create the criteria. What that means is Kiwibank can do a whole bunch of testing and together we’ll be setting the criteria so other organisations will be able to do this work.

The Brain Badge is a New Zealand company wanting to encourage local businesses to be neurodivergence-friendly (Image: Brain Badge)

In the past, do you think Kiwibank has been a challenging place for neurodivergent people to work at?

Neurodivergence is a very complex thing to be interacting with. Two people might have the same outward diagnosis, but those two people aren’t going to be experiencing the world in the same way. So when it comes to how people have been able to work, the experience is going to be super different for each individual depending on what their needs are.

I would hope that given the work we’ve been doing around flexibility, around accessibility and inclusion at Kiwibank over the last few years, there’s been a real increase for people to be able to perform. But the point of this work is to say “we know we’re not perfect”. In fact, we’ll never be perfect – but we know we’re not and we know we have a lot of work here and we’re looking to Brain Badge to help support us in doing the work we need to do to help our people thrive.

The reality is that about 40% of us have neurodivergent traits so this could be quite revolutionary for a lot of people at Kiwibank who might never get a diagnosis or know they have neurodivergent traits. All of us have nuanced ways of thinking, that’s what makes diversity so cool.

What about prospective employees? Will Kiwibank be equipped to understand that someone who is interviewing for a role might be neurodivergent?

What we’re doing at the moment is to start thinking about what we do when we need someone to fill a position. Things like the language we’re using in job advertisements, where we’re putting job advertisements, how people can interact with that advertisement. We’re also doing things like rethinking how you might submit a CV or whether you have to submit a CV at all. For some people, writing a CV is a really tricky thing to do – it doesn’t mean they don’t have exactly the skills that we need, but a video might be a better way for them to submit their skills and capabilities.

And then when they get through to the next stage – what does that mean? Interviews can be really, really hard. That doesn’t work for a lot of people, so what can we do to change that experience for some people? What we are saying at the moment is we are just at the starting blocks. There are some things we know we are not doing at the moment that people at Brain Badge are going to be able to help us understand, acknowledge and then do something about it.

Are there standards that must be met, or a way that Kiwibank will be held accountable?

The work we’re doing with Brain Badge will be to help us establish those standards. But what we’re also doing internally is setting up a neurodiversity network of our people. We have a philosophy around diversity at Kiwibank which is: “Nothing about us, without us”. So even though we are working with Brain Badge there is another really critical group of people that will help us to understand what expectations we should be setting at Kiwibank and how we meet them – and that is our people.

Things like Covid have actually presented a good opportunity for us to do some testing around how people work and how we can better enable people to work in different ways and still be productive. I think people generally have a better understanding now that some people thrive in conditions that weren’t enabled pre-Covid. And so we need to keep that going even though things are starting to change in terms of office life.

This is sparking a conversation within Kiwibank – but do you want that conversation to be sparked in other companies or industries?

The work we can do is about Kiwibank but I firmly believe that anything that we do here has fingers out into other places too. The more people that talk about this kind of thing, then the more likely we are to be able to make a broad difference. That’s what I love about Brain Badge – yes they’re trying to make a difference in terms of corporates, but they’re also really trying to make a difference beyond that and create systemic change that starts with our kids.

That’s absolutely where we should be focusing.

Keep going!

When youth feel heard, they can thrive (Image: Archi Banal)

PartnersMay 11, 2023

The plan to address youth disadvantage in our southernmost city

Russell Brown

Contributing writer

When youth feel heard, they can thrive (Image: Archi Banal)

Russell Brown meets three of the catalysts behind an ambitious initiative in the deep south, and learns how the challenges of 2022 have forced change, adaptation and growth.

A year ago, Te Rourou, One Aotearoa Foundation, was poised on the edge of an unusual experiment. The Invercargill Initiative, a bid to make a difference in one place, had its ground laid, its funding in place. The initiative had aimed to address youth exclusion and disadvantage in the southern city as a first step towards a longer-term vision of halving youth disadvantage nationally. But what would it actually do?

At inception, there was a degree of uncertainty even on the side of the organisers – although, as The Spinoff learned at the time, that was the point of the experiment. The idea, rather than to set a strict and prescriptive roadmap, was that the initiative would let the community – and in particular, its young people – decide what was important.

The Invercargill Initiative emerged from research undertaken by the foundation – research which has led its strategy through to 2027 and which also informed the launch of its OHI Data Navigator project. The research showed that 23% of Invercargill youth had experienced exclusion and disadvantage, compared to a national average of 20%. For some areas of the city, the rate is much higher. The research, among other factors, including focus from One NZ in the region, and the foundation’s work with Ngāi Tahu, were some deciding factors for the place-based initiative.

Mandy Smith, an Invercargill local, came aboard the initiative in April last year, as the first of two “community catalysts” employed to forge connections between groups that might not have had a common focus before. Initial community consultation identified the need for such roles, and now the two in these roles act as a resource for the community, building connections, collaboration, and capability in the youth sector.

On top of that, the team has been working with young people, which has involved much more than just listening to them, she says.

“We know from our experience in the community and the kōrero we’ve had with our rangatahi that the disadvantage and exclusion they’re experiencing is creating constant barriers for them to thrive. Whether it’s related to finance, education, wellbeing, or social connections, our young people’s lives are constantly being impacted by things outside of their control. Our rangatahi are very aware of what needs to change for them and so it is vital that we work alongside them to enable the change they want to see.”

Invercargill city centre (Photo: George Driver)

Through this work, Smith and her team have discovered that young people don’t feel like their voices are being heard in Murihiku. The Te Ōhanga Tīwera fund (“ōhanga” meaning a nest; “tīwhera” signalling it is open to all) is helping to change that – by giving funding power to the rangatahi themselves. It’s the foundation’s innovative way of demonstrating that youth voices are not only being heard, but being turned into actions – and those actions benefit the region in more ways than one.

The first work of the initiative was to establish and upskill a panel of eight young Māori to hear applications and decide where the support should go.

“We had this group nominated by their rūnaka,” says Smith. “And we took them through a few months of working together, learning about community wellbeing funding models, conflicts of interest, all those sorts of governance and funding skills. Now they’re deciding what happens with all of that money.”

To date, the panel has allocated over $250,000 in two rounds of the fund, supporting Southland programmes which help to connect rangatahi Māori to their culture. An awards night has followed each round, during which oversized cheques were handed to successful applicants.

“It’s been amazing, because we had 14 to 18 year-olds in there, so really quite young,” says Smith. “Seeing them really taking control and learning has been great.”

The Invercargill town hall and theatre (Image: Walter Bibikow/Getty Images)

Stacy Hughes joined Te Rourou’s work as a community catalyst midway through last year, and describes his role as “a meddler in the middle,” a “conveyer of conversation.” Stacy, also an Invercargill local, uses his background in the youth sector to better understand how funders can do better for the communities they want to serve.

When it comes to the struggles of Invercargill’s young people, many of them point towards the geographical isolation and a need to get out of their hometown to have better opportunities. Hughes and Te Rourou are working to create scalable change within the region so leaving isn’t the only perceived option for these rangatahi to succeed.

Hughes points to the unique approach of Te Rourou, relying on community leaders and the connections that have already been forged to inform their work. “It’s very easy for people in large cities like Auckland and Wellington to point at another region and try to replicate the same approach to community uplift, but the ‘community catalysts’ understand that Invercargill has its own mana and therefore needs a unique approach. Te Rourou believes there isn’t a one-size-fits-all to tackling youth disadvantage and exclusion in Aotearoa.”

Data shows 30% of young people in Invercargill experience exclusion and disadvantage, compared with the national average of 20% (Photo: George Driver)

Sharon Reece, a developmental evaluator for Te Rourou, has two teenagers of her own so isn’t shocked by the capability of the rangatahi she sees in her day-to-day. “I think many people will be surprised by how well rangatahi can communicate their own experiences and their future aspirations,” she says.

“We’re so much more than a source of funding. The work done by our local team of three is about bringing together a network to drive real community change, and we value the relationships we build above all else.”

There is a clear benefit, Smith says, in making Invercargill a place where young people want to stay, rather than leave. This feeds into work the city council is doing.

“We’ve got an ageing local population and we’re seeing quite a disconnect between who’s running businesses and who’s at that management level, and then the young people coming in. Not knowing how to work together is a huge problem. Those businesses need young people to come through.

“The council is pushing on a strategy of: how do we retain young people in the city? How do we build vibrancy? It aligns with the work we’re doing quite nicely.”

The work that’s being done in the Invercargill Initiative to ensure young people’s voices are heard, and they have a seat at the table in their communities, will hopefully result in more young people feeling a sense of belonging in Invercargill and therefore staying in the region beyond their teens. Empowering young people to have a say on how their city reflects their own needs and experiences will give them a new sense of pride and ownership over their communities.

When Smith looks towards the future of the initiative, she sees sustainable growth and evolution. “Our roles were created from community engagement. It has always been about what the community wants and needs, and as those needs change, so will our initiative. It’s up to us to continuously learn, reflect, and adapt the mahi according to the voice of our community. The long-term goal of the place-based initiative is really to learn, trial and innovate not just in the community, but alongside it.”