How has Diversity & Inclusion shaped the culture at Frasers Property?
D&I has helped shape the culture at Frasers Property by allowing us to bring diversity of thought, experience, and perspectives to our teams and in doing so create a culture of innovative thinking, psychological safety and where are employees are free to be their true self. It’s ultimately about embracing the Best of Us.
What does having Diversity of Thought bring to the leadership table?
In addition to encouraging robust conversations, Diversity of Thought ensures that our leadership tables set an acceptable standard and aspiration around embracing and leveraging different experiences and perspectives. It ensures that we embody our value of Progressive – we are curious and actively seek opportunities to innovate.
Provide examples of how diversity and inclusion policies have improved your organisation’s performance?
At Frasers, everyone plays a role in the creation of stronger, smarter, happier neighbourhoods. As our customers are diverse, coming from different backgrounds, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, buyer profiles & more, we depend on diversity in our own ranks to get it right. We work hard to foster & embed a workplace culture that values different perspectives. Our diversity of women & men, of different backgrounds & skill sets, builds strength which we bring to our core purpose, to create belonging, through the creation of diverse real estate assets for our broad range of customers. Some examples are below:
- EMPLOYER OF CHOICE – Staff surveys support the notion that the organisational culture we’ve established, with our D&I program as its platform, has a positive impact on our capacity to attract & retain talented people.
- POLICIES SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE THROUGH COVID – With established policies covering mental health & wellbeing support, flexible working, health & safety, & employee care in place, we maintained strong business performance through the pandemic across all metrics, most notably profitability, project progress and crucially employee retention. Today, our NSW projects are some of the best-performing in our national pipeline.
- KICKSTARTING CAREERS – The Master of Architecture (Urban Transformation) Scholarship for Women is a partnership between Frasers Property and Western Sydney University, designed to encourage growth in female participation and cement more opportunities for women in architecture. It’s a program we’re proud of and it’s working – our inaugural scholarship recipient Sarah Abu Dareb has completed her Masters degree and is now an Urban Designer at Urbis.
- SUPPORTED PARENTS – The uptake of our parental leave entitlements by employees of all genders is well utilised across all levels of the company. Employees widely share positive experiences which has resulted in a broad acceptance of normalising access and utilisation of leave.
Is there anything you would still like to see and … what would it look like if you had a magic wand and could create the outcomes you envision in our industry?
Broader outcomes would be to see continued growth in the presence of women in non-traditional areas within the industry, from trades through to C-Suite.
Who was the champion for D&I at Frasers Property who made it a vital part of the organisations strategy and investment?
Ranna Alkadamani – GM People & Culture played a pivotal role in bringing our strategy and investment initially to the executive table many years ago. Today we are fortunate to have executive and leadership teams across the board that proactively support and drive our D&I strategy and subsequent investments. It’s a real embodiment of ‘leading by example’.
Could the staff at Frasers Property easily describe the culture of diversity and inclusion? And if so… what has enabled them to do so?
Absolutely! We firmly believe that our employees can and do easily describe the culture of diversity and inclusion at Frasers Property. The true test is that their descriptions would be as diverse as our teams!
Our greatest enabler of this has been embracing story telling and shared experiences to bring it to life and create a layer of relatability to our policies, programs, and employee experiences.
If we were meeting again in 12 months’ time, what would you like to be celebrating?.
We would be celebrating the continued growth of our Constructive Culture with our next organisational wide Culture Survey being conducted in early 2023. Achieving White Ribbon Reaccreditation finalisation. Maintaining our position as a WGEA Employer of Choice, continued positive feelings towards Frasers Property as a great place to work and continued growth in diversity of the industry.
This interview forms part of a UDIA D&I Committee initiative series to encourage and highlight more diversity in UDIA and the property industry. It is intended to highlight diversity by profiling our members through industry publications on a regular basis throughout the year. Thank you to Ranna Alkadamani, General Manager, People & Culture, Frasers Property.
Since 2018, the Diversity & Inclusion Committee has been one of the key Business Advisory Committees for the UDIA NSW, focussed on improving and promoting diversity and inclusion in the UDIA and our industry. This year, we launched the ‘One Thing’ campaign – celebrating and sharing the ‘one thing’ that we’re doing to empower people by respecting, supporting and appreciating what makes them different, in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, beliefs, disability, sexual orientation, and education. What’s your One Thing?