Prioritising conscious inclusion throughout the recruitment lifecycle

The recommendation

Ambulance Victoria should:

embed conscious inclusion initiatives at each stage of the recruitment lifecycle, to help attract candidates from diverse backgrounds and offer them support during the recruitment process
encourage the greater use of external advertising and (external) lateral recruitment to diversify its workforce and future leadership talent pool
set clear and progressive targets within its forthcoming Gender Equality Action Plan to increase the representation of women in operational leadership roles at the middle, senior and executive management levels and among MICA paramedics and MICA Paramedic Educators.

Define Ambulance Victoria’s approach to conscious inclusion, learning from leading practices in other organisations
Map current recruitment processes, identify opportunities to be consciously inclusive and redesign recruitment model and systems to enable conscious inclusion and align resourcing to enable this
Create and improvie the accessibility of employment pathways for people from diverse backgrounds
Ensure greater use of external advertising
Expand horizons of potential talent pool to include interstate and international candidates, including returning expatriates
Consider exchange and secondment learning opportunities with similarly situated ambulance services and internal secondments and placements to diversity knowledge and experience
Strengthening onboarding and induction to set up new staff for success and throughout employment lifecycle
Set clear and progressive targets within its forthcoming Gender Equality Action Plan to increase the representation of women in operational leadership roles at the middle, senior and executive management levels and among MICA Paramedics and MICA Paramedic Educators

In 2022, AV has met with organisations who are exemplifying leading practice approaches to conscious inclusion in recruitment, so that we can learn from how they define and apply conscious inclusion practices.
In mid-2022, AV advertised all but one role (Operational Advisor) in the Equality & Workplace Reform Division externally and, with the support of a recruitment agency, developed a recruitment campaign centred around conscious inclusion. Once concluded, AV will undertake an internal evaluation of the effectiveness of the campaign, to determine the impact of this approach and what we can learn for conscious inclusion initiatives across the organisation going forward.
The Equality & Workplace Reform Division will test potential amendments to AV’s ‘New Starter Form’ – as part of the onboarding of the division’s staff – to capture better diversity data about our workforce, supported by proposed communications describing the value that AV attaches to diversity data, why it is collecting this information and how it intends to use it. The division will consider how to promote and celebrate the diversity, drawing on the leading practice Board skills and diversity matrix developed by the Victorian Government for public sector Boards and the intersectional data requirements in the Gender Equality Act 2020 (Vic).
AV has set clear and progressive targets in its Gender Equality Action Plan to increase the representation of women in operational leadership roles.

To be confirmed