The Business Revolution Episode 7

In this seventh episode of The Business Revolution, we delve into the ‘S’ in ESG, exploring the social impact businesses can have through diversity and inclusion. Our guest, Yvonne Kelly, CEO of Glow Up Careers, shares inspiring stories and actionable insights on how businesses can create a more equitable future by tapping into underutilised talent pools.

Yvonne discusses how Glow Up Careers is bridging the gap between refugees and migrants and potential employers, using AI-powered tools and personalised coaching to overcome systemic barriers.

Tune in to learn about:
The crucial role of collaboration and community partnerships in fostering sustainable change.
How a skills-first approach to hiring can unlock untapped potential and drive diversity.
Concrete steps businesses can take to create a more inclusive and equitable workplace.
Join us on this journey of transformation and discover how your business can make a real difference in the lives of individuals and communities.

Audio version:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:52 — 21.1MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

Yvonne Kelly is the CEO of Glow Up Careers, an award-winning Social Enterprise dedicated to empowering everyone to have their dream career. Recently honoured with a Women Changing the World Award in London for Cultural Diversity and Inclusion, Yvonne has over 25 years of experience in the recruitment industry. Yvonne is passionate about diversity hiring and inclusion in the workplace, and advocates for the use of AI to overcome technological barriers in job-seeking. Yvonne works tirelessly to shift leader mindsets and transform hiring practices to build more diverse, inclusive, and thriving workplaces.

Links:
→ www.glowupcareers.com
→ www.linkedin.com/in/yvonnekelly1

Transcript – episode 7

Cherry Ward (00:00)

Welcome, revolutionaries. My name is Cherry.

Mik Aidt (00:02)

And I’m Mik.

Alan Taylor (00:03)

And I’m Alan. Together we’re the three business musketeers who guide you through the evolving landscape of business and sustainability.

Cherry Ward (00:11)

This podcast is made on the lands of the Boon Wurrung, the Yuggera and Turrbal and the Wadawurrung people to whom we pay our respects and acknowledgement. In today’s episode, we’re diving into the S in ESG, the social impact that businesses can have on their people and communities.

Mik Aidt (00:28)

Businesses increasingly recognise that their success is intertwined with the well-being of society in general. Today we’re going to explore how a business can help create a more inclusive and a more equitable future.

Alan Taylor (00:42)

Today we’ll explore the power of social impact and how businesses can make a real difference in the lives of their employees and communities.

Cherry Ward (00:49)

Here in The Business Revolution podcast, we are on a mission. We intend to prove to the world that sustainability isn’t just good for the planet. It’s good for our health, our pockets, businesses, and for our economy.

Mik Aidt (01:02)

So whether you’re a business owner, a climate advocate, or simply curious about the future of this planet of ours, you won’t want to miss this episode of The Business Revolution.

Cherry Ward (01:14)

And that’s why we’re thrilled to have Yvonne Kelly with us today. Yvonne is a CEO of Glow Up Careers, an award -winning social enterprise dedicated to empowering everyone to have their dream career. Recently honoured with the Women Changing the World Award in London for Cultural Diversity and Inclusion, Yvonne has over 25 years of experience in the recruitment industry.

Yvonne is passionate about diversity hiring and inclusion in the workplace and advocates for the use of AI to overcome technological barriers in job.

Yvonne works tirelessly to shift leader mindsets and transform hiring practices to build more diverse, inclusive and thriving workplaces.

Cherry Ward (01:58)

Welcome to the business revolution, Yvonne. Please start by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Glow Up Careers and your

Yvonne Kelly (02:03)

Thank you. Really excited to be here and love what you do and yeah, love exploring more about ESG. So thank you for hosting me today.

Yvonne Kelly (02:19)

So my background has been that I came to Australia as a migrant, but a very privileged one from Ireland a number of years ago, and then got into the recruitment industry and worked in that industry for most of my career to date. And about six years ago, I noticed that with the rise in technology and AI, that there were a lot of people that were really struggling to be visible in their job search and really understand how to navigate AI and technology in that job search. A chance meeting with a refugee at an event that I was at really kind of was a catalyst to bring me into the social impact work that we do at Glow Up today. And we launched five years ago on World Refugee Day.

And today we’re talking about the S in ESG, so the social impact. At Globe, we launched just before COVID and we ended up doing a lot of social impact very quickly. And we didn’t really know around social enterprise and social impact and the importance of it, until we had delivered a lot of it. And then somebody said to me, it sounds like you guys are a social enterprise. And I said, well, yeah, let’s look into what that is. And really, a social enterprise is an organisation that is a for-profit business. We call it a for-profit business with a for-purpose heart. So that a percentage of the profit goes back into impact and purposeful work.

And so, yeah, recently I’ve been a judge in some social impact awards within the recruitment industry. And it’s been really interesting to see how organisations are really kind of embracing that S in ESG. And, you know, for me, it’s all about looking at that long term sustainable change. And I didn’t realise that as a recruiter and with the skill set and strengths that I have, that and we could make such an impact in a very short space of time. And it’s really amazing to see organisations that embrace ESG and the social and the S part of that, as to what they can do in relation to making really positive change, both in the communities that they serve and in the world in general.

Alan Taylor (04:40)

That is wonderful. And then could you share some more specific examples of how Glow Up Careers is helping businesses embrace the social aspect of ESG and how your work goes beyond the traditional recruitment to create that social impact?

Yvonne Kelly (04:58)

We started off with that coaching aspect in relation to assisting. So that one refugee that I coached then expanded. We’ve now over five years supported over 1 ,600 refugees and migrants through coaching. And we have a community of over 200 volunteers that we’ve accredited that help us deliver that. So that’s been really exciting. We entered into the refugee and migrant space not knowing a lot about how that works and what we realised that there was quite a big gap between the kind of .org so that the charities and not-for -profits in that space and the corporates, so kind of the dot-coms.

So we’ve really set out to bridge that gap of kind of understanding of both sides. So really our yeah our kind of work is dual purpose. We have worked with a lot of community partners in that space to support and complement the amazing employment programs that they offer and really to look at where the gaps are and where the challenges are. And what we’ve found through the individuals we’ve supported is that most of the barriers to employment for those from all different diverse backgrounds is a lot to do with the recruitment and hiring processes. A lot of the issues actually sit with the employers. So what we’ve been now shifting our focus is how can we work with employers to reduce those barriers to entry?

And everyone knows the benefit of diversity and inclusion in a business. What we’re now trying to do is move that to action. So there has been a focus in Australia with WGEA, with gender equality, but it’s actually looking at then the intersectionality. There’s women who are refugees, women with disabilities, women who are neurodiverse. How can organisations be more proactive? And that’s an area that we’re helping them in.

Mik Aidt (06:51)

Can you share with us maybe some concrete examples, some initiatives where there’s been some programs that really made a difference?

Yvonne Kelly (06:57)

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the big programs we worked on was supporting all of the Afghan evacuees. So after the fall of Kabul, Australia welcomed a large number of Afghan evacuees that came to Australia. Many of these Afghan evacuees were very highly skilled. So we had doctors and lawyers and dentists and really qualified individuals. So we partnered with them. We’ve had a very collaborative approach and we found that collaborating with other not-for-profits and community partners in this space has been a real benefit.

So we partnered with the charity. We actually trained 20 of their staff to be career coaches and then they delivered our coaching programs to over 650 Afghan evacuees. So that was a really exciting project. Another project which is very close to my heart is the first refugee that I coached. His name is Arash. His dream career is to work with Australia UNHCR and become the first High Commissioner of the UN. About probably 18 months after the coaching that we did together, Arash actually landed a job in Copenhagen with the UNHCR and last year reached out to collaborate on a project working with refugees in Africa. So we ran a program across five African countries supporting youth refugees with leadership skill development, and then went to Africa and ran a conference in Kenya and Arash got to come to that as well. So it was a very full circle moment on that project.

So, yeah, we’ve run a number. We worked on a project in Western Sydney with Refugee Kids where we did one on one coaching with the school kids. And then we actually brought them to organisations like Google and Microsoft and did an immersive experience where we got their staff involved.

So a lot of it’s been trying to connect, find moments of connection for employees and employers to understand and meet people from diverse backgrounds and really to be able to see the potential that they bring.

Alan Taylor (09:10)

That’s fantastic. And from what I’m hearing there, you’re not only just providing solutions, you’re helping them help other people in there, in the same situation along the way. So this becomes a self supporting mechanism. That is super cool.

Yvonne Kelly (09:25)

It’s very much for us about empowering, you know, making sure that that kind of sustainability of empowering both community leaders and people with lived experience. So we’ve got a very diverse community of coaches that do our volunteering and undertake that work. Yeah, so that kind of long lasting impact is super important for us. And then I do a lot of advocacy work as well. So a lot of public speaking.

I speak alongside a number of refugees who I share my privileged migrant story and they share their very harrowing stories. And then we talk to a lot of employers about what action both as an individual you can take and as an organisation. And I think there’s just a lack of awareness about what can I do, what as a person can I do to make a change, whether that be for environmental or any other world problems.

Alan Taylor (10:22)

So building on that then, how does Glow Up Careers actually address those issues of equality or equity and belonging in the workplace?

Yvonne Kelly (10:30)

Yeah, so as I said, through our coaching, we uncovered a lot of barriers and challenges that individuals are finding. And one of them was that they that visibility. So we actually were looking for a job boards that we could refer individual job seekers to that was fully inclusive, that kind of covered all areas of diversity inclusion. And we just couldn’t find them.

There’s some amazing job boards that are out there for different specific areas, but we just couldn’t find one that was generalist. So we spoke to a number of organisations and then one of the large job boards, we approached them and they said, hey, why don’t we collaborate together and create a diversity job board? So we’ve launched that.

We’ve got some large employers subscribing and they are committing to ensuring that all of their jobs are open and welcome to diverse employees. So that’s really the first step. And then we’re working very closely with them to address where those barriers and challenges lie internally. So that’s been really exciting. We’ve been able to onboard. We’ve got over a million candidates on the job board. And then we’ve got people that can identify with a number of diversity badges on there. And then employers can and yeah, can identify roles that they want to specifically reach out and connect and share with diverse talent.

Mik Aidt (11:56)

So, Yvonne, you talked in the beginning about AI and how that can help. And I think when we talk about workforces, a lot of people see AI more like a threat than something that can help. So, can you explain to us how you’re working with AI?

Yvonne Kelly (12:10)

So our job board is AI driven and it takes the skills first approach. So there’s a real move around employers now to move to, rather than looking just at qualifications and experience to look at skills and also look at what that potential skill set. A lot of our all of our coaching programs work on the parameters of looking at strengths, values and passions and really connecting people with meaningful work.

And so the AI on our job board actually matches the skill sets required for a job so that the employer is looking for a particular role with the skill sets from the individual. It also takes the diversity into account as well. So if an employer is open to welcoming a refugee and we have a refugee that’s identified with a refugee badge, it will match those badges together with the AI. It also gives our candidates a match score to that job ad. So it will say you’ve got a 98% match with this role and encourage them to apply. So it means that people can look at roles that maybe they haven’t considered before. So the AI will present other opportunities that could be suitable for this skill set that they, yeah, that they were unaware of.

Alan Taylor (13:26)

That is so cool because the idea of that skill set view rather than what what boxes you’ve ticked is just a far more powerful method when we actually managed to leverage it. So that sounds fantastic.

Yvonne Kelly (13:38)

Yeah, and there was an article in the FIN Review recently, Culture Amp and Canva and some other large organisations are using this skills first approach and they’ve seen a significant increase in diversity hiring just by taking that approach because it opens it up to a lot more people to apply.

Cherry Ward (13:56)

Yvonne. If I was a chief people officer for an organisation and I wanted to make a difference and start to think about more diverse hiring, how would you work with an organisation to take the first steps?

Yvonne Kelly (14:11)

So one of the things that we find that works really well is we have a lot of senior people and talent leaders that are volunteers with us. So they undertake the accreditation and they actually get to have a lived experience of coaching a refugee or migrant. And so what I find is that that kind of lived experience, whether it be through actually coaching or being in a position to meet somebody from a diverse background and hear their story.

So we do a lot of speaking engagements to organisations to raise awareness, whether that be on World Refugee Day or other days that are celebrated, really understanding what the challenges are from an employment perspective.

And I think it’s just that awareness is it really plants a seed of, what can I do as an individual, as a people leader? But what can I also do as an organisation? And so some of the organisations we’re working at now, the people leaders are starting to think. If we have a team of volunteers that are undertaking this coaching, well, maybe then we can create a CSR initiative that connects those individuals into a talent pipeline to come into the business.

Also, one of our clients has reached out and said, there’s a local mosque right near our head office. We’d love to be able to liaise with that community and look at ways that we can support them in their careers. And that’s where that coaching. So there’s lots of different ways. But what we always say is to look at that long term, you look at the values of the organisation and their mission and what they’re trying to accomplish. Look at the customer base. Who are they serving as their customers? And then look at how can it fit in with their ESG goals? And there’s lots of, you know, lasting initiatives that can make a huge impact, that they can look at working with communities.

And sometimes it’s also a big part of this is identifying the diversity ambassadors within the organisation. And when they come to light, you can really empower and drive that. So whether that be through having groups that support disability or support refugees. A lot of organisations do that in different ways. I think the easiest thing is to look at what your current setup and processes are, how can you gain traction and engagement within and then look at kind of the long term growth of that project or idea.

Cherry Ward (16:41)

Yvonne. I love that lived experience, creating that connection. Because often, I’ve delivered a lot of diversity and equity and inclusion initiatives, and often people don’t have that personal connection. And going, okay, well, why are we delivering this particular initiative? So think having that coaching and having that connection, well, there’s a human on the other side. Now I understand the experiences that they’re sharing. So I think that’s such a great first step for organisations even before looking at their structures and processes, which is where I probably would have gone initially. Let’s have a look at their policies and processes and how can we change them?

Yvonne Kelly (17:23)

Yeah, and there has been a number of research that’s been done recently around, you know, what initiatives have really kind of had a good positive outcome. I saw another piece of research which was around what type of activities help with kind of mental health and actually change the mental health. And the highest that was a UK study, the highest result was from volunteering that actually made the biggest shift in mental health positive mental health. Yeah, it’s definitely looking at that end goal of, you know, what can we achieve? As I said, looking at that alignment with values and mission of the organisation, how are we going to get there?

But I think the biggest thing is identifying the ambassadors and being able to give them a voice. A lot of people, a lot of employees will have lived experience that they may never have. And we see that a lot through the speaking engagements that these voices emerge that they’ve never spoken off about.

One lady came up to us recently at an event and said, wow, my parents came here from Vietnam as refugees. And it’s lovely to be able to talk openly about that. And then it’s how can you harness that passion as ambassadors within, as you know, with the advocacy work that all of you do and in that ESG space that you’ve got to have those supporters and people that really believe and understand the reasons for this happening.

And, you know, there’s a lot around engaging boards and executive level to be on board. And, you know, with the G component around the governance, for example, with gender equality, having structures like with G reporting and, you know, compliance structures in place that actually now are becoming a requirement is definitely helpful.

And it’s now looking at kind of how can we do that in a more impactful way rather than just, as I mentioned before, looking at gender, looking at that intersectionality of how can we actually really get deeper and support all different types of people from different backgrounds. And you’ll find that there’ll be ambassadors. I’ve this lovely lady who was super enthusiastic about disability because she has a sister who has a disability and different people will have different diverse backgrounds and areas. Neurodiversity is a really growing area now with a lot of adult diagnosis and ADHD. And yeah, it’s just really acknowledging that your customer base and your employee base is going to have a lot of different people. And it is hard to really, you know, I suppose, have a policy or procedure that supports each of them. But yeah, how can we work towards being much more kind of broadly inclusive?

Cherry Ward (20:05)

Yvonne, we have a segment called rapid fire tip for action, which is essentially an opportunity for you to provide actionable insights to our listeners to inspire them and then for them to take action as well. So my question to you is what’s one thing everyone can do right now to contribute to a better world?

Yvonne Kelly (20:25)

So I think one thing that you can do is meet someone who’s different to you. So reach out and try and find whether an organisation or an individual or someone who has a different background to you and just sit and have a conversation or a coffee with them.

Mik Aidt (20:40)

And what’s one small step that any business could take to get started with that journey towards a more inclusive supplier relationship?

Yvonne Kelly (20:48)

One is definitely to look to social enterprise, because if you engage a social enterprise as a supplier, the knock on social impact of that is really helpful.

Cherry Ward (20:59)

Thank you, Yvonne, for taking the time to share your insights with us. And one final question, where can listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you’re doing?

Yvonne Kelly (21:07)

glowupcareers.com and we’re on LinkedIn as well. And on LinkedIn, I’m under Yvonne Kelly.

Mik Aidt (21:14)

And that’ll be a wrap for today’s episode of The Business Revolution.

Alan Taylor (21:18)

We hope you enjoyed diving deep into the world of business and sustainability with us.

Cherry Ward (21:24)

Remember, the revolution doesn’t end here. It’s up to each and every one of us to take the knowledge and inspiration from today’s episode and turn it into action.

Mik Aidt (21:33)

Whether it’s implementing sustainable practices in your own business or advocating for change in your community, every single step counts towards building a better and more equitable future.

Alan Taylor (21:45)

So don’t forget to visit our website at businessrevolution.earth for more resources, past episodes and ways to get involved.

Cherry Ward (21:54)

If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, make sure to subscribe, rate us and review us on your favourite podcast platform. We are The Business Revolution. Your feedback will help us to reach more listeners and amplify our impact.

Mik Aidt (22:11)

And again, thank you for joining us on this journey of transformation. Together we can revolutionise the way we do business and create a world that’s sustainable for generations to come.

Alan Taylor (22:22)

Stay tuned for insights, inspiration and actionable steps to help reshape the way we all do business for a better tomorrow.

Cherry Ward (22:29)

Until next time, keep innovating, keep inspiring and keep pushing for positive change for a brighter tomorrow. This is Cherry.

Mik (22:38)

Mik…

Alan Taylor (22:39)

And Alan signing off. And don’t forget, the business revolution starts with you.