Impact Community Services is a not-for-profit organisation, based in Bundaberg, Queensland, providing a range of services to support those experiencing disadvantage, poverty, or exclusion from community, employment and social networks. Its programs are structured around three key pillars, with the “Prosper” pillar focusing on providing supported employment, often through its social enterprise, New Image Laundry.

New Image Laundry provides commercial and domestic laundry services to the Bundaberg and Wide Bay-Burnett region, including washing, drying, folding and ironing. As a social enterprise, it not only offers high-quality laundry services but also creates supported employment opportunities for vulnerable community members and reinvests all profits back into the community. CQUniversity’s Office of Social Innovation had the opportunity to speak with Impact’s Managing Director, Tanya O’Shea, and New Image Laundry Manager, Brendan Laws, to explore how the organisation has achieved success in providing meaningful employment for disadvantaged jobseekers, fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce.

Workforce Diversity at IMPACT

During our chat with Tanya and Brendan, they emphasised the strong workforce diversity throughout Impact Community Services and their social enterprise, New Image Laundry. Tanya explained the organisation attracts people with a diverse range of different backgrounds and characteristics.

It’s like a beautiful melting pot, whether it’s gender, whether it’s culture, it could be age. So, there’s all of these beautiful characteristics, I guess, that we attract within our workforce at Impact Community Services and also within our social enterprise.”

Tanya O’Shea, IMPACT Community Services

New Image’s Manager, Brendan echoed this sentiment, highlighting his highly diverse workforce at the laundry, which includes people with disability, people with mental health issues, long-term unemployed, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. “Staff come from all sorts of backgrounds, including the cultural, there’s mental health, we have long-term unemployment, people with disabilities.”, said Brendan.

Transitional Employment

New Image Laundry follows a transitional employment model, offering individuals supported entry-level roles that allow them to build their confidence and skills while preparing for fulltime employment in the broader community. Tanya emphasised the importance of this model, describing it like a stepping stone to open employment. She also highlighted the value in providing people a job, while they prepare to enter open employment. “It really is about stabilising circumstances, giving people real-life opportunities so that they can then transition into open employment. So, it’s a job, but it’s also about preparing people for work.”, Tanya said.

To facilitate this transition, New Image Laundry supports its staff by identifying the types of training they wish to pursue in order to progress their careers, whether through internal programs or external resources. “It’s about finding out what’s important to people, what sort of training they would like to do, whether that’s internally or externally.”, Tanya O’Shea said. Additionally, because New Image operates under Impact Community Services, employees ready to move on from supported roles often have the opportunity to transition into full-time, unsupported positions within the organisation. Tanya explained, “At Impact, we are all about attracting people to either stay with us if they would like to make a career here at Impact, or if they’re just using it to stabilise circumstances and transition into open employment.”, said Tanya.

Recruitment Through Internal Referrals

At New Image Laundry, internal referrals play a crucial role in identifying and hiring employees. Tanya explained that Impact Community Services actively refers individuals who are seeking employment through its various support services, creating clear pathways for those in need of support. “The prosper pillar is all about employment, so we have people actively looking for work within our organisation. We also have people who might be getting support through our support pillar”, Tanya explained.

Brendan added that focusing on internal referrals to recruit employees of New Image has been one of his best decisions as manager. “I think the best choice that I’ve made since working in the laundry is only looking at our internal referrals for employing staff. So, fulfilling the purpose of the laundry and giving people meaningful employment.”, Brendan revealed.

This model of recruitment allows New Image Laundry to reach individuals in need of supported employment, and ensures the social enterprise fulfills its purpose of providing meaningful employment to disadvantaged jobseekers.

Diversity Education During Onboarding

Tanya highlighted that as part of the profiling and onboarding process, education on diversity is incorporated, which also plays a crucial role in enhancing the workforce’s understanding and appreciation for diversity among its workforce.

“I truly believe that the education that we do in that front end when we’re onboarding people and doing that profiling is supporting them to broaden their understanding of appreciating difference in others.”, said Tanya.

This educational approach not only facilitates smoother integration into the team but also fosters an inclusive environment where diverse perspectives are valued and understood.

Encouraging Safe Conversations

Encouraging safe conversations among employees and managers at Impact and New Image was identified during our interview as a proactive, simple, yet highly effective strategy for fostering workforce diversity. Tanya explained, while it may seem straightforward, encouraging open, safe conversations is essential to building a culture which prioritises and values diversity.

“It sounds incredibly simple however if you really want to build a diverse workforce it’s about encouraging open conversations and really safe conversations.”, Tanya said. In order to facilitate these conversations, Tanya described having staff lead group conversations. During leadership meetings, one team members presents an article or topic related to diversity for discussion, which encourages interest in and excitement about workforce diversity within Impact and New Image.

“We get different staff members to lead conversations with all staff… we also lead them at our leadership meetings… someone brings an article, a journal, something of interest where they would like to explore a topic around diversity. We ask questions, we sit down and have those safe conversations. I think just getting that discussion going it just starts to pique people’s interest and get them more interested and excited about how diversity can add value.”, Tanya discussed.

Understanding Employment Barriers and Providing Support

During our interview with Brendan, he emphasised the additional support available to New Image employees through Impact services, which helps them overcome various barriers. He also highlighted how the stories shared by employees about their backgrounds often reveal eye-opening challenges which they have faced and overcome.

Brendan stated, “If they need that support, they can ask freely, they can express any concerns to us, and we will help them find that within the community or within impact itself. The guys, when they’re talking about their life or their background, it’s quite eye-opening, some of the challenges that they’ve had to overcome, or where they’ve come from and where they’re up to now.”

Brendan also shared his personal experience, as a parent of children with disabilities, and how that motivates him to provide the kind of support he would want for his own kids entering the workforce. He emphasised that he strives to reassure his staff that the barriers they face do not define their value as workers.

I try to make it very clear from very first contact with any of my potential staff members that regardless of their barriers, it’s not going to define them as a bad worker… So personally, I have two kids that are disabled, so I would like someone like myself to support my children when they’re entering the workforce.”

Brendan Laws, IMPACT Community Services

Unconscious Bias

Unconscious bias was identified as one of the barriers which Impact has had to overcome to effectively manage diversity within the organisation. “One of the biggest barriers that we face is the one that we may not even be aware of within ourselves and that’s the unconscious bias.”, Tanya revealed.

Tanya spoke about the fact that people may be unaware of their own unconscious bias, which can affect the way in which staff are recruited or placed in teams. “We all come with bias in some way and sometimes we think I’ve got this sorted, I understand what diversity is… but there’s always something within us, I guess there’s this bias that exists that we may not be aware of.”, said Tanya.

Tanya emphasised the importance of providing education around unconscious bias within the workforce and encouraging staff to personally reflect and increase their understanding of their own bias. “It is about educating around unconscious bias, it’s about encouraging people to do their own reflection, to do their own learning around unconscious bias and to build their own personal awareness around that. Organisationally it’s about how we put strategies in place to support people so that that’s not coming up when we’re recruiting, when we’re onboarding our people and when we’re creating teams.”, Tanya explained.

Differing Communication Styles

Brendan spoke about differing communication styles being his biggest challenge with regard to managing workforce diversity as New Image Laundry’s manager. “Biggest barrier for myself was communication style. Managing each individual personality with their community communication styles was a big challenge for myself.”, Brendan said.

Challenges Thinking and Opens Perspectives

Tanya emphasised the significant value that having a diverse workforce brings to Impact Community Services, highlighting that it challenges conventional thinking and fosters broader perspectives. Tanya elaborated, “Working within a really diverse and inclusive workplace, there are huge benefits… and getting that opportunity to work with people from a diversity of different cultures, with different worldviews, cognitively they’re different. It just provides a whole new lens and different ways of seeing the world. It just challenges our thinking a little bit more, and I think that provides genuine value within the broader workforce.”

Tanya’s experience underscores how highly diverse teams can enhance creativity and innovation within an organisation, along with enriching the work environment.

Stabilises Circumstances for Vulnerable Individuals

Tanya emphasised the significant role of supported employment in stabilizing individuals’ circumstances throughout our conversation. She recounted the story of a former employee who overcame a domestic violence situation, highlighting how her experience at New Image helped her regain confidence and transition into a management role in a local agricultural organisation.

Tanya explained, “I can remember one of our staff members… she was a survivor of domestic and family violence, was working here as one of our workers. Just day-to-day, coming to work, getting used to coming back to work after having removed herself from a controlling environment, re-engaging with people socially and building her confidence. Her confidence built into becoming a team leader here at New Image Laundry … and she went into one of our agriculture employers here in the local area and she became one of their team leaders, which we were incredibly excited about and were very supportive in supporting her to make that transition.”

This support exemplifies how New Image aids individuals in reclaiming their lives and achieving stability.

We also spoke with Kassara, a current employee with New Image Laundry, who also explained how her role has helped stabilise her circumstances and care for her son. “Working here means that I can provide for my seven-year-old son and also gives me the social interaction that I need.”, said Kassara.

Through paid employment and the opportunity to develop essential skills, New Image empowers disadvantaged individuals, helping them stabilise their lives and set the foundation for a more successful future.

• • • Supported employment stabilises circumstances for vulnerable individuals.

    • Encouraging safe conversations is a simple way to improve appreciation of diversity among employees.

    • Workforce diversity provides value by challenging thinking and opening perspectives.

    • Workforce diversity can be consciously fostered.