Main Roads Western Australia - Internal communications
Discover Main Roads Western Australia's internal communications strategy for promoting workplace cultural diversity and inclusion in transport organisations.
Summary
Main Roads Western Australia is a statutory authority of the Government of Western Australia.
About Main Roads WA
Their role is to plan, build, maintain and operate WA’s State Road Network and they are one of the most geographically dispersed road agencies in the world, responsible for nearly 18,700 kilometers of road spread over 2.5 million square kilometers.
Main Roads employs approximately 1200 staff, of which 14% are people born in countries which are not mainly English speaking *.
Its main office is located in East Perth, WA.
Internal communications team
The Main Roads Internal Communications team manage corporate messaging on our intranet to ensure staff are engaged and informed about the agency’s activities and wider transport issues. Some of the ways we utilise this facility to raise awareness and promote the benefits of a culturally diverse workforce include:
- Generating cultural competency and awareness. This might include sharing articles that have a focus on a particular cultural group or significant cultural practice. Recently, this included an interview with Muslim employees on ‘What is Ramadan?’. It may also include promoting available facilities, such as our multi-faith prayer room.
- Encouraging employees to list other languages on their Intranet profiles to enable assistance should someone require help translating.
- Sharing our Diversity Calendar that lists dates and events of significance for staff across the organisation. These dates are highlighted and awareness raised through internal news stories, information sessions by guest speakers and participation in community events and projects.
- Supporting employees undertake equal employment opportunity training, which is compulsory for new starters. Employees also have access to Diverse WA, a cultural competency online training package. In addition, information on unconscious bias and inclusion in the workplace is readily available on our intranet page.
- Promoting the Main Roads Harmony Week Cookbook, created through contributions from employees on their favourite recipes to celebrate the multiculturalism of Main Roads and the backgrounds of employees from around the world.
- Sharing information on workplace initiatives. For example, during Harmony Week, to celebrate those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, we produced a video that featured employees delivering a greeting in some of the many different languages spoken across the organisation.
More information
More information is available at: https://www.mainroads.wa.gov.au/
* Organisational profile information from the 2021 Annual Report.
