Research: The Upsides of Disclosing Your Religion, Sexual Orientation, or Parental Status at Work

Many important aspects of your identity are not immediately visible to those around you. When it comes to your religion, sexual orientation, or parental status, how should you approach the decision of whether — and how — to disclose your identity to your colleagues? In this piece, the authors discuss the potential benefits of revealing your most authentic self in the workplace, as well as some of the ways in which certain organizations can be less supportive of these kinds of disclosures. Ultimately, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions: Each employee must make their own determination as to whether the advantages of disclosing their various identities outweigh the risks in their specific environment

Food Security: The What, How, Why and Where to of Food Security in NSW. Discussion Paper

This Discussion Paper considers food security in the context of food supply and access systems, and articulates how it links with food consumption patterns, weight and risk of chronic disease, in order to provide direction for research, policy and programs. The paper provides an overview of what is meant by the term ‘food security’, a summary of studies describing patterns of food insecurity in Australia, and strategies for promoting food security, with examples of programs. This synthesis also discusses the implications for research and programs in NSW. Importantly, it also seeks to clarify where there are or might be both common and divergent approaches to addressing food security and obesity and chronic disease prevention. Whilst there are known global and national influences on food security, this document mainly focuses on community, household and individual level food security

Examining Why and for Whom Reflection Diversity Training Works

This research introduces a novel approach to diversity training by theoretically developing and empirically testing a model that considers a new training exercise aimed at improving proximal and distal pro-diversity outcomes. This new training exercise, reflection, is proposed to be effective at increasing pro-diversity attitudes and behaviors due to the promotion of one\u27s internal motivations to respond without prejudice. Further, we test a critical trainee characteristic, social dominance orientation (SDO), as a boundary condition of our proposed effects. Results from an online experiment with two time points indicate that reflection can be an effective diversity training exercise and leads to better pro-diversity attitudes and behaviors through one\u27s internal motivation to respond without prejudice. Social dominance orientation moderated these indirect effects, such that reflection was more effective for those high in SDO, counter to expectations. Implications of this research and future directions are discussed

Helping or Hurting?: Understanding Women’s Perceptions of Male Allies

In the past decade, organizational scholars have begun to explore the role of allies in mitigating workplace discrimination toward women and members of minority groups. However, this nascent literature has, to this point, failed to consider the perspective of targets of ally behavior. That is, we do not yet know how targets of discrimination experience others’ intervention or advocacy. To begin to understand these issues, we examine target perceptions of allyship through a qualitative critical incident approach, asking women to describe experiences in which a man has effectively and ineffectively acted as an ally to them in the workplace. Our findings from surveying 100 women provide new insights regarding who engages in ally behaviors, what behaviors these allies enact, when and where the behaviors take place, and why participants believed their male ally engaged in this behavior

Healthy Workplace Activities: At a Glance

This four page brochure provides practical suggestions for physical activity and healthy eating activities that can be easily implemented in your workplace to promote a healthy lifestyle for your employees

How prior knowledge of LGB identities alters the effects of workplace disclosure

© 2017 Elsevier Inc. Decisions to reveal one\u27s sexual orientation are assumed to be a volitional choice. Prior research has shown, however, that people often learn about the lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) identities of others through indirect means, such as gossip and stereotypical cues (Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999; Colgan, Creegan, McKearney, & Wright, 2007). We conduct two studies to determine the effects of these forms of prior identity-related knowledge on disclosure outcomes. First, a pre-test of study assumptions demonstrates that recipients of minority sexual orientation disclosures often have prior knowledge of those identities. Second, a survey study examining the target\u27s perspective finds that LGB people often suspect when others have prior knowledge of their identities, and this expected prior knowledge moderates the relationship between identity-management and subsequent experiences of discrimination. Lastly, a lab experiment manipulating the level of prior identity-related knowledge establishes that this information directly influences interpersonal workplace outcomes of disclosures through perceptions of awkwardness but not through liking. Together, these studies demonstrate support for our model of prior identity-related knowledge and highlight the importance of examining both prior identity-related knowledge as well as identity management strategies in predicting LGB workplace experiences

Healthy Workplace Guide: Ten Steps to Implementing A Workplace Health Program

To assist businesses to improve the health of their employees, the Heart Foundation, Cancer Council NSW and Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity Research Group (PANORG) from the School of Public Health at The University of Sydney, collaborated to develop this practical ten step guide. The guide provides easy to follow steps on creating a workplace that supports employees in leading healthy lifestyles, including how to get started, construct, implement and evaluate a workplace health program