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Australian Unity is an Australian mutual company founded in 1840. They provide a range of services, including insurance, aged care, and banking, focusing on supporting the ‘Real Wellbeing’ of Australians. The company’s key values are to be ‘bold’, ‘warm’ and ‘honest’, as they strive to ‘welcome difference’, ‘showcase…care and understanding for others’ and ‘do the right thing’ (Australian Unity, 2025). These show that inclusivity and diversity are important for the company, and that just as they promote their clients’ wellbeing, they seek to support the wellbeing of their staff.

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Australian Unity. (2025). Careers at Australian Unity. Retrieved 17th September 2025 from https://www.australianunity.com.au/careers

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A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of people united by a common interest or goal. Through mutual engagement, they develop a shared repertoire of resources, practices, and beliefs that shape their relationships and identities (Eckert, 2000). Newcomers join through Legitimate Peripheral Participation, learning through access and viewing mistakes as growth opportunities (Wenger, 1998).

The policy defines building a workplace free of discrimination, with equal opportunity and respect as the company’s joint enterprise. Guided by the vision “Real Wellbeing starts here,” calls on employees to work toward this goal. Specific terms such as “Welcoming Difference,” “Whole Self,” “Protected Attributes” serve as shared language and internal jargon, which signal membership and shared understanding within the community. Moreover, it outlines the behaviours expected of members, “merit-based selection,” “monitoring pay parity,” “reporting incidents,” translates invisible values into concrete practices, shaping the community’s unique cultural patterns. Although the policy includes disciplinary measures, the core focus is on prevention not punishment. Employees can engage in difficult conversations about diversity, without fear of being excluded or ignored, thereby fostering deeper learning and full cultural integration.

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Rapport management (Spencer-Oatey, 2008) refers to people’s perception of harmony or smoothness in interpersonal relationships and is shaped by three key factors: face sensitivity, interaction goals, and social rights and obligations. In workplace settings, official documents and policies are always value-laden to promote rapport with maintaining specific institutional control (Fletcher, 2017).

The Welcoming Difference Policy shows this balance by carefully protecting employee dignity while also reinforcing organizational authority. The phrases such as “bring your whole self to work” and ““everyone has something unique to offer”” protects a positive face, making employees feel valued regardless of background. Besides, the policy strongly emphasises obligation, repeating “you must not discriminate” and requiring “objective reasoning” to ensure fairness but also control behaviour. This reflects rapport management in the workplace, where harmony is promoted alongside compliance. Additionally, by recognising diversity across “geographical location” and “educational background”, Australian Unity positions itself as progressive to enhance its brand image. However, the monitoring role of the People & Culture team and warnings of its disciplinary action suggest the company power is still centralized and rapport remains top-down under surveillance.

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Positioning theory is a framework that explains how people negotiate identities and roles in communications. Positions are not fixed but dynamic, determined through the circumstances and context of the interaction, and each position carries rights and duties (Harré, 2012). Debray & Spencer-Oatey further studied the framework and explained how positioning operates across power dynamics, storyline and cultural norms (Debray & Spencer-Oatey, 2019).

In this text, Australian unity positions themselves as the authority and rule-setter. Its duties are creating policies and allocating responsibilities. The managers are positioned as the assignment agents, their duty is to supervise the workplace culture that the company aims for and implement the inclusive corporate culture into daily management strategies. The employees are positioned as the protected groups and accountable actors to follow policy rules and practice inclusive behaviour. For power dynamics, Australian unity empowered themselves as the policy maker and allocation, and also uphold the rights to consequences of violation. Managers are empowered as both enforcers (guardians of the policy) guardian and protectors , while employees are subject to evaluation as they have responsibility to sustain the policy.

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Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2025). Australia’s population by country of birth. Retrieved 19th September, 2025 from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/australias-population-country-birth/jun-2024

Australian Unity. (2025). Careers at Australian Unity. Retrieved 17th September 2025 from https://www.australianunity.com.au/careers

Davis, P. J., Frolova, Y., & Callahan, W. (2016). Workplace diversity management in Australia: What do managers think and what are organisations doing? Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 35(2), 81–98. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-03-2015-0020

Fletcher, J. (2017). Rapport Management. In B. Vine (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace (pp. 77–88). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315690001-8/rapport-management-jeannie-fletcher

Glassdoor. (2025). Australian Unity Reviews. Retrieved 17th September, 2025 from https://www.glassdoor.com.au/Reviews/Australian-Unity-Reviews-E317912.htm

Harré, R. (2012). Positioning theory: Moral dimensions of social-cultural psychology. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology. Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195396430.013.0010

Spencer-Oatey, H. (2008). Culturally Speaking Second Edition Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Syed, J., & Kramar, R. (2009). What is the Australian model for managing cultural diversity? Personnel Review, 39(1), 96–115. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483481011007887

Eckert, P. (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Blackwell.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Cambridge University Press.

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This analysis reveals the strategies employed by Australian Unity to implement their Welcoming Difference policy. While the policy reflects their positive intentions to foster an inclusive workplace, such policies may not necessarily result in rapid change. A brief examination of anonymous reviews by (ostensibly) current and former employees on glassdoor.com.au show a mixture of opinions on the company’s workplace culture (Glassdoor, 2025). While these are far from the most reliable source of data, they indicate that an objective investigation of this policy’s effectiveness through non-self reporting measures, such as observation of the company’s internal workplace practices, would be worthwhile. However, overall, policies such as these show that steps are being taken to make workplaces more inclusive spaces, for the benefit of employees, clients and companies as a whole.

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The text we will analyse in this poster is Australian Unity's ‘Welcoming Difference Policy’, published in 2023. The policy describes how the company aims to foster a ‘discrimination-free, equal opportunity and respectful workplace’ (p.1). It outlines the roles and responsibilities of employees, including not discriminating, being aware of potential biases in decision-making, and reporting incidents. It also notes that breaching the policy may result in disciplinary action.

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Diversity and marginalisation in Australia

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Diversity and marginalisation in Australia

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Australian society is highly diverse, with 31.5% of the population born outside of the country as of June 2024 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2025). Many today recognise Australia’s diversity and multiculturalism as a strength. However, the nation’s past and present are marked by marginalisation and discrimination, seen in the oppression of Indigenous Australians following European arrival in 1788, the ‘White Australia’ policy of the mid-20th century, and lasting misconceptions about cultural and linguistic diversity (Syed & Kramar, 2009).

Despite the implementation of anti-discrimination legislation and diversity management policies in recent decades, Syed and Kramar (2009) contend that these have been inadequate. As an example, in their 2016 study of Australian managers’ perceptions of workplace diversity management, Davis et al. found that workplace diversity continued to be underappreciated and poorly understood.

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This text was chosen to investigate whether progress has been made in the past fifteen years, as it provides insights into the discourse surrounding diversity management in Australia today. By analysing the policy’s communicative strategies, through the theoretical concepts of communities of practice, rapport management and positioning theory, we will consider how new members are acculturated into this workplace community - how they are addressed, how rapport is built and how employees and the company are positioned.

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Do policies like this really change workplace culture, or do they mainly manage rapport at a surface level?

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How can strategies like positioning and rapport management work both positively and negatively in workplace context? How does this example compare with the incident described in Debray & Spencer-Oatey (2019)?

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Please include your question responses and feedback on the presentation here below :) Thank you!

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I think that policies like this can help set a clear standard, but they don’t automatically change workplace culture. They often work more on the surface, showing the company is progressive and values respect. Real culture change depends on how leaders and employees actually live these values day to day. If it stays as ‘words on paper,’ it just manages rapport to look good, but if backed by real actions, it can genuinely shift the workplace culture.

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Positioning and rapport management can build trust, inclusivity, and belonging when done well, making employees feel valued and safe. But they can also feel top-down or controlling if the focus is only on compliance and discipline. In the Debray & Spencer-Oatey (2019) case, the issue came from tension between protecting dignity and enforcing authority. Similarly, policies like Australian Unity’s can support harmony but also risk creating a sense of surveillance if not balanced carefully.

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Honestly, I think this is a really thoughtful question. From my perspective, such policies can contribute to positive cultural change if they are genuinely implemented and supported by management. But often they stay at the surface level, functioning more as symbolic actions than as real structural change. I like how this point pushes us to consider the difference between “symbolic action” and “practical implementation.”

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I really liked the link you made to Debray & Spencer-Oatey (2019). Positioning and rapport management strategies can be positive when they build respect and belonging. But they can also work negatively if they reinforce stereotypes or exclude certain voices. This connects well with Debray & Spencer-Oatey’s point about “misalignment” in intercultural teams, where intentions don’t always match how others interpret behaviors. I think your example captures this tension really well.

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I think these policies provide shared language and norms that may foster inclusion over time, buy in the short term, they often manage surface-level harmony and compliance, emphasizing monitoring and discipline rather than deeply transforming workplace culture

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I think positioning and rapport management can work both positively and negatively. Positively, they clarify roles, protect dignity, and encourage fairness, making employees feel respected and included. Negatively, they may reinforce top-down authority, where harmony feels controlled rather than genuine. In this case, Australian Unity’s policy highlights inclusion but still relies on monitoring and disciplinary warnings, compared with Debray & Spencer-Oatey, both show that while strategies aim to promote harmony, they can also reproduce unequal power relations and limit deeper cultural change

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Policies like Australian Unity’s Welcoming Difference can serve as an important symbolic signal of inclusivity, but their real impact depends on how deeply they are enacted in daily workplace practices. On one hand, policies can indeed change workplace culture if they are embedded in organizational routines, such as recruitment, evaluation, and communication norms—because these institutionalize diversity values. However, there is also a risk that such policies remain performative, managing rapport only at a surface level to present a progressive corporate image. In practice, the challenge is whether employees experience these policies as genuine empowerment or as compliance-driven obligations.

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Positioning and rapport management can work positively when they help employees feel respected, included, and able to bring their whole self to work. For example, emphasizing face and social rights may foster trust and psychological safety. Negatively, however, these same strategies can reinforce hierarchical power if managers use rapport language while still exercising top-down surveillance and disciplinary control, leaving employees little real agency. This tension mirrors Debray & Spencer-Oatey (2019), where rapport management was shown to reduce conflict in multicultural teams but also risked silencing minority voices when harmony was prioritized over authentic participation. Similarly, Australian Unity’s policy balances inclusivity with compliance, meaning it may simultaneously empower and constrain employees.