Diversity at BAE Systems Australia

Heaps of variety in terms of gender throughout the company, but I work in engineering which is mostly male.

Promote women in engineering. Have their own Reconciliation Action Plan. Trying to get more indigenous people into the company

The company is very diverse and accommodating

We have reconciliation day and incorporate welcome to country at every meeting

As BAE is a defence and engineering company it is quite a male dominated area. As a young female, I have felt very welcomed and treated fairly by all people in the company. I have found there are no issues with discrimination in my area, and the benefits (e.g. parental leave) are very good for both men and woman.

We have a DE&I team who are responsible for implementing employee resource groups. BAE Systems thoroughly believe in DE&I and is implemented into everything we do. We have a goal to reach 26% female representation by 2026 and 30% by 2030. We have a strong focus on supporting indigenous Australia's through RAP and initiatives with local communities we also focus attention to disability and neurodiversity, culture and nationality, sexual and gender diversity as well as veterans as we have quite a few in our business.

BAE has a commitment to opening the doors for more female engineers which I really appreciate and found very beneficial. They also have a trackers program to be open to more indigenous people that may wish to apply and assist them with thriving in the business and providing assistance, where needed, for any cultural-related issues they may experience. In terms of promotion, child care, maternity leave - I can't speak to that as it doesn't apply to me.

Very supportive and inclusive

There have been diversity resource groups and community groups set up. I'm probably not the best to comment on the effectiveness of this as, but from an outside look, I'm glad to see the company committing to promoting diversity and inclusion.

The company has a strong focus on diversity and are often making new ways to increase the number of women being hired and increasing the range of diversity of employees as well.

Very high Male-Female ratio in our office, although there appears to be more young women engineers being recruited. Very ethnically diverse. No LGBTIQA+ people that I am aware of. I do not believe that members of LGBTIQA+ would be respected socially as much as others in our workplace, based on workplace chit-chat and attitudes. I am not across recruitment, retention, promotion, childcare, maternity leave, etc., so cannot make comment.

Being a defence company, it is sometimes be difficult to achieve ethnic diversity. However, I have seen the company trying to push for better recruitment with gender diversity.

Engineering company and thus is very male dominated, there are a couple of women in high level leadership roles but most women you see are graduates There is an employee resource group for the LGBTIQA+ community however they have only just formed and thus haven't actually done anything. I only know of 1 person who is openly queer (gay) at work. I believe they have stated some goals for next year is getting more resources out there including doing training on pronouns and awareness stuff I believe the company has both maternity and paternity leave.

Good education from top and on socials, hard to navigate how to access the support or how to have those conversations. As a new employee, apart from informing my line manager. There hasn't been need or opportunity to talk about diversity, so I haven't really had the space/ need to state certain aspects of my identity. For context I am a queer women, in a same sex relationship. I also am neurodiversity as I have ADHD. This being said it hasn't neither a positive and negative experience. In a way the office culture doesn't outline the need for working relationships to be based on identity. Seeing limited need for conversations surrounding the topic.

There is a lot of diversity in the community which is great to see, especially for a defence company. Do not really know much more on this topic for BAE Systems.

I don't have much oversight here. I think in general, teams are supportive regardless of who you are.

They don't seem to care very much, especially compared to my previous workplaces

Diversity is a really hard subject to fully understand the scope of, especially within the defence industry. There are underlying issues on the premise of defence that make many people in my generation want nothing to do with it. Conflicts and war are something many do not want to encourage, support, work for, or associate with. Many of my friends workplaces have advertised protests and petitions to stop the contract for the AUKUS Subs and the production of weapons in general. The military is not very respected within my generation. For many, the Australian Army jumps into wars that they are not required for and these operations are considered to be fueled by racism and dehumanisation of opposing countries and their civilians. The same applied to the American Army through their operations within the middle east and the war crimes committed on civilians. Defence is a necessary part of national security - but I think there are growing concerns about what it is being used for. I have mentioned the above to express the issues with diversity within people who are gaining more and more awareness of things around them and their personal identities. Indigenous representation will be hard to capture as the oppression and war pressed on their communities for generations is something they will not want to contribute to. There is correlation to Australia's occupation and genocide of the indigenous people to the wars we fight overseas. Furthermore members of LGBTIQA+ who are extremely aware of their personal identities will often also have heightened awareness of these global conflicts and the reasons behind them. This is an assumption, but those that question their gender/sexual identity will think di_erently to those who do not and share more compassion for others who are oppressed for who they are, as they have felt that as well. I cannot speak much for female representation in defence, but I understand the stereotype of war being such a male dominated concept that it can be a challenge for them. It is great that BAE are looking to raise equality within the SLT and it would be extremely empowering to see other non males doing what males have dominated before. Minorities are only lead to believe what they see before them, and their representation in SLT positions is the most important part to increasing diversity within the workplace. Quantifying diversity may not also be the solution either, especially when gender equality has no non-binary representation. These issue is much larger than BAE, but trying and having goals is the best step forward. I know the outlook I hold may be di_erent to a lot of people in my age bracket, but I am surrounded by mindful queer people outside of work and love to express this outlook whenever I can because I know it will gain in popularity in years to come. This is something I am very passionate about and could easily speak more on if there is anything of value I can provide outside of this survey.