Inclusion is now operational, not optional
(Diversity, equity and inclusion) DE&I Policy Australia 2026 isn’t a slogan. In Australia it’s a mix of legal duties, public transparency, and day-to-day management choices that either lift performance or generate risk. If you don’t write DE&I into how you hire, pay, promote and run teams, you’ll spend that time later on disputes, turnover, and public questions you can’t answer. The smarter play is to make inclusion the default setting in your processes.
The legal baseline you can’t ignore
Australian employers sit under a clear framework: federal anti-discrimination laws prohibit discrimination on attributes like sex, disability, race, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status, across employment and other areas of public life. That’s the floor your policies must at least meet.
Two recent changes raised the bar. First, the “positive duty” under the Sex Discrimination Act: from 12 December 2023, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) gained powers to enforce your duty to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent sex discrimination, sexual harassment and sex-based harassment, proactively, not after a complaint. If your policy is passive or box-ticky, it won’t pass.
Second, workplace sexual harassment is expressly prohibited under the Fair Work Act (from 6 March 2023), and the Fair Work Commission can deal with disputes. That makes prevention and response a workplace relations issue as well as a human rights one.
Safety and inclusion now overlap by design
DE&I lives inside work health and safety (WHS). Safe Work Australia’s Model Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards requires businesses to identify and control risks like excessive workload, low job control, bullying, and role ambiguity, issues that often sit behind exclusion and turnover. There’s also a Model Code of Practice on sexual and gender-based harassment. In short: inclusion failures aren’t just “HR problems”; they’re safety risks regulators expect you to manage.
Pay transparency is part of fairness
Pay secrecy clauses are out. Employees now have a right to share (or not share) their pay information, and secrecy terms can’t be enforced. If your policy still hints that talking about pay is “unprofessional”, you’re behind the law, and you’re undermining trust. Build your remuneration policy on explainable bands and criteria instead of secrecy.
Public scrutiny is real: your numbers are online
Since February 2024, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has been publishing employer-level gender pay gaps for private employers with 100+ employees, and in March 2025 it expanded publication across ~7,600 employers and 1,600 corporate groups. Candidates, investors and media can see your gap in two clicks. Your DE&I policy needs an action plan tied to these numbers, not a poster.
At the national level, the ABS-based gender pay gap sits at 11.5% (May 2025). That’s the backdrop: even with progress, the market won’t fix itself without deliberate settings inside each business.
Disability inclusion is a legal duty, not a nice gesture
If you know a worker has a disability, you must consider and provide reasonable adjustments so they can participate and perform, during hiring and on the job. JobAccess (the government service) sets out practical adjustments and supports, and the Fair Work Ombudsman underscores the protections. Your policy should spell out how an employee requests adjustments, who decides, and how quickly you respond.
Flexibility is part of inclusion
From 6 June 2023, the right to request flexible working arrangements expanded (including for employees who are pregnant or experiencing family and domestic violence) and employers have extra obligations before refusing. Treat flexibility as a structured conversation with clear criteria and timelines; don’t leave it to line-manager mood.
What a modern DE&I policy actually does
A credible policy does three things. First, it translates the law into plain expectations for behaviour and decisions: how people are hired, paid, evaluated, and treated day-to-day. Second, it embeds process (who does what, by when) for complaints, adjustments, flexible work, and pay decisions. Third, it sets measures you’ll report on, internally and, where required, externally (WGEA).
Put differently: if your policy can’t tell a new manager exactly how to run a fair hiring panel, how to decide a flexibility request, and how pay bands work, it’s a brochure, not a control.
The core sections, written for people, not lawyers
Open with a short statement of scope and the laws you operate under. Then make four sections do the heavy lifting.
Safe, respectful work. Define prohibited conduct (discrimination, sexual and sex-based harassment, bullying) in plain language and link to the WHS psychosocial and sexual harassment Codes of Practice. State that leaders must design work to reduce risk (workload, role clarity, hours) and that reports are investigated quickly and fairly, no retaliation. That aligns you to the positive duty and WHS duties in one move.
Fair pay and transparency. Explain pay structures, bands and progression. State that employees may discuss pay and that managers will not discourage it (because the law says so). Commit to annual pay-gap analysis, a remediation process, and an explanation of outcomes at team level. Tie your timeline to WGEA reporting windows so the internal story matches the external one.
Access and adjustments. Set out a clear, quick workflow for reasonable adjustments, request, assessment, trial, review, and who pays (usually you). Name JobAccess as a resource and set service levels (e.g., acknowledgment in two business days, decision in ten). That’s how you turn obligation into practice.
Flexibility with criteria. List the legitimate reasons you’ll say yes (work deliverables, coverage, safety) and how you’ll review a trial arrangement. Confirm the expanded right to request and your manager obligations before any refusal. A written, predictable process beats ad-hoc exceptions every time.
Turning policy into decisions people feel
Policies fail when they’re invisible at the moment of choice. So wire them into the tools managers already use.
Hiring. Require structured interviews and diverse panels for roles above a set level; score against job-related criteria only. Ask the disability-friendly question (“Do you need adjustments for the interview or the job?”) every time, and make it easy to say yes, with a small central budget and a quick form.
Pay and promotion. Run reviews against ranges with calibration across teams, and publish the rules: what moves someone up a range, what triggers promotion, what earns a market correction. With pay secrecy bans, your safest path is being able to explain the decision, not hiding it.
Conduct and safety. Train leaders on the Model Codes and the positive duty. Teach teams how to intervene early and where to report. Most issues go bad because no one knew what “good” looked like, or they feared backlash. Your DE&I policy should remove both barriers.
What to measure (and why it matters)
Pick a minimum set you can defend and improve.
Representation and flow. Track who applies, who gets interviewed, who gets hired, and who gets promoted by role level and location. That shows whether your process is fair, not just your end state.
Pay gaps and corrections. Measure your organisation’s own gender pay gap (and, where meaningful, other gaps) the same way every cycle. Use it to set remediation budgets that you can explain, then reconcile to what WGEA will publish. WGEA already compares gaps by industry and leadership mix; assume you’ll be benchmarked.
Safety and culture. Track complaint resolution times, outcomes, and actions taken; pair that with psychosocial risk signals (overtime, leave use, turnover hotspots). You’re aiming for earlier fixes, not just thicker policies.
Adjustments and flexibility. Time to decision, time to implement, and satisfaction with the outcome. If approvals take months, you’ve built a barrier, not inclusion.
Common traps (and quick fixes)
Beautiful policy, messy practice. If managers can’t recognise a harassment report or don’t know the steps, your positive duty isn’t met. Fix it with short scenario-based training tied to your Model Codes and a one-page “what to do now” guide.
Secrecy by habit. If leaders hint that talking about pay is a firing offence, you’ve just created a legal and cultural problem. Put the pay secrecy rule in your handbook and coach managers on how to have transparent pay conversations.
“We’ll handle it if it happens.” The law expects prevention. Show your reasonable, proportionate measures: risk assessment, training, clear processes, leadership accountability. That’s how you meet the positive duty and avoid being purely reactive.
A simple rollout plan that actually sticks
Month 1: Write for reality. Update your DE&I policy to reflect the positive duty, WHS Codes, pay secrecy rules, flexibility changes and reasonable adjustments. Strip jargon; add timings and owners.
Month 2: Wire it into systems. Add DE&I checks to recruitment (structured interviews, panel composition), add pay-range guidance to comp tools, add quick-path forms for adjustments and flexible work, and make the conduct reporting path visible.
Month 3: Publish the numbers. Internally share your current gaps, actions, and dates. Align your cadence to WGEA reporting so staff see progress before the public does.
For small businesses: same standards, lighter lift
You don’t need a DE&I department. You need a two-page policy, a named contact for adjustments, a documented flexible-work process, basic training on respectful behaviour, and a simple quarterly check of representation and pay by team. The legal expectations don’t shrink just because the headcount does.
Bottom line
A credible DE&I policy in Australia is not a PR exercise; it’s a risk control and a performance system. The law now expects you to prevent harm (not just react), your pay settings must withstand daylight, your gender pay gap is visible, and your disability and flexibility decisions need to be fast and fair. Do the boring parts well: clear rules, clean process, and published measures. In 2026, compliance is the floor, and transparency is the only currency of trust. Start wiring your policy into your systems today.