Supporting diversity underpins The Social Deck’s work

The Social Deck’s strong commitment to diversity and inclusivity is displayed through its work in consultation and engagement, ensuring people from diverse backgrounds have input into social policy and strategy development, as well as its own workforce and supply chain.

A Noosa Heads for-purpose social business, The Social Deck provides consultancy services including strategic communications, stakeholder and community engagement, social marketing campaigns and evaluation to government, businesses and not-for-profits.

The business supports the Queensland Government’s procurement approach, ‘Putting Queenslanders first’ through its engagement practices, business operations and its pro-bono work and sponsorship.

Chief Operating Officer and Director of Digital and Innovation, Steven Speldewinde, said that The Social Deck helped organisations to engage people in actions that had a positive impact on society and environment.

'Our clients are mainly government and not-for-profits, but we're working with them on policies, usually social policy, to support people from a diverse range of backgrounds—disadvantaged backgrounds, sometimes lower socio-economic backgrounds, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, people with disability; underrepresented groups.'

The Social Deck’s team of 20, 17 of whom work in Queensland, includes people from First Nations, CALD and neurodivergent communities. The Social Deck’s diverse and inclusive employment practices are guided by a Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

'We are engaging with the diverse representation of the community and we think it's really important to have diversity within our workforce as well,' Steven said.

Steven also said The Social Deck partnered with or purchased from First Nations businesses, as well as other suppliers such as disability groups, to deliver community consultation and stakeholder engagement. He said having representatives from these suppliers facilitate or lead conversations 'adds to the trust of the service that we provide and helps those people build their businesses as well'.

He said that the team were currently working on a National Autism Strategy, where people with autism would lead community consultations around Australia.

In Queensland, The Social Deck’s has worked with the Queensland Government to develop the Queensland Cycling Strategy, the Zero Emission Vehicle Strategy and a communication strategy to raise community awareness of domestic and family violence (DFV) against people with disability.

Prioritising Queensland suppliers in its supply chain is important to The Social Deck.

'In the past 12 months we have sub-contracted over 10 Queensland-based organisations to help us deliver our projects, which has resulted in a spend of approximately $450,000 with SMEs, First Nations organisations, culturally and linguistically diverse enterprises, disability organisations and social enterprises,' Steven said.

Over the past year, The Social Deck has provided more than 350 hours of pro-bono work to Zero Net Emission Noosa and the Australian Human Rights Commission, and also sponsors Queensland based social enterprise, Nature Freedom.

By supporting diversity and inclusion, The Social Deck is putting Queenslanders first.