Written by Michelle Begbie
Do people leaders incorporate thought diversity in employee development? Do we value diversity as a driver of performance? And do we connect conferences with the growth of thought diversity?
The rapid advancement of AI drives our value as employees and leaders into the realm of soft skills. Diversity of thought enables us to embrace different perspectives, build bespoke solutions, recognise and avoid bias; and perform holistic and system oriented decision-making and performance analysis. In this way, bringing diversity of thought to our practice supports organisational resilience and agility in the face of changing trends and challenges such economic downturns.
Teams built on diversity make better decisions 87% of the time, and demonstrate 35% increased productivity (Scargill, 2024).
But how can we continue to develop our people, build their loyalty and organisational resilience while meeting narrowing budgets? We need to ensure learning and development efforts align with overarching company goals. Is fostering a culture of thought diversity one of those goals?
Meeting new people, hearing novel views and encouraging collaborative opportunities is key to fostering a culture of diverse inquiry. Conferences foster diversity of thought by bringing together speakers from varied backgrounds, experiences, interests and expertise. The 2024 ALGA Ecoforum Conference in Auckland was a fantastic opportunity to expose New Zealand practitioners to diversity. If you’re not already convinced, read on to understand why conference attendance is key to supporting business success through diversity; especially during times of economic challenge.
When times are tough, its easy to pull back from investment in staff development; and I’m in no position to tell others how to operate their business during fiscally challenging times. However, research is clear that while learning and development are highly valued employee benefits (Lin et al., 2022), and cognitive diversity supports creative performance in the technology sector (Shivhare, 2025); it is also true that while companies need to retain top talent during times of austerity, more often than not, learning and development investment decreases (Maliska, 2022).
Perhaps, while reducing spend during tough times, we need to concentrate what few resources we still have on development of critical and diverse thinking. We can seek out development opportunities that relate to core functions of client engagement and understanding, creative and collaborative solutions and holistic decision-making. And where better to do this than at conferences?
The 2024 ALGA conference was a virtual smorgasbord of perspectives that provoked and challenged every attendee. Multiple presentations provide diversity of thought in the following core areas:
Cultural diversity: Bradley Moggridge, Dan Hikuroa, Erina Wehi-Barton, Glen Skipper, James Kendrick and Sari Eru brought forward various indigenous perspectives, all with elements of indigenous knowledge systems, and traditional solutions borne from holistic study of Earth’s systems at large. They bring true ‘world views’ that thanks to our technical specialisation, our industry has (arguably) lost touch with.
Global diversity: While we heard from some of our most respected and experienced Australians such as Craig Cowper, Dru Marsh, Victoria Lazenby and Kate Hughes; ALGA 2024 brought American perspectives via the ITRC; in particular Chrissy Petersen, Brady Johnson and Charlie DeWolf. This crew brought their experience and skill created within a very different framework- still modern science, but developed under a different philosophy, regulatory and geological environments.
Domain diversity: We are united in our passion to ‘do better’ in the contaminated land industry, but we would be remiss to recognise lessons learnt by colleagues in related industries; lessons we can also take on board for the betterment of our own domain and integration into real world solutions. The ALGA 2024 conference presented legal perspectives, health and safety considerations from ‘contaminated-land-adjacent’ industries.
Specialist development and change: Traditionally one of the first benefits leaders think of when registering employees to conferences is learning new techniques. ALGA 2024 presented new remediation techniques from home and afar and introduced new sampling methods including pore water sampling (Simon Hunt). Delegates learned new perspectives on QA/QC techniques (Andrew Rumsby) and emerging contaminants (Auckland University), and were urged by Dr Nick Kim to take a critical look at soil guideline values and challenged by Dr Jonathan Caldwell to consider oft overlooked elements such as acid sulfate soils.
If delegates are open-minded and willing to learn, there is a wealth of diversity presented to expand minds and keep us humble to the richness of experience outside our everyday.
Conferences have long been a bastion of learning and development, but in this rapidly changing world of technology and AI, I suggest the most valuable benefit conferences provide is diversity exposure. Promoting cultural, global, technical domain diversity and specialist experiences opens minds and dialogue, practices respectful debate and promotes thought diversity in everyone. Thought diversity supports effective and creative analysis, problem-solving and supports collaborative teams, who are more likely to perform well during challenging times.
When working with staff to create development plans; avoid viewing conferences through a narrow reward lens. Instead, see them as growth and development opportunites to open minds and hearts to new views and ideas, building thought diversity and resilience to your teams.
The recent announcement that ALGA will partner with WasteMINZ for the 2026 conference in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington brings an epic opportunity to even further increase the rich diversity of speakers, topics, formats and participation at a location accessible to most.
Incorporate thought diversity into your mentorship today!
References:
Lin, CY, Huang, CK, Li, HX, Chang, TW & Hsu, YC 2022 ‘Will They Stay or Leave? Interplay of Organizational Learning Culture and Workplace Mindfulness on Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intentions’, Public Personnel Management, vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 24–47, Available <https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=e2cd3233-60c1-3d83-b2e5-a69f6d5cbb42>. Accessed 15 June 2025.
Maliska, A 2022 ‘The Importance of Continuing to Invest in L&D During Economic Downturns’, ATD Blog, Association for Talent Development, 10 September, 2022. Available https://www.td.org/content/atd-blog/the-importance-of-continuing-to-invest-in-l-d-during-economic-downturns. Accessed 15 June 2025.
Scargill, G, 2024 ‘Diversity of thought: a superpower for business’, Human Resources, 27th June 2024. Available https://www.business-reporter.co.uk/human-resources/diversity-of-thought-a-superpower-for-business#:~:text=Diversity%20spurs%20efficiency%20and%20creativity,%2C%20adaptability%2C%20and%20sustained%20growth. Accessed 5 June 2025.
Shivhare, A 2025, ‘Unlocking Creativity within Cognitively Diverse Teams in High-technology Firms- A Social Cognitive Theory Perspective’, Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 433–445. Available <https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=6dfefb29-875e-36b4-8bf8-363c0ee87b2c>. Accessed 15 June 2025.