"Australia needs to give immigrants the opportunity to build careers and excel in their careers, otherwise the country risks losing talent to countries with more socially inclusive societies."
That's Karen Loon's view, She grew up in Australia but moved to Singapore to further develop her career at PwC, where she became a partner at the age of 33 and most recently became a non-executive director.
Loon is a fourth-generation Asian-Australian whose great-grandparents immigrated from China and grew up in Tamworth.
She said she would not have been able to achieve the same level of professional success in Australia, where only 3 per cent of Asian-Australians were in leadership roles in 2018, despite Asians making up 15 per cent of the population.
When she joined her firm, none of the partners were female or of Asian-Australian background.
"Australians have stereotypes about who is a leader. The stereotype of an Australian leader tends to be male and a bit of a maverick."
"Many people from different backgrounds do not look like Australian leaders in appearance." stereotype, they face challenges," she said, referring to her own youthful and diminutive appearance, which she said often resulted in her being judged.
She said Australia needed to remember the world had changed. More than 7.6 million migrants lived in Australia in 2020, with nearly 30 per cent of the population born overseas, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The UK, India and China are the top three immigrants, reflecting changing immigration patterns.
"I don't think it's necessarily a racist thing, but I do feel that for this country to progress and develop, it needs to bring in different people and embrace them."
Ahead of the Australian Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra this week , immigration is a hot topic in an effort to find solutions to staff shortages.
After working to improve cultural diversity at PwC, she says returning to Sydney a decade ago made her realize her home country was lagging behind in harnessing and developing talented business people from non-European backgrounds How far.
She said the conversation about diversity had been around for a decade in the UK and was well advanced in the US compared to Australia.
This prompted the 53-year-old to publish her debut book, Developing Culturally Diverse Leadership in Organizations, published this month by Routledge, in which she interviews prominent leaders from Asian-Australian backgrounds.
"I feel like if I understand how leaders do it, that will actually help me advise or assist companies on what they can do to improve the situation in Australia."
She warned that in the aftermath of the pandemic In an environment of increased global labor demand, Australia, and particularly the business sector, will pay the price if it does not improve quickly.
"There are a lot of opportunities for skilled immigrants, the UK needs talent, Singapore needs talent in specific industries, you can't say 'come to Australia just for the lifestyle'," she said.
The federal government will support an increase in Australia's skilled migration intake as it prepares to host this week's jobs summit.
Australia's unemployment rate is at a record low of 3.3 per cent, but businesses say they are struggling to find workers to fill jobs, largely because of pandemic restrictions that saw Australia close its doors to all foreigners for two years.
She said despite the increasing number of Asian faces in Australian society, improving cultural diversity was not inevitable because people preferred to work and collaborate with people who were similar to themselves.
She said there was a need to create "psychological safety" in workplaces where people could discuss sensitive topics such as race and ethnicity openly without fear or fear.
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