About Prospa

Prospa is an ASX-listed fintech and Australia’s number one online lender to small business that provides cash flow products and services to small businesses.

The challenge

As a fintech, Prospa straddles the intersection of two traditionally male-dominated industries: finance and technology.

In the face of the challenges presented, Prospa was committed to fostering true diversity and inclusion as a top priority.

In 2019, The Dream Collective worked with Prospa to support their mission to create an industry-leading framework that would tackle this head-on and help achieve their mission of attracting the best talent globally by developing a world-class D&I strategy.

The solution

Through onsite observation sessions, extensive diagnostic and discovery sessions, we were able to accurately identify and prioritise 3 key focus areas:

* Improve inclusive hiring practices
* Increase understanding of unconscious bias
* Increase manager capabilities on managing flexibility

The program would then be delivered through both a top-down and bottom-up approach to ensure that all levels of the organisation were committed and engaged with the project:

Top-down consisted of Executive Discovery & Commitment Sessions which focussed on engaging all members of the Executive team to identify & resolve any potential roadblocks & co-design what full commitment & success looked like.

The bottom-up approach saw Prospa create internal Ambassador Groups to encourage employees of all levels to participate in the solution. These groups were tasked with coming up with innovative approaches to drive improved D&I, creating self-driven momentum to deliver superior outcomes.

The company: Prospa
Service: Consulting & Bespoke Training

"Our partnership with the Dream Collective is a way to bring our D&I goals to life. It’s kept us accountable so that diversity & inclusion are front of mind. It also shows our employees that this is real, not just talk and we expect everyone to contribute to building a better workplace. Partnering with them has helped us benchmark our practices against the best."
Executive General Manager of People & Culture

The results & takeaways

Across 9 months, we saw:

2020 Finalist

Australian HR Awards: Best Workplace D&I Program

8%

increase in female workforce participation in 1 year

86%

of employees felt more equipped to manage unconscious bias

Trusted by world-leading brands

Hear from other leaders that have walked the path with us

Learning & Development Manager, en world Japan
Thank you for another wonderful workshop! The energy was inspirational, and you could feel the leadership confidence in the room growing and growing. Always awesome to work with The Dream Collective as we strive to make a more inclusive environment that ensures anyone from any background can thrive and succeed.

eBusiness Implementation Manager , Computershare
I came with a demotivated approach to my leadership style and how I had been performing, having not been challenged for a while except with workload. Day 2 was an invigorating day with exceptional speakers who woke 'ME' up and cleared my head.

Media Account Manager, Zenith Media
It was such a great experience, I was really inspired to meet so many fantastic women and participate in some really thought provoking and challenging workshops. I think that all of the events were excellent. Particular highlights were absolutely the dinner with a mentor which was so so so valuable and the workshop intensives.

Senior Account Manager, Canon Australia
This was the best training experience I have been to because we not only learnt some invaluable lessons from a personal perspective, we also learnt how to pass this on to our teams, whilst forging some really great relationships/contacts along the way. I really enjoyed having different presenters for each think tank - particularly as each of them were really engaging and practical.

Marketing Director, APN Outdoor
The program was well-balanced, inspiring, great selection of speakers and the dinner with a mentor was a brilliant opportunity to meet and ask questions of inspiring women in leadership. Meeting the amazing cohort of women - we had a terrific group and I learnt a lot from each of them, connected with lots of them and feel like I have come away with an inspiring network of even more women. The panel was so good and the little nuggets of gold they all offered was really valuable.

Office Manager, BCG Consulting
I found the program extremely inspiring and well thought out, the content and external facilitators were engaging. Resilience, leadership and negotiation were extremely applicable to my role and dinner with the mentor was fantastic. Very intimate and inspiring. Project management and design thinking were not as applicable to me but still very interesting. Dinner with a mentor is just amazing, this was so intimate and meaningful and I left feeling very inspired.

Team Leader, HCF Australia
I got so much out of completing the course. Personally & professionally. The Networking drinks were a great way to break the ice and meet some people prior to starting. I particularly enjoyed the Fireside Chat and listening to different opinions and stories. The Think Tanks were varied and some were more relevant to my role than others, however I took valuable feedback from every one that could still be implanted in my day to day.

Account Director, Starcom
I feel like 3 weeks on I feel even more value from this course than I did the days after. I came away with so much information in my brain I had no idea how I would implement it. As all the leaders said "practice, practice, practice" and I have used so much already and am even working with HR on my learning for internal training.

Audit Manager, HILTI
I am really grateful that I got the opportunity to join this program. The most important take-away I have from this program is that I have a different way of evaluating myself, which in turns makes me more confident in who I am. It is also great to know that I am not alone in this journey and that I am sharing the same path with so many like minded young women out there.

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