AusTriathlon embedding integrity at every stroke, pedal and step
The roll out of the National Integrity Framework (NIF) in 2021 was a game changer for protecting the integrity of Australian sport. The focus in the early years was to ensure sports were equipped to deal with integrity threats.
The framework is a suite of policies designed to target areas in most need of protection and sports signed up to the NIF adopt these policies to help create a safe and fair environment for everyone to participate.
Photo by Bec Ohlwein.
Four years on, the focus is on ensuring integrity is embedded not only at the national level, but at the state and community levels also.
Hence, sports are thinking outside the box when it comes to engaging their respective communities on integrity.
We recently spoke to National Integrity Manager (NIM) at AusTriathlon, Chris Cunningham, about his sport’s new approach to embedding integrity.
AusTriathlon recently established an Integrity Risk and Culture Working Group to increase integrity ownership and buy-in, with a whole of community approach.
“Early on the plan was to build up that ownership for the organisation and the best way to do that, was to form a team and give everyone the responsibility of being part of an integrity team,” Chris said.
“Each person is effectively responsible for making their particular environment safe and fair.”
To do this, AusTriathlon has established eight Integrity Hubs who together have touch points across the entire membership of the sport. Each hub looks after integrity for their respective areas:
- AusTriathlon Membership and Operations
- Youth and Junior Pathway
- Accredited Coach Program
- Technical Official Program
- Olympic Performance Pathway Program
- Paralympic Performance Pathway
- Sanctioned Events, and
- Affiliated Clubs/Squads.
As the NIM of AusTriathlon, Chris leads, manages and provides support to the working group.
It’s an innovative approach that has created a cohesive team focussed on the scale of the integrity role in reaching all members – be it athletes, coaches, technical officials or volunteers – from the grassroots to the high performance space.
“The idea is that every single environment throughout the sport has got someone within this working group to identify risks to that particular environment,” Chris said.
“All risks are different. At the club and youth level it’s very much about how they're recruiting people and how they’re looking after children and young people. In high performance there’s a lot more focus on education around anti-doping and coaching practices.”
AusTriathlon has also signed up to the Safeguarding in Sport Continuous Improvement Program (SISCIP). This program is designed to help sporting organisations build their capability to provide safe environments for children, young people, and all members to participate in sport.
The program is structured so that a sport can continually assess and improve their safeguarding practices and processes. Once signed up, sports complete an online safeguarding self-assessment based on the 10 National Child Safe Principles. This self-assessment is made available to sports to complete on an annual basis so they can identify where improvements have been made and where further work is required.
“There are a number of items as part of SISCIP that we need to deliver as well and we’re conscious that we want to take ownership of that,” Chris said.
“We work collaboratively with the team at Sport Integrity Australia (SIA), but we don’t want to leave it all up to SIA; we want to be proactive, which is how the working group was born.”
AusTriathlon’s Integrity Hubs are one of 11 principles that underpin the new working group. Other key principles include risk management and mitigation.
Risk analysis will be conducted within each hub to identify and address threats such as safeguarding breaches, competition manipulation, anti-doping violations, and other integrity risks.
AusTriathlon will also develop targeted mitigation strategies informed by criminological theories such as the Crime Triangle and Situational Crime Prevention, focusing on four key areas to strengthen its integrity framework:
- Integrity Practices – Policies and procedures.
- Integrity Identity – Awareness and attitudes.
- Integrity Ownership – Roles and responsibilities.
- Integrity Capability – Education and training.
Chris knows that the key to the success is message delivery, its reach and buy-in from members. To this end, AusTriathlon will activate integrity impact points on an annual basis with a focus to ‘Establish, Anchor and Reaffirm’. This structured approach will help ensure members and stakeholders uphold responsibilities, integrate integrity into daily practices, and sustain long-term accountability.
“We’ll work on an annual basis,” he said.
“Hence, ‘establish’ occurs at the start of the year, that’s when we can do the necessary introductions and get members signed up, but the integrity piece is outlined at the start, it’s not just in the ‘terms and conditions’.
“We then ‘anchor’ those messages throughout the season to ensure integrity is always front and centre.
“Then towards the end of season we move to ‘reaffirm’ phase, reminding people what their role in integrity is within our sport.
“We don't want an ad hoc approach to integrity, we want to be very deliberate. We see the start and the end of the year as key times to be doing that, while anchoring messages throughout the year.”
The integrity impact points will be supported by an integrity communications plan, introduction of a reward system to recognise and celebrate adherence to integrity standards and strengthening of intelligence gathering.
Importantly, there’s also a strong focus on leadership and empathy in leadership to foster trust and reduce resistance to change.
“I see this whole project as a change project,” Chris said.
“We're trying to effectively change people's perception and prioritisation of integrity to really elevate it and make it front of mind, not a last minute tick box.
“It should be the first thing we lead with, for example setting up an event asking, ‘Is it safe? Is it fair? And working out what we need to do to make sure it is.
“I used to apologise a lot when I was explaining to others what to do around integrity. I'd say ‘I'm really sorry, I need you to do this’ or ‘I'm really sorry, but we don't do it that way’.
“I then found myself thinking why am I apologising? I felt like I was imposing and being a nuisance.
“It was at this point I had to change my delivery to empathetic, not apologetic.
“What we are implementing is change. It’s a new way of working and new is not always easy.
“Whether we’re connecting with a volunteer or paid administrator, they’ve already got a lot on their plate; we need to be empathetic to that, but not apologetic for why we are implementing this change.
“Saying sorry undermines the importance of what we are trying to achieve in keeping our sport safe for all.”
The ultimate goal for AusTriathlon is embedding integrity to Win Well and to Play Well.
“Our mission is to build the foundations of AusTriathlon upon safety and fairness – enabling participation, performance and belonging to thrive,” Chris said.
“We want to be at the forefront of integrity within sport worldwide.”
He is well aware that to do that he needs to bring the AusTriathlon membership with him on the integrity journey.
“We try and do a lot of work around why integrity is important, the risks of inaction and the benefits of action.
“Integrity increases people's enjoyment, which means they're likely to stick around, so retention increases, and they're likely to speak more positively about the sport, and then membership and participation go up.
“We're very focused on making sure that everything we do in integrity is not just compliance. We want people to want to do it and understand the benefit of it as well.”
