This National Reconciliation Week, we wanted to take the opportunity to share the progress we’ve made since the launch of our inaugural Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) in August last year.

Governance

We’ve been very mindful to incorporate the learnings identified from our Reflect RAP into our governance model to ensure long-term effectiveness. Some of our actions have included:

• Formulating a comprehensive project plan. 
• Establishing a RAP Working Group with clearly defined Terms of Reference. 
• Implementing a consistent meeting schedule for ongoing collaboration. 
• Allocating a provisional budget specifically for RAP initiatives. 
• Instituting a robust reporting mechanism to maintain transparency and accountability with our senior leaders and our people. 

Relationship

Hays is committed to building partnerships and strengthening mutually beneficial and respectful relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and we are pleased to announce that we are in the process of forming an External Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Committee. This Committee will be instrumental in ensuring that our strategies and activities, aligned with our Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan, are developed and implemented in partnership, which upholds the principles of self-determination and will lead to better outcomes.

Additionally, we are currently developing a database to pinpoint potential collaborations with clients who align with our RAP goals, and we have had several opportunities to collaborate and engage with other organisations on their RAP commitments.

Respect

We have drafted a Cultural Learning and Employee Engagement Strategy that will be implemented over the coming months. We’ve also ensured our people are able convey our commitment to reconciliation through tools and resources. These resources include a cultural protocol document, and we are seeing great traction with employees integrating an Acknowledgement of Country in their meetings.

Opportunities

We know our core purpose is to help people succeed by creating opportunities through the removal of barriers and ensure equitable workforce participation. Most recently, we’ve joined Minderoo’s First Nations Employment Index and enhanced our demographic data collection to better understand our workforce demographics and improve this through targeted employment strategies – a key objective within our Innovate RAP that will become our focus over the coming months.

We also expanded our partnership with The Smith Family, where late last year one of our talented and passionate RAP Working Group members contributed to Career Talk at the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program Gathering. And we’re continuing to execute our procurement commitments and have increased our supply from Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait owned business and re-engaged with existing suppliers to explore avenues for increased support.

Our Learnings

While we have an incredibly passionate group of people driving our reconciliation journey, some of the timeframes we set ourselves when developing our RAP were overly ambitious, so we have needed to realign our expectations and timeframes to achieve these.

How We’re Recognising Reconciliation Week 2024

At Hays, we’re encouraging our people to engage with observances and events in their local communities, in addition to providing opportunities to participate in our internal events. This year we are recognising Reconciliation Week by participating in the Indigenous Literacy Foundation’s Great Book Swap and we’re also launching our own book club – Reading for Reconciliation – which aims to provide ongoing learning opportunities for our people throughout the year and enable opportunities to learn more about our shared histories and the cultures and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

We’re proud of the progress we’ve made so far, but we know we have more work to do. And in alignment with this year’s National Reconciliation Week theme, “Now More Than Ever,” we reaffirm our ongoing commitment to our reconciliation vision: all Australians recognise, respect, and celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their knowledges, cultures, and connection to Country. 

About this author

Bernadette Hanly - Senior Manager, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, ANZ

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