New report reveals indigenous people comprise only 0.7% in senior leadership

A new report recently published that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people hold less than one percent of executive and senior positions of the country’s employers, a revelation that most indigenous leaders called “hugely disappointing.”

The Indigenous Employment Index (IEI), a first of its kind, took 5 per cent of the Australia’s workforce and examined insights from 700,000 employees. Forty-two organisations reportedly participated in the research, including Woolworths Group, ANZ, Australia Post and various state public agencies.

The Woort Koorliny (“moving forward”) report seeks to unravel the experiences of Indigenous people to develop standards and benchmarks for “future growth in the workplace.” The said report found that “only 0.7 per cent of Indigenous Australians hold senior leadership positions within the 31 employers that reported the relevant data,” according to co-authors Minderoo Foundation, Murawin and Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre.

“It’s equally disappointing for employers who were really missing out on the value and the perspectives that Indigenous Australians can bring to leadership tables,” Shelley Cable, a Nyoongar woman and CEO of Minderoo Foundation’s initiative “Generation One,” said in an article published by SBS News.

“We know that there’s such incredible leadership amongst Indigenous Australians in this country, and to see that not reflected in the leadership of corporate Australia, it’s probably unnatural,” Cable added.

The same report also said that more than half of all Indigenous employees surveyed
“experienced racism, either directly or indirectly, compounding higher than usual turnover rates in the workplace than for non-Indigenous people,” SBS News reported.

“One Indigenous employee in the report said there was a ‘fear’ of jeopardising their career if they called out racism in the workplace. Another said that ‘it’s very tough’ being an Aboriginal person working for a large corporation,” the report claimed.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine, a businessman descending from Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr and Yuin, said the “general public has a lot to learn from Indigenous perspectives in the workplace.”

“If we are really going to make a difference for Indigenous people ... the only way we can do that is by building economic prosperity for Indigenous people. The only way you can do that is by giving a person a job,” Mundine said.

Mundine also highlighted that “the true strength of employers lies in listening to their staff, especially those from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds.”

“Some of them are coming from a background of a generation of no work ... you’re bringing people from welfare, from poverty, you’re giving them opportunity to work,” Mundine said.

Meanwhile, Cable said that many employers who participated in the IEI report had “good intentions” in recruiting more indigenous staff but also added that “more work [was] needed to be done to ensure workplaces were culturally safe for all to stay employed there,” SBS News reported.

“Employers have this very strong tendency to focus on recruitment and attraction of Indigenous employees and getting them in the door. But there’s not the same focus applied once they’re in,” Cable explained.

“What we’re asking employers to do is really take as much effort in retaining your Indigenous staff helping them progress and promoting them through the organization,” Cable said.