Increasing Indigenous Employment in Australian workplaces

If you happen to be a business owner on the Gold Coast, then your drive for recruiting may have been objectively oriented towards finding star employees for your business. It would be your cherished recruitment strategy to target the best possible workforce for recruitment (irrespective of the country of origin of the prospective employee). This is what is trending in the global recruitment market. With the rise of global business empires, more and more businesses are resorting to diversity in recruitment.

This recruitment diversity is creating more diverse and dynamic workplaces in Australia, however, on the flip side, it also results in denied or reduced employment opportunities for indigenous Australians.

When you pitch the principles of recruitment and fair work against recruitment diversity, it is obvious that recruitment diversity must not come in the way of the recruitment for indigenous Australians.

It is an established fact that, traditionally, indigenous Australians are less likely to be hired in comparison to other Australians owing to their lower levels of education, skills, training levels, lower health standards, living in areas with relatively lesser employment opportunities, discriminatory hiring approach, criminal record and lesser likely chances of job retention by an indigenous Australian.

Identifying the problem has been helpful in arresting the trend and there has been an improvement in the indigenous Australian hiring trend between 1994-2008 in the private sector. But, the situation of recruitment for indigenous Australians is still far from satisfactory. There still exists a need to take concrete measures to increase indigenous employment in Australian workplaces.

Here are a few ideas to effectively increase recruitment for indigenous Australians:

• An enhancement in training and skill level through formal training and education.
• It is important to formulate recruitment strategies that are customized (being non-standard) to give an indigenous Australian a chance against standard / conventional hiring standards (where he or she may not stand a chance)
• Indigenous Australians may be afforded opportunities of dedicated training and pre-job assessment to suitably equip them with the skills required to successfully undertake an employment.
• It must be made imperative for employers to arrange and provide cross cultural training for indigenous Australians to survive in a culturally diverse workplace.
• Recruitment Gold Coast must cater for complementary and multifaceted support programs and mechanisms that ensure long term retention of indigenous Australians through; consistent organization support and effective mentoring, workplace practices that support and facilitate indigenous Australians in undertaking their community / family / work obligations.
• Your company cultural diversity support policy must cater for the racial discrimination factor to safeguard the interests of indigenous Australians.
• On the governmental level, a subsidy in indigenous wage programs and targeted labor market initiatives (in the form of government policies) is the key to creating the right conditions for the recruitment of indigenous Australians.
• Identifying the reasons for non involvement or interest of indigenous Australians in moving to certain high employment areas. Additionally, creating of more job opportunities in the area of residence of the indigenous Australians by providing incentive to businesses for setting up plants and factories in such areas