Indigenous

We’re proud to have maintained a strong connection to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities since our foundations more than 90 years ago. Our Indigenous Services Team has expanded significantly and are focused on delivering on the areas outlined below: – Reconciliation and Indigenous cultural awareness – Employment and career development – Indigenous business relationships, procurement and partnerships – Indigenous participation and community engagement in our projects

Internal Indigenous Network

Our internal Indigenous Network continues to grow and bring together our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees to create a community. There are currently more than 70 people who make up the network, and together they welcome new mob as they commence their careers at GHD.

Procurement and partnerships

In July, we celebrated our Australia business exceeding our national Indigenous procurement target for the second financial year in a row, purchasing goods and services from 90 Indigenous-owned businesses to a total procurement value of AUD2.4 million. We’re targeting to continue to increase our total annual spend on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses by at least another 25% for the 2022/2023 financial year and we onboarded over 60 new Indigenous-owned businesses.

We also signed a Strategic Relationship Agreement with the Indigenous Defence & Infrastructure Consortium (iDiC) to strengthen our approach to Indigenous procurement and expand Indigenous participation opportunities on our projects. → Read more here.

Cultural Awareness Training

When our Indigenous Cultural Awareness Training e-learning program was launched in early 2021, we set a target of 70 percent of employees to complete the training by December 2022. The program, created with Indigenous owned training provider, Corporate Culcha, is a self-paced interactive course focused on raising awareness, knowledge and understanding of the rich culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We’re proud to report we have exceeded our completion target ahead of schedule, with 71% of our Australian based employees completing the training (as at 30 September 2022).

Indigenous employment

In 2022, we have increased our strategic hiring efforts and grown our Indigenous workforce to ensure we have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples engaging with our people, communities, businesses and clients. As a result, we are closer to achieving our 1.8 percent Indigenous employment target as outlined in our RAP.

Partnering for change

We’re committed to continue growing opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples at all levels in our industry and will continue to partner with different organisations to create change. Some of our achievements with our partners include:

– CareerTrackers Internship Program

We’ve been a proud partner of the CareerTrackers

Internship Program since its inception in 2010 and a 10x10 partner since 2015, affirming our commitment to an intake of 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students annually for 10 years.

On top of our regular university intern intake, in 2022 we’ve hosted six high school students during the school holidays as part of the Work Shadow Experience Program. Two of the students will be returning for our pre-university internship program in early 2023. GHD continues to have representation in the CareerTrackers Graduate Accelerator Program with three of our graduates taking part.

– GO Foundation

Throughout the year, GHD participated in GO

Foundation’s Cultural Connection Days and Career

Bites panels which provide the opportunity for our people to meet with students and expose them to career pathways available in our industry.

We’ve been involved with GO Foundation since 2017, and in October 2022, we announced that the GHD Foundation will extend our partnership with GO Foundation through to 2026.

– STEAM Pathways Program

Run jointly by GHD, Melbourne Indigenous Transition

School (MITS) and Indigenous owned construction company, Rork Projects, this one-week program involved six MITS students from years 10 and 11 participating in a range of activities in our Melbourne office, including working on a real-life project that showcased our industry and the professional opportunities it provides.

– Reconciliation Tasmania

For the first time, we partnered with Reconciliation

Tasmania to host two Aboriginal high school students for three days during the spring school holidays.

Students were buddied with our Digital team to learn about drafting and were mentored on career and life options.

71%

of our Australian employees have completed our Indigenous Cultural Awareness Training

National Reconciliation Week

To celebrate NRW we hosted a wide variety of activities including walking tours, discussion panels with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and cultural activities like weaving and painting. The week was also an opportunity to unveil a piece of artwork, created by Merinda Walters, a proud Kamilaroi woman and a Graduate Environmental Scientist at GHD (pictured above).

NAIDOC Week

To celebrate NAIDOC, we hosted a panel in our Brisbane office with external guest speakers Uncle Charles Passi and Dr Ruth Link, our Chair Rob Knott and one of our Indigenous young professionals, Cassie Cawthray. Hosted by GHD’s Annika David, the speakers explored how GHD and our people can be an ally and ‘Get up! Stand up! Show up!’ for the communities we live and work in. We were delighted to collaborate with Indigenous owned digital media business, Message Stick to webcast the event to all GHD employees across Australia.

Our Reconciliation journey

Since the launch of our Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) in October 2021 we’ve learned the importance of creating a culturally safe workplace to provide ongoing and rewarding career opportunities for Indigenous employees. To support actions within our RAP, we have also created specialised roles including Indigenous community engagement leads and an Indigenous Business Partner in Talent Acquisition and HR.

We also recognise the importance of tracking our RAP commitments, and in February, we began using Indigenous developed software Weavr, to capture, track, manage and share our performance against our commitments.

“For me to graduate high school, go to university, join a global business and have one of my pieces displayed in an office that I work in is something I hope some of the kids from my hometown of Karumba might see and realise there is space for them in companies like GHD too.”

Merinda Walters Graduate Environmental Science

Merinda created her first corporate piece of Aboriginal artwork entitled Ngaarribiyan Dhawun or, Northern Lands. The piece pays homage to the Cairns region and was purpose-created to sit in our Cairns office reception as a visual reminder of reconciliation. Merinda is a Graduate Environmental Scientist in our Northern Australia region, and first joined GHD as a CareerTrackers intern in 2019. We were thrilled to commission and unveil her masterpiece during National Reconciliation Week 2022.