I’m often approached by senior leaders in service organisations saying they’re thinking of developing a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) for their organisation. And they’re often surprised when I respond “Are you sure a RAP is what you need?”

Many leaders turn to a RAP simply because that is the one approach they’ve heard of and not because it’s the best solution to their needs.

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

The intent is there. These employers have realised their workplaces need to change so Aboriginal people can be a part of their organisations, with equal access and opportunity. They’re putting more and more effort into building better workplaces to be inclusive of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their cultures. And that’s a good thing.

But a RAP isn’t the only choice for organisations wanting to make a difference in the lives of Aboriginal people, or to the nation as a whole. An Aboriginal Employment Strategy is a viable alternative for organisations, and one that holds many benefits over a RAP.

Let’s look at what a RAP is, what an Aboriginal Employment Strategy is, and then you can decide if a RAP is the right tool for you.

What is a RAP?

Reconciliation Australia’s website states that “The Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) program provides a framework for organisations to support the national reconciliation movement.”

Reconciliation Australia’s RAP framework has 4 levels:

1. Reflect - 12-months, scoping and developing relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders, deciding on your vision for reconciliation and exploring your sphere of influence, before committing to specific actions or initiatives

2. Innovate - 2 years, establishing the best approach for advancing reconciliation within the organisation; and implementing reconciliation strategies and initiatives

3. Stretch - 2-3 years, embed reconciliation initiatives into the organisation and utilise sphere of influence to drive reconciliation

4. Elevate - 3+ years, leadership in reconciliation

This means that most organisations would start with a Reflect RAP and then progress to an Innovate RAP. The process – even for a Reflect RAP – can be lengthy.

A Reflect RAP is about “scoping and developing relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders, deciding on your vision for reconciliation and exploring your sphere of influence, before committing to specific actions or initiatives.” So, 12 months will pass before you can develop Aboriginal employment initiatives under the RAP framework.

And progress from one RAP stage to another is not guaranteed. There are commitments and requirements that must be met at each stage. It’s not uncommon for organisations to go through the same stage two or three times before moving on, or not move on at all.

In order for the plan to be called a ‘Reconciliation Action Plan’ or ‘RAP’ it must be endorsed by Reconciliation Australia. The endorsement process can be laborious, as you must fit tightly into their framework and meet language and other requirements. It can take several rounds of submission and feedback before it will be provisionally endorsed. The quickest provisional endorsement I’ve seen has been on the second round – and this still took close to six months.

The language requirements are about what you can say and how you can refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Again, I’m on board with clear use of language, but Reconciliation Australia’s framework doesn’t allow organisations to make their own mind up about language which, as I’ve written before, can change based on the organisation’s circumstances. Based in Canberra, Reconciliation Australia is unable to guide every organisation on this very much localised and situation-dependent decision, instead they have a preferred – but rarely ideal - term that all organisations must use.

RAPs are also set up to benchmark your actions - not your results - against other RAP organisations. This is one of my bugbears. Activity may make you feel warm and fuzzy. It may get you pats on the back from your peers, but if doesn’t deliver real results for Aboriginal people, if it doesn’t change our lives in meaningful ways, I have to ask, what good is it?

A catalyst for real change, or a symbolic effort?

A RAP can be an instigator of real change. But recent events have also shown that it can equally be a hollow promise; a PR exercise in dotting of the Is and crossing of the Ts.

The recent example of mining giant Rio Tinto, who at the highest level of the RAP framework, Elevate, recently made headlines for the wilful (and legal – a story for another day) destruction of a 46,000 year old Aboriginal site, and subsequently displaying a complete lack of remorse. Their RAP, it seems, was not worth the paper it was written on. The question must be asked: how did they manage to make it through to the Elevate stage with such an obviously flawed decision-making process?

In a smart and necessary move, Reconciliation Australia revoked its endorsement of Rio Tinto as an Elevate RAP organisation following this failure and suspended it from the RAP program. I can only imagine the calls Reconciliation Australia would have received from other Elevate organisations…imagine being another organisation with an Elevate RAP and your years of hard work and commitment being called into question in the wake of such a traitorous act.

All of this is not to label RAPs ineffectual, nor disrespect the good work of many organisations which have taken the time to develop theirs. Many of my clients have developed RAPs, and I’ve even conducted a RAP development workshop. I am not opposed to RAPs; they are perfectly respectable and often useful plans of action. They have their place as important tools to improve Australia and the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the country.

The truth, however, is that a RAP may not do what you need it to do – achieve real and quantifiable change within your organisation in relation to Aboriginal employment.

But there is another option that is designed to do exactly that.

While it may not have the name recognition of a Reconciliation Action Plan, an Aboriginal Employment Strategy, tailored to your organisation, can be an incredibly powerful catalyst for change.

What is an Aboriginal Employment Strategy?

An Aboriginal Employment Strategy is focused on improving your employment of Aboriginal people. This means, not just employing more Aboriginal people – as many people assume – but improving the experience of your Aboriginal staff, and their retention comparable to other staff cohorts. You need to be able to both find and keep Aboriginal staff to be successful with Aboriginal employment.

The primary aim for most organisations is to work towards a workplace representative of the community. This can be based on your geographic footprint, or a another relevant community, such as your client base. So, if Aboriginal people are 4% of this community, then your goal would be to have 4% staff who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. Once you’ve achieved this there are many more advanced goals to pursue. But pursuit of this number, without due attention to your staff experience and their retention, would be foolhardy, a waste of resources, and do nothing to improve the lives of Aboriginal people. Not to mention poor business strategy.

If you’re looking to improve your service delivery to Aboriginal clients, you’ll need to start with Aboriginal employment. If you can’t find or keep Aboriginal staff, how do you know you’ve got a work environment where Aboriginal people are respected? If you can’t keep Aboriginal staff, it’s likely you don’t have such a workplace. And if you can’t keep your Aboriginal staff, it won’t be long before you won’t be able to attract Aboriginal applicants. Word gets around.

It’s a short term (read: poor) strategy to rely solely on your current Aboriginal staff to bring in referrals, especially if your track record indicates retention issues. What happens if your Aboriginal staff move on? Will other Aboriginal staff follow? Were they committed to your organisation, its vision, purpose and values? Or were they committed to helping and supporting your now former staff member?

Excellent service delivery needs a level of respect, as well as broad cultural capability amongst your staff. And, having Aboriginal staff, along with the appropriate support systems in place, will help develop Aboriginal cultural capability amongst your broader staff cohort. If you have a workplace where Aboriginal staff can have success, this will improve your Aboriginal client service delivery, not just directly through your Aboriginal staff, but by having your non-Indigenous staff engage and work alongside talented and dedicated Aboriginal people every day.

Aboriginal employment strategies have been around longer than Reconciliation Action Plans. The RAP program began in 2006, while employment strategies have been around since the late 1980s – for example, NSW Premier Nick Greiner introduced the NSW Public Service Aboriginal Employment Strategy in 1988.

An Aboriginal Employment Strategy – or call it anything you’d like. Over the years they’ve been called many things; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Workforce Development Plan (like the Commonwealth Government’s plan), Aboriginal employment plan, Aboriginal action plan, Aboriginal employment development plan, or Aboriginal workplace development plan. Preferably not ‘Aboriginal recruitment plan’ – since, if you focus on recruitment without consideration of your workplace and retention, your plan would be a certain failure.

For an Aboriginal Employment Strategy to be successful it needs to address Aboriginal employment holistically and from a systems standpoint. It needs to address the whole of the organisation – particularly the workplace. The workplace needs to be prepared for success, just as you prepare a garden bed before seeds are sown, or your Aboriginal staff won’t have a chance to bloom. Too often employers fail to understand the work required within their workplace, and so the failure of Aboriginal staff to thrive blamed on us, and not the environment. This is something a good Aboriginal Employment Strategy will recognise and address.

You’ll also notice the word ‘strategy’. It’s key here. What an Aboriginal Employment Strategy does is focus your efforts on a specific outcome – employing and retaining Aboriginal people - and focuses your efforts on moving that number with a clear strategy.

Unlike a RAP, you’re focused on one, clearly articulated change within the circle of influence of your organisation, that is, how many Aboriginal staff you employ, and their relative experience as your staff. How does their engagement, retention, and attraction to your organisation stack up against other cohorts? You’ll need to pull a number of levers to reach a comparable position, but the outcome you seek is specific.

If action is what you want - the kind of action that creates change - to my mind, there’s nothing better than a clearly articulated specific goal. And a clear way to achieve it. It’s no use asking organisations to simply be “better”. You need to put your energies into achieving something specific and measurable.

Let’s Consider Your Goals

So, let me ask you some questions about the results you want to see. Feel free to grab a pen and make notes. These are some of the questions I ask organisations when they want to work with me.

What is it you are hoping to achieve? If you developed either a RAP or an Aboriginal Employment Strategy, what would you hope the change would be?

What would be different about how your staff felt and talked about Aboriginal people, and issues? How would it be different? Would they learn about us? Or learn from us.

What would be in place that is missing now?

What would your reputation be with Aboriginal people, as an employer, as an organisation? What would your reputation be amongst leaders in your sector? Your clients?

What would your employer brand and talent acquisition be like? Would you attract candidates who value diversity and inclusion? Would you attract strong Aboriginal candidates or be constantly struggling to find any?

And, importantly, how would you know you’re making progress?

How will you achieve this?

A good Aboriginal Employment Strategy needs to have activity driven by strategy like any business plan. In order for Aboriginal employment to be successful you must ensure you:

• Consistently communicate a unique and compelling rationale for your organisation’s commitment so you can build internal buy-in and bring people on board with your vision

• Establish a baseline for your goals with the systems to measure your progress

• Implement the right recruitment strategy mix for your organisation so you can put time and resources where they’ll do the most good and achieve your goals quickly and without undue waste

• Introduce and/or standardise visible symbols in your workplace and communications to send a strong signal that your organisation respects, welcomes and supports Aboriginal people (yes, symbolism is still important)

• Follow appropriate protocols such as Welcomes to Country and Acknowledgements of Country with robust policy and procedures to ensure they are implemented consistently across your organisation

• Bring your team up to speed with your Aboriginal employment plans, embed continual cultural learning into your staff training, and commit to this education long term

• Build strong relationships with the traditional custodians and local communities. Take time to understand our communities and work with us.

But let’s return to the question at hand: Is a RAP what you need?

Strictly speaking no one needs a RAP. But Australia does need organisations to stand up and commit to making a difference in the lives of Aboriginal people across the country. There’s simply no better way to change the lives of Aboriginal kids than employing their parents.

But, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. A RAP can be a fantastic tool but, like a hammer, it is far from the best for every situation.

An Aboriginal Employment Strategy expands your toolkit. It’s more customisable than a RAP. It’s more focused. It’s within your circle of influence. It’s also entirely measurable, and contributes directly to your business. It could be a great next step.

A RAP doesn’t preclude an Aboriginal Employment Strategy, nor does an Aboriginal Employment Strategy preclude a RAP. They can work well together.

After considering your organisation’s current state of affairs, its desired outcomes, and the community within which you work, your strategy can be adapted to suit your unique set of circumstances.

The act of considering the development of a RAP shows that you’re ready and willing to drive organisational change. And you deserve to give yourself the best chance of making that change real and long lasting. And, we deserve that too.

An Aboriginal Employment Strategy could be the best way to do just that.

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