Access to sustainable employment and productive training: workplace participation strategies for Indigenous employees

Access to sustainable and viable employment is crucial to an individual’s potential to achieve a reasonable quality of life. Policies introduced to promote Indigenous employment in Australia, such as Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP), have had minimal impact on long-term employment outcomes and the percentage of Indigenous people in employment has barely moved in 35 years. According to statistics in the Prime Minister’s Closing the Gap report, there has been no improvement in Indigenous employment targets since 2008 and the ‘Indigenous employment rate fell from 53.8 per cent in 2008 to 47.5 per cent in 2012–13’ (Australian Government 2016:27). National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS) 2014–15 data indicate that only 46 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15 years and older were employed (ABS 2016). The purpose of this paper is to report on an investigation into employment and workplace participation strategies for Indigenous employees in one government organisation in Queensland. The study adopted a mixed methods approach, predominantly qualitative, and focused on descriptive similarities and differences in terms of Indigenous employment strategies to develop in-depth comparable case studies. It used thematic and discourse analysis to bring together theoretical understandings of communities of practice to theorise employees as participants in workplace employment and practice. The findings indicate that employees want careers, not just jobs. They enjoy working in culturally safe environments with other Indigenous employees onsite and want to improve their life opportunities.