The remote Cape York region of north-eastern Australia is home to approximately 14,000 people, most of whom live in communities of about 800 people. It is one of the most remote and poorest regions in Australia with high levels of unemployment and poor job prospects, high rates of preventable disease, poor participation levels in education and high levels of substance abuse.
Westpac is one of Australia’s largest banks, with a number of retail brands as well as insurance, superannuation and commercial banking businesses. It employees 37,000 people and has over 10 million customers. Westpac became actively involved in the Cape almost a decade ago.
Business insight
Following financial difficulties in the 1980s Westpac found itself in an aggressive cost cutting path to survival. However, it became evident that this had been done at the expense of its customers and the community. Employee morale and customer satisfaction was low. Recognising that it had fallen out of step with community expectations was the beginning of Westpac’s sustainability journey and its transition to a more stakeholder led organisation.
Although the organisation already had some association with Indigenous banking a trip to the Cape by one of its former Head of Human Resources Ann Sherry in 2001, saw this take on new scale and level of understanding. Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson emphasised the need to move away from passive welfare dependency and for Aboriginal peoples’ right to take responsibility.
It was clear that the trip had had a profound effect on Sherry who said, “You can’t go into those communities and walk away thinking that it’s okay for a very affluent society like our to have people live on rubbish tips…Those things happen in our own backyard but it’s very invisible.”
Sherry formed Westpac’s Indigenous Working Group and engaged other senior leaders in support of Indigenous Enterprise Partnerships (IEP), a partnership between companies and Indigenous communities.
Transformation
The partnership is based on a change from a philanthropic mindset to one that puts communities in charge and the program was developed following extensive dialogue with communities to help them establish their own strategies for improving their circumstances. Importantly Westpac employees who go to the Cape, some 50 of them each year, are called secondees, rather than volunteers or mentors, they provide capacity building and support on programs directed by the local communities.
Recruitment is also a careful process with a strong focus on attitude and aptitude through a series of confronting hypotheticals. Once selected secondees undertake extensive pre-reading, including Pearson’s book as well as alcohol and substance abuse management plans , economic strategies and guidelines produced by Aboriginal people on how to consult with Aboriginal communities. Upon arriving in Cairns there is a week’s induction training, primarily on cultural understanding before in some cases, making the two to three day drive to their community.
Whilst there, secondees work on one of the two programs Westpac is involved in; Family Income Management to assist in individual budgeting skills and Business Facilitation which provides advice for new or existing businesses. These programs were chosen because they best draw on the skills of Westpac’s employees. Placements last between one and twelve months. As an indication of the strength of the program, all shorter term placements are covered by the business so individual line managers must pay for a replacement employee or manage around their placement. Longer term appointments are jointly funded between Westpac and IEP.
Westpac’s involvement in the Cape demonstrates elements of the integral model, particularly the often under used internal quadrants .
A great deal of attention is placed on the cultural understanding (we internal) with secondees required to complete extensive pre-reading and cultural training before starting their placement. Indeed the entire programme has been designed with cultural sensitivity in mind.
It is also a very powerful life changing experience for the employees involved (I internal) full of challenging but also rewarding experiences. As put by the then CEO of IEP, “For a lot of people it’s the first time they’ve been allowed or able to serve the community, and I think that rebuilds a person’s spirit or confidence…they’re not just being put in a safe room to pack boxes, they’re being put at the forefront of Australia’s biggest alcohol epidemic and most serious social problems.”
The focus of the broader IEP program is about creating a critical mass of projects that support Indigenous initiatives in a coordinated way that include youth, health, social and economic programmes. In this sense it looks at the more systematic processes and dynamics between them (I and We externals). For instance, it considers that if you create more wealth in a community it is likely to be spent fuelling the alcohol epidemic unless you treat the entire system.
End game
To date more than 400 employees have participated in secondments in Cape York, providing the equivalent of 50 years of continuous employment. In 2010 Westpac has announced an expansion of the program to include the inner city Sydney areas of Redfern and Waterloo which have a large urban Indigenous population.
Whilst it is true that there are still social problems in the Cape those who have been involved in the programme from the outset say that the improvements are noticeable.
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© Article 13 - April 2010
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