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Jawun aligns to the organisation’s purpose
An organisation’s core purpose refers to its ‘most
fundamental reason for existence’.
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Jawun aspires
to build capable and empowered Indigenous
communities who will lead systemic, breakthrough
change for Indigenous people. Companies and
government agencies are attracted to partner with
Jawun when their organisation’s purpose aligns
to these aims. Catherine Hunter, Head of Corporate
Citizenship at KPMG, explained:
‘Inspiring confidence, empowering change’ is our
internal purpose as an organisation. If you look at
the concept of Jawun—around skills transfer and
capability build to help empower our Indigenous
communities to self-determine the communities
they want to see—the notion of empowerment is
absolutely aligned with our purpose.
Engagement with Jawun enables companies to
demonstrate their purpose to employees, clients
and the wider community in practical ways.
Westpac, Australia’s first and oldest bank, was one
of Jawun’s founding partners in 2001. Westpac
CEO Brian Hartzer described the value of the
Westpac–Jawun partnership in helping to achieve
the organisation’s purpose:
Westpac aspires to contribute positively to
the national economy for the benefit of all
Australians. Our relationship with Jawun gives
Westpac employees the opportunity to continue
to learn, respect, celebrate and share skills, so
that ultimately we can help shape a nation in
which Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians
share social and financial equity. By doing this
we’ll be living up to our purpose.
Another founding partner of Jawun is the Boston
Consulting Group (BCG). BCG partners with its
clients in solving the hardest problems challenging
their businesses—and the world. In explaining
Jawun’s alignment to BCG, Anthony Roediger,
Partner, said: ‘Our work with Jawun and its
Indigenous partners allows us to contribute
to a better Australian society, to stretch and
grow as individuals, and help Indigenous leaders
and their communities solve some of the most
intractable challenges there are.’
Partnership helps drive strategic objectives
When the Jawun partnership is part of an
organisation’s business strategy it can be leveraged
to drive value more broadly across the business
in the areas of workforce development, culture
and reputation.
For participating agencies within the Australian
Public Service (APS), Jawun has been integral
to
growing internal capability
in the area of
Indigenous affairs. It also supports an agency’s
talent
strategy by being positioned at targeted
organisational levels as a development program
for future leaders. Dennis Richardson, Secretary
of the Department of Defence, said the partnership
serves a very practical purpose for his agency:
‘I see Jawun as a vehicle through which individuals
can gain a lot, but I can get benefits which drive
broader change in the organisation.’
APS secondees attest that public servants derive
real value from working with people who are
directly affected by government policies and seeing
the effect
policy decisions
have on the ground.
This view was endorsed by Katherine Power,
Director of Talent Strategies at the Australian
Public Service Commission, who said secondment
experience plays back into the way policy and
programs are approached in the APS:
In many instances we are seeing some quite
transformational learning occurring. People are
coming back and saying, ‘As public servants we
often focus on analysis and driving towards a
solution, and actually it is also really valuable
to pause and listen and find local solutions to
local challenges without assuming we have
all the answers.’ So it is creating individuals
who advocate a different approach on how
we go about designing and delivering different
policies and programs. This is a direction we
are increasingly moving towards; finding local
solutions and working with communities rather
than telling them we have the answer. It is really
important that we have people with experience
that gives them those insights and they bring
that back, share it with others and inject it into
their own work and the work of their teams.
30 JAWUN
2015 LEARNINGS AND INSIGHTS