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Platform for people and leadership
development
Growth in employee capability
Align to talent framework
Evaluate competency build
Build leadership strength
Plan transition back to work
Corporate organisations and government agencies
have found that Jawun secondments have led to
valuable staff development, with noticeable
growth
in employee capability
on their return to work.
Participants come back from secondments more
resilient and mature, with improved stakeholder
relation skills and the ability to work with a
greater degree of autonomy.
27
These benefits were
particularly evident when the Jawun program was
aligned to talent management platforms
.
Colin Carter, a former BCG partner who helped
establish Jawun, reflected on the positive impact
of secondments on employees’ effectiveness:
People came back better than they were before.
The young consultants who went away had to
deal with more responsibility and more ambiguity.
They couldn’t just talk to people using the normal
consulting jargon. It was a challenging, formative
experience and we saw the benefits of that
when they returned.
Anthony Roediger commented that Jawun
secondments ‘provide fantastic development
experiences for BCG employees. Staff can see a
world they have never seen, practise skills in a
completely new environment, take leadership roles
that were previously unavailable and interact with
stakeholders, such as senior Indigenous leaders
and government stakeholders, they wouldn’t
normally be exposed to.’
At Westpac our people have taken up
over 700 secondments with Indigenous
partner organisations. And what we’ve
found is that those secondments have
been transformative—our people return
with a greater understanding of, and
respect for, Indigenous culture and a new
set of skills that help them become leaders
within Westpac. It’s these shared benefits
that make the program so powerful.
BRIAN HARTZER,
CEO, WESTPAC
Katherine Power recognises the value of the
Jawun secondment program in building leadership
capability across the APS:
We are absolutely seeing improvement in
leadership capability that we as a public service
really value. And those capabilities are around
engaging others in making progress on really
difficult challenges, listening and diagnosing what
is going on. For us, that is what leadership is all
about. People come back from secondment
and apply those skills at work.
Ann Sherry, formerly Group Executive, People &
Performance at Westpac, observed an increase
in maturity in staff who participated in the Jawun
program: ‘Many employees who returned from
secondments stood taller because they realised
they had a lot of opportunity that many people
didn’t have. Organisationally, Westpac had more
people with a better understanding of the world,
their own capacity and the communities
Westpac was serving.’
We find Jawun secondments are
extraordinary for growth for our people.
They get the opportunity to work on
what are often seriously complex
problems, in a different environment
with more space to manage themselves.
TRISH CLANCY,
PRINCIPAL, BCG
Secondment partner organisations recognise
the opportunity to see a return on investment
through aligning Jawun to its talent management
strategies. Many are working to link it to people and
leadership development frameworks with some,
including the Australian Public Service and QBE,
using Jawun as a talent program.
National Australia Bank has partnered with Jawun
since 2010 and links the program to its Group
Talent Pool. Tina Bain, Business Unit Manager,
Direct Consumer, Digital & Direct Banking, has
seen the benefits of this first hand. Her direct
report, Steph Stokes, went on secondment to the
West Kimberley in 2014 and has been promoted
twice since then. ‘Steph has always been a high-
performing leader who is passionate about people
but with this opportunity she was forced to step
out of her comfort zone and challenge herself,
personally and professionally, and she rose to the
CREATING VALUE FOR CORPORATE AND GOVERNMENT PARTNERS 37