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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.

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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