NAIDOC Week — An Open Letter from Michael Shimota, Country Managing Director, Slalom Australia
Today marks the beginning of NAIDOC Week — a week that celebrates the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
At Slalom Australia, we are committed to showing our alliance and support to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, and we are proud to be taking part in a series of initiatives to celebrate NAIDOC Week as a team.
In April, we launched our Inclusion & Diversity (I&D) Council and Working Group specifically to develop our ‘Reflect’ Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), which we are so proud to be officially launching today.
By implementing the RAP within our organisation, we make the commitment to do our part and to gain a better understanding of the communities in which we serve. We strongly believe this will equip us to do meaningful and impactful work. The RAP outlines a series of actions that we can take within our business that will allow Slalom to:
· Establish and strengthen relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and organisations
· Increase the understanding, value and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories and rights through cultural learning
· Improve employment outcomes by increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander recruitment, retention and professional development
Slalom arrived in Australia this year, so we are only at the beginning of this important journey. We have already implemented initiatives within our business with a focus on educating our teams. We are gifting all employees a copy of ‘Growing up Aboriginal in Australia’, which is now part of the on-boarding program and virtual book club discussions, we held a Donation Matching Program for four Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander support organisations with 100% team participation, and we are establishing ongoing relationships with these organisations.
But we recognise there is always more to be done.
We have developed our RAP and I&D council to ensure we are always learning, improving and growing in the way in which we acknowledge and support the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community within our business — and to show our commitment to our RAP, we are proud to be participating in NAIDOC Week this year.
The theme for NAIDOC Week 2020 is Always Was, Always Will Be, which recognises that First Nations people have occupied and cared for this continent for over 65,000 years, inviting all Australians to embrace and acknowledge the true history of this country.
To align with this important message, we are inviting both our Melbourne and Sydney teams to take part in virtual cultural training sessions with elders from the indigenous community. The aim of these sessions is to educate our team on the histories and cultures of Australia’s First Peoples and demonstrate respect for the indigenous culture, by showing an understanding the purpose and significance behind cultural protocols.
We have also commissioned artwork by artist and graphic designer Jasmine Sarin, a proud Kamilaroi and Jerrinja woman. Her company JS Koori Designs strives to build and grow a sustainable Aboriginal owned and operated business by celebrating the world’s oldest living culture. We are very excited about the opportunity to partner with Jasmine and launch her artwork as part of our NAIDOC Week celebrations.
We are encouraging our team members to share their learnings from the week with their colleagues and clients, and to start a dialogue about how we can continue to live the values and actions outlined in our RAP, to demonstrate our alliance and support to the indigenous community.
We hope everyone enjoys celebrating NAIDOC Week, and from it takes away important learnings, which will act as a guide to take meaningful and impactful actions to work toward eradicating racial inequality in the workplace, well beyond the end of this week’s celebrations.
Sincerely,
Michael Shimota
