“It’s people who reconcile” | How to authentically drive your organisation’s Reconciliation journey

This National Reconciliation Week, LinkedIn is connecting business leaders with Indigenous changemakers to drive meaningful conversations about reconciliation in the workplace.

As part of the initiative, Dixie Crawford, Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) Consultant and Michelle Hutton, Vice Chair, Asia Pacific at Edelman have partnered to create content across the week, exploring the topic of reconciliation.

A proud Barkindji woman, Dixie Crawford is the Founder and Managing Director of Nganya. Working across different sectors, she has advised and consulted with global and a number of Australia’s largest organisations on their Reconciliation Action Plans. Meanwhile, since returning from London in 2019, Michelle Hutton has played a leading role in Edelman Australia’s Reconciliation Action Plan. A fierce advocate for DEI, Michelle has helped global clients navigate their own RAP journey in Australia.

They sat down to discuss the importance of authenticity and how the implementation of a RAP plan is a journey that is not to be taken lightly.

Q: How important is going about RAP implementation the right way?

Dixie Crawford: Businesses can have a KPI for diversity, inclusion and belonging, but before you even start, it’s important for businesses to identify who is partnering with the CEO to lead this, to be the champion or the sponsor. You can’t have a RAP and not be prepared to address the unconscious bias that lurks in the shadows of your organisations. Everyone likes to and wants to think they’re inclusive, but an inclusive culture means you have managers and leaders in the business that don’t look and sound the same as everybody else. How can you have empathy and understanding for a lived experience when we each have a different one, especially when your workforces include people from a diverse background?

Michelle Hutton: Edelman as a business, has access to the C-Suite of a lot of large companies in Australia, and that privilege comes with an obligation. When we started on our own RAP journey, it was tough for us as a business to go through it, but we know we have an obligation to do the right thing because we do have a seat at the table. We need to help our clients and corporate Australia understand that how they go about it is just as important as why they want to do it.

Q: How can businesses continue to be authentic, and what’s the importance of that authenticity when it comes to reconciliation?

Dixie Crawford: The way that you know you’re authentic, is that you actually just be it. You demonstrate your values every single day, and you show what’s important to you. ?Sometimes, organisations are much more focused on the visibility and validation of being perceived as an ally instead of doing the work, as a form of people-pleasing or personal validation. For example, people say they want to create jobs for Aboriginal people, but they don’t actually give them a seat at the table to make decisions.

Michelle Hutton: Looking at who is responsible for the Reconciliation journey internally says a lot about not just how the organisation is showing up, but how committed they are across the whole organisation. How they run their RAP process speaks to how serious they are. Leaders need to be serious about changing their organisation, because that’s actually what I think a RAP journey should be all about. And we need to be vulnerable; we know that we don’t have all the answers, we need to learn, and we’re going to transform the business as a result.

Q: Research shows that 69% of non-Indigenous Australians still only know a little about Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders. Why do you think this education is important? Do you think there should be more of an onus on the individual to educate, or are they relying too much on RAP’s and corporations to guide them?

Dixie Crawford: I think for a lot of people, they just don’t have the bandwidth, and they’re triggered about a lot of different things, and it can be too much. If it’s not your lived experience every single day, there are all these other factors, like looking after your kids, caring for others, your job, your business. Unless it’s a real passion for you, you can wish you knew more and you can want to know more, but you probably don’t know where to get started. There’s also this element of… it’s somebody else’s responsibility, so it doesn’t really relate to or affect —it’s that out of sight, out of mind kind of thinking and energy.

Michelle Hutton: I really hope there’s going to be generational change and I’m optimistic there will be. For people in my demographic, who grew up in Australia, what we were taught in school was wrong. Kids today are learning a very different history of Australia, and I’m loving it. The way they call out anything and everything when it’s wrong, their knowledge and understanding of traditional owners and how they’re more accepting of people. And they are constantly questioning and challenging things, which is amazing.

Dixie Crawford: There is this new curiosity. They think this is a new standard and we’re not accepting anything less. For organisations, I’d say that these kids are your future employees, they’re entering the workforce, and they’re also going to be having those conversations at the dinner table. You can’t be a social justice advocate at work and a racist in community. How you do one thing is how you do everything.

Q: Do you have any tips on how to make sure a RAP is effective in an organisation?

?Dixie Crawford: There’s two key audiences you need in your organisation to make your RAP work - your sponsors and your champions. Your sponsors are the people whose names are listed on the table in the external facing document that is responsible for the work. Your champions are the ones who are having the conversations when you’re not in the room, and when the title of the discussion is not reconciliation or First Nations people and communities. A sponsor’s role is about demonstrating a commitment to the work and creating opportunities for people to do the work. Those people will eventually make themselves known, so keep your eyes and ears open, and you’ll start to recognise who they are if your organisation really wants to do it.

Michelle Hutton: Conversations happening internally within an organisation are just as important in a RAP process as what you’re doing externally. What we’ve seen in our Trust Barometer research each year is that people trust the company they work for more than they trust a lot of leaders in the community, so if you're an employer of people then your people are going to be looking at you as a leader to give them direction.

Dixie Crawford: At the end of the day, it’s the people within our organisation to enable reconciliation. We have to create time and space for our people to do this and lead together for a better shared future for us all.

Q: The theme of Reconciliation Week this year is “Be a voice for a generation”. What does that theme mean to you?

Michelle Hutton: Themes give focus, and themes give the jumping-off point to have a narrative and a conversation. I think that it could be any theme, but managed in the right way, I think it can give a jumping-off point for an organisation that would typically not know where to start having that conversation. It can give them the opportunity to feel vulnerable, and jump in and say “Okay, let’s start a conversation”.

Dixie Crawford: Themes are a point of reference for people to start at a place where they don’t know where to start. The themes are relevant to the social and political landscape that we will continue discussing. It’s a good conversation starter. At the end of the day, we need to regularly have these conversations to make an impact and create change.

Four Key Takeaways:

1.????It’s not about just looking authentic but being authentic and true with what your organisation is doing.

2.????How you go about your RAP is just as important as why you want to do it in the first place.

3.????RAP implementation is just part of the journey, and having the right people in your organisation to sponsor and champion this journey is critical.

4.????It’s people who reconcile, not organisations, so ensure they have the ability to have their voice heard.

This National Reconciliation Week, LinkedIn is connecting voices from a range of perspectives to have meaningful conversations about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues. Follow Dixie Lee Crawford and Michelle Hutton to hear more throughout the week.