Bis Industries fights indigenous unemployment by creating local employment for local communities at local operations. That way, we focus on growing the participation and development of Indigenous persons in Australian society. We develop various entry opportunities into employment in a number of industrial services roles and support the employees by offering relevant training.
To prepare potential employees for full-time employment, we provide them with pre-employment work readiness training and work role training. We ensure that their training covers all necessary safety, literacy, cross-culture and duty of care elements, as well as addresses what the company’s expectations of the new employees will be. These courses are aligned to accredited training under the Australian Qualifications Training Framework (AQTF), and offer employees a path to future study.
To support local communities, we form a close rapport with the various Indigenous communities. We also aim to develop sustainable employment with local Indigenous companies through commercially competitive arrangements.
Indigenous development strategy
We have a Bis Industries Local Community / Indigenous Peoples Standard. It provides us with the required direction to support Aboriginal reconciliation through industry partnerships. Since 1999, Bis Industries has a dedicated Indigenous Development Team that drives this strategy in cooperation with our senior managers and leaders.
In 2008, Bis Industries defined its Indigenous development strategy until 2011. Our main goal is to attain a comprehensive Indigenous workforce to a minimum of 10% by 2011 at all our operations where possible.
When developing the strategy, we conducted a mapping and gap analysis of each business unit. We believe that, besides meeting our commitment to Indigenous development, this strategy helps us optimise our resource management and give us a competitive edge.
Develop business opportunities
For a number of years, Bis Industries has been engaging with community organisations to develop small business opportunities that supply to our operations. In Western Australia, we worked together with a number of local Aboriginal organisations and liaised with the customers and the Aboriginal land & sea council to provide the foundations for training, employment and small business opportunities for Aboriginal people who live near the mines and their infrastructure in West Australia. The Aboriginal businesses not only tender for mining work, but also for local and regional opportunities.
We regularly partner with local Indigenous organisations to offer training. For example, a MC driver program to local Indigenous community members driven by Bis Industries and the boards of directors of Indigenous community organisations had the goal to develop expertise for small businesses. It resulted in 10 Indigenous people graduating and available for work in the south west and Goldfields regions of Western Australia.
