Flexible Work for Indigenous Staff Goes Beyond Remote

The Centre for Indigenous People and Work (CIPW) has released new guidance to help employers create an Indigenous-inclusive flexible work culture, which extends the mainstream understanding of workplace flexibility beyond simply working from home. The Truth to Practice guide on Indigenous-Inclusive Flexible Work, to be launched later this week, challenges employers to think about culturally competent and contextual flexibility for their Indigenous workers, particularly the impact of Indigenous ways of caring for kin, community, and Country. The guide sets out how employers can enable flexible work hours and locations that respond to the caring obligations of their Indigenous employees, particularly women, as well as cultural and ceremonial obligations. For many Indigenous people, family extends beyond the immediate nuclear unit of parents and siblings to include extended family, clan, and the broader community. Caring therefore can include supporting parents, aunties and uncles, younger siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins, partners' children, Elders, and/or those with disabilities or chronic health issues as well as other community members. According to Carers Australia, approximately 14 percent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are carers, compared to 10.5 percent of non-Indigenous people. CIPW Director Professor Nareen Young said the guide gives employers a practical starting point for creating a fair and culturally inclusive flexible workplace policy. "For a long time, flexible work in Australian workplaces has been treated as a one-size-fits-all policy, and for Indigenous employees, that size has rarely fit," Professor Young said. "For Indigenous people, flexible work might mean time to attend to Sorry Business, to care for Elders and other community members on an ongoing basis, or to take part in cultural obligations to community and Country." CIPW Deputy Director, Josh Gilbert said the life circumstances and caring responsibilities of Indigenous people meant that for some, flexible work arrangements may need to be a permanent aspect of employment. "It is not the same as simply logging on from home on a laptop a couple of days a week," Mr Gilbert said. The report coincides with the release of new research that examines Indigenous women's experiences of flexible work and how flexibility is shaped by gendered, racial and colonial relations of power. The research paper, Unsettling flexibility: Indigenous women's experiences of flexible work at work, found that Indigenous women used flexible work arrangements more often than non-Indigenous women, yet experienced less control over the conditions of use. The research highlighted an incompatibility between Western care assumptions and the realities of Indigenous kinship care and community obligations as well as widespread managerial gatekeeping, with Indigenous women frequently describing using flexibility within a context of heightened scrutiny and distrust. "Indigenous women frequently encountered requirements to explain, justify and defend their use of flexibility in ways not expected of other employees," the paper says. "In this context, flexibility became a conditional privilege rather than a straightforward entitlement." Professor Young said employers who get culturally sensitive flexibility right were building workplaces that were attractive to high-performing Indigenous employees while also meeting the commitments they have made in their Reconciliation Action Plans with everyday practice. The guide will be unveiled at an online panel discussion facilitated by Professor Young featuring Susan Kibukamusoke, Chief People Officer at the National Indigenous Australians Agency, and Lara Watson, Indigenous Officer at the Australian Council of Trade Unions.