The recruitment, retention and development of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff is a key opportunity that will help us close social, economic and health gaps.

The recruit­ment, reten­tion and devel­op­ment of Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander staff is a key oppor­tu­ni­ty iden­ti­fied in our Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Action Plan that will help us close social, eco­nom­ic and health gaps.

In recent years, increased sup­port and resourc­ing has seen the pro­por­tion of Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander staff employed by NSW Health Pathol­o­gy grow from 0.40% in July 2017 to 1.46% in August 2022.

This puts us on track to meet our tar­get of 3% of over­all workforce.

But We’re not stop­ping there.

“Cre­at­ing a nation, strength­ened by respect­ful rela­tion­ships between the wider Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty and Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ples is some­thing that NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is pas­sion­ate about,” our Abo­rig­i­nal Employ­ment Coor­di­na­tor Col­in Gib­son said.

“As an organ­i­sa­tion, we believe this starts from within.”

NSW Health Pathology’s Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander Recruit­ment and Reten­tion Pro­gram sup­ports our organ­i­sa­tion to grow and devel­op our Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander workforce.

“Our focus is to put Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ples at the cen­tre and build a strong work­force ground­ed in our shared his­to­ry,” Col­in said.

“We want to pro­vide a cul­tur­al­ly safe and respect­ful work­place and posi­tion our­selves as an employ­er of choice for Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peoples.

We’re active­ly work­ing towards being an organ­i­sa­tion that has respect­ful, respon­sive and cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive ser­vices for our community.”

The program’s suc­cess­es includ­ed host­ing our inau­gur­al Abo­rig­i­nal Work­force Forum, pilot­ing an Abo­rig­i­nal trainee­ship pro­gram at West­mead, and increas­ing pro­mo­tion of tar­get­ed job vacan­cies through exter­nal Abo­rig­i­nal employ­ment networks.

It has also ensured that our Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander staff are includ­ed in lead­er­ship devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties.  We’re proud that three of our Abo­rig­i­nal staff were select­ed and suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed our inten­sive Emerg­ing Lead­ers program.

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