IPS Management Consultants is supporting Aboriginal participation and engagement outcomes across the Stephenson Avenue extension project. Work is now underway on Phase 2 of the Stephenson Avenue Extension, with the $165 million project set to provide a major boost to the local economy and support an estimated 800 jobs.

When complete, the project will provide a new connection from Cedric Street to Scarborough Beach Road, including a new grade-separated Mitchell Freeway interchange with a southbound Smart Freeway on-ramp, as well as new local road links to Ellen Stirling Boulevard.

IPS worked with the Noongar Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NCCI) and Traditional Owner Mr Walter McGuire who delivered the recent Smoking Ceremony and Welcome to Country to project managers and partners, supported by Project Director George Chi.

We’re delighted to announce that we have just expanded our service offerings within IPS Organisational Capability (previously known as Organisational Development & Leadership). This next chapter comes with an exciting range of new product offerings, and a new team member leading the way, Julie Hillier. 
 
IPS Management Consultants would like to welcome Julie on-board the IPS team. Julie has joined as the Executive Lead for IPS Organisational Capability (OC). With over 25 years’ experience in consulting across a multitude of industries, national and internationally, we’re lucky to have Julie’s expertise in leading the way for our OC team. In addition to being a Chartered HR/OD Professional, she is also an accredited coach and facilitator.  Julie is passionate about our company vision of ‘making a positive difference and improving the lives of First Nations peoples. Julie is also co-founder of the Mila (Aboriginal Youth) Foundation – a fully registered charity.
 
With an exciting range of new product offerings, our team is looking forward to continuing delivering exceptional service to our valued clients and also expanding these to new and emerging clients across Australia.

We are excited to evolve our service offering, and provide these innovate new tools for our changing world. We have refined our 6 key products to:

• Organisational Development
• Leadership & Supervisor Development
• Strategic HR / People and Culture
• Diversity and Inclusion
• Workforce Enabling & Activation: Sector and Industry Level
• Organisational Culture: Change Transition and Transformation

Some of the tools within these are: AQ Adaptability, empathy, design thinking, analytics, inclusive leaders and organisations mental health and thriving teams to name a few.

Learn more about Organisational Capability:

Learn more about Julie Hillier:

Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs) are a growing movement towards creating change by setting a company’s values, expectations and actions for working towards reconciliation. Companies with RAPs are responsible for a series of deliverables, under the five pillars of Relationships, Respect, Opportunity, and Reporting and Governance.

Right now we’re seeing diversity leaders make structural change through their RAP deliverables that help to provide welcoming, culturally safe workplaces for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff.

​Updating your company’s workplace policies and processes provides a framework in which to offer a culturally safe workplace experience. One key element of this is to allow for floating public holidays. Essentially, this enables a staff member who does not wish to observe Australia Day on January 26 the option to work that day and substitute their public holiday for a different day. This also applies to other public holidays – enabling team members to substitute these for days of cultural or religious significance. This small change goes a long way to creating a flexible and culturally safe workplace that meets the needs of your team to celebrate the days that are important to them.

Every company is required to have policies and processes that keep their team safe from bullying, discrimination and harassment. It is important in these policies to recognise and address the unique context in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team members operate – including the experience of lateral violence.
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Lateral violence, also known as intra-racial violence, is the product of complex historical and social factors. You can read more about it here.
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Including references and providing education to lateral violence in your anti-harassment policies and processes can provide an extra layer of protection for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team members when it comes to knowing that their workplace is a safe place to be.

​A culturally safe workplace is one in which all team members feel safe, supported and respected. Creating cultural safety can include a range of things, from displaying the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags in the workplace, to having Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country protocols, to updating policies and processes to address the cultural needs of team members. A cultural safety plan will look a bit different dependent on who you are, what your company does, where you are located, and who is in your team. What this plan will do for you is give clear guidelines and a framework around how to build a company culture that respects and lifts up every member of the team.

Workplace diversity is becoming increasingly important – not only because of government policy such as the Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP), but because it is the right thing to do. Team members who feel safe and supported by their workplace and peers flourish, grow, and are passionate about what they do.