Creating employment opportunities for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and developing an inclusive work environment that supports employees to build successful careers, are just some of the ways John Holland is creating and fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace.
Opinion: Steve Butcher, Executive General Manager– Rail and Transport, John Holland
Across Australia and New Zealand, John Holland has a proud history as a leading building, infrastructure, rail and transport business.
In the rail industry John Holland prides itself on being a leading provider of end-to-end rail and transport solutions, from design and construction, testing and commissioning, right through to operating and maintaining completed, world-class transport systems.
It’s the John Holland team’s focus, which extends beyond delivering city-shaping rail projects for their clients, that sets them apart. They are committed to delivering on their purpose of ‘transforming lives’ for the communities they work in, and developing a strong pipeline of talent to support a bright future for the rail industry.
At John Holland, while it’s important to us to deliver strongly for our clients, we’re committed to going beyond that to create employment opportunities within the communities we work and support local suppliers and community groups.
For me, it’s really important that our people feel they belong, can learn and grow with us and be their best self on the job.
The rail industry, and broader construction industry, is facing a skills shortage. We need to think differently about creating a strong pipeline for our industry through embracing and fully utilising the skills and capabilities of people from the communities we work in.
Our diversity, equity and inclusion work is focused on ensuring our people reflect the communities we work in.
It includes supporting gender equality, First Nations Peoples, LGBTI+, cultural and linguistic diversity, generational diversity, people with a disability, and neurodiversity within our workforce.
We have a number of programs and partnerships in place with organisations that support people from these groups through apprenticeships, traineeships and employment opportunities.
Then once they join our team, we have policies in place to ensure that everyone feels supported to be themselves.
In 2020 John Holland was awarded Bronze Tier Status with the Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI), which is the national benchmark on LGBTI+ workplace inclusion.
In March this year John Holland received the WGEA Employer of Choice Citation for Gender Equality (EOCGE), one of just two leading rail contractors to be recognised.
We have boosted our parental leave policy, which is now 18 weeks of paid primary carer’s leave regardless of gender, and men now makeup 42 per cent of all parental leave taken.
We’ve also introduced two new compassionate leave entitlements for miscarriage and infant loss, in addition to our existing stillbirth leave.
We have updated our Family and Domestic Violence Policy to improve access and support to people experiencing family and domestic violence.
We also have a flexible working policy that helps our people make time for what matters most to them.
We introduced a Multicultural Leave Exchange Policy, which supports our people to swap public holidays for days that are culturally significant to them.
We know this policy is well-used by our employees from diverse backgrounds, which includes 20 per cent of our workforce that speak a second language, and also people that exchange public holidays for other personal beliefs.
INCREASING GENDER DIVERSITY
We’re proud that we’re growing the number of women in our rail and transport business.
Women now make up 34 per cent of our apprentices, while 29 per cent of our current graduates are women, and we’ve just increased on that for our 2024 intake, with women making up 59 per cent of the cohort.
It’s an ongoing journey and we recognised that we weren’t doing enough to encourage women to take up a trade in the rail industry.
To address this issue, we needed to navigate a number of factors, including prevailing gender stereotypes, entrenched attitudes, safeworking conditions and a lack of awareness about the types of skills required in the rail industry and fulfilling career opportunities.
This required a multi-disciplinary response, including a review of our employee experience(parental leave, career pathways, flexible working practices and more), audits of our workplaces, design and roll-out of diversity, equity and inclusion training for our current workforce and much more.
In addition to this work, a key part of our solution to the gender imbalance was an employee-led awareness building campaign to promote careers in the rail industry for more diverse and under-represented groups.
With the support and engagement of both technical leaders and apprentices in our business, we proactively reached out to deliver presentations articulating the opportunity for tradespeople in the rail industry.
We gathered a mix of trade-qualified male managers, female managers and female apprentices to have career conversations facilitated by leading training institutions.
Almost without exception, audiences were surprised to learn that trades like electrotechnology and mechanic were highly valued skills in the rail industry, outside of more traditional settings.
This response provided further evidence that an awareness building campaign was needed and added weight to the concept of ’you can’t be what you can’t see.’
PATHWAYS FOR FIRST NATIONS PEOPLES
Across John Holland, we’re committed to recognising First Nations Peoples and working towards reconciliation.
Last year we spent more than $156 million with more than 128 Indigenous suppliers and we’re committed to how we can grow this, and continue to support the employment of First Nations Peoples through key partnerships with community organisations.
One of these partnerships is with the Fitzroy Stars Football and Netball Club, an Aboriginal community organisation based in Melbourne’s inner-northern suburbs.
Established in 1973, they are one of only two First Nations football and netball clubs in Victoria.
The club relies heavily on government funding and corporate support to deliver their health and education programs.
We’re proud to support a grassroots organisation where our financial support is so impactful.
But importantly it also allows us to become more embedded within Victoria’s First Nations community and create lasting relationships.
So far, this partnership has seen us place three players or members into roles across our Rail Network Alliance and North Western Program Alliance projects and our Rail Services business.
The ‘John Holland Round’ at the Stars’ last home and away fixture of the season in August also gave us the opportunity to get to know more about the club and players when our people went along to cheer on the Stars.
We also have a proud partnership with the Clontarf Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that enables First Nations boys finish school and gain meaningful employment.
We have shown them first-hand some of the opportunities available in the rail industry.
After getting an introduction to our industry, some of these students have been eager to find out more, completing work experience as well.
In Western Australia, our team is committed to supporting the First Nations community through a number of initiatives.
On the Eliwana Railway Integrated Package project, John Holland exceeded its required spend with First Nations businesses.
The project also employed more than 11 percent First Nations Peoples during the peak of the program, which far exceeded the target of three per cent required by the client.
Meanwhile, our Botany Rail Duplication Project has exceeded the target for spend with First Nations suppliers by $11.5 million and the employment target by almost two per cent.
Across our business we celebrate our First Nations employees, and the Eliwana project team commissioned Yamatji-Whadjuk-Ballardong woman, artist and John Holland employee, Marcia McGuire, to create artwork for various initiatives including, high visibility shirts for the project team and art displayed on the project’s NTC machines.
Marcia was also recently commissioned to do a piece for our Sydney office reception area and does artwork for tenders.
I’ve been in the rail industry for more than 40 years, and for a long time the industry has been made up of people that look like me.
But that’s not the reality of the communities we operate in, and I’m really excited about the work we’re doing to create opportunities for everyone in our community.
Importantly, we want to ensure that we have an inclusive environment where everyone can be themselves and people feel they belong at John Holland.
For us, this is a much greater purpose. It’s about being embedded in the community.
I’m looking forward to how we can continue our journey.
.png){kind=small}
