Your talent acquisition strategy rests upon how you are perceived by Indigenous audiences. 
We can provide an assessment to aid your recruitment, retention and advancement processes.

4. Employer Brand Audit

Does your brand resonate with Indigenous audiences?

Your company may have a clear employment brand for general audiences, but this may not resonate with Indigenous audiences. The lack of an Indigenous employment brand is a missed opportunity to educate Indigenous job seekers about your company and to further position you as an employer of choice with Indigenous peoples.

Here are a few questions which can help you consider your Indigenous Employer Brand:

1. What factors make your company attractive to Indigenous job and career candidates? 
2. What is your company seeking to convey to both internal and external audiences? 
3. Does your mission statement generate interest and excitement among Indigenous candidates? 
4. Do your company values align with Indigenous community values in the region you are operating? 5. Why would a talented Indigenous person choose a career with your company over others?

In this process:
We use evidence-based research and interview Indigenous audiences who know your company and gather their opinions, views and advice on your behalf.

Indigenous Works will interview 5 of your closest Indigenous partners, stakeholders, or clients to ask them their view of your brand, and what they feel you need to shift to create a more attractive Indigenous Employee Brand. Third-party inquiries yield impartial and revealing insights.

We develop a report containing our findings and recommendations. We will develop a brand narrative that distills the key messaging underlying your ideal Indigenous Employment Brand

5. Growing Your Indigenous Employment and Engagement Partnerships

Indigenous Works will develop systems documentation for your company which explains or articulates the processes you use to conduct engagements, build relationships, and develop formal partnerships with Indigenous employment organizations. Your partnership systems document will express the principles which will guide your Indigenous partnership formations. The document we produce will be a step-by-step template which takes you through the partnership formation process, so you know what to expect. Imagine a scenario. You are holding discussions with an Indigenous organization and you think everything is fine. Suddenly, your calls are not being returned and the silence is deafening. What is that all about? In the systems document, we will provide tips and suggestions on how to interpret these kinds of cues from your prospective partner.

The systems template can be provided as a resource throughout your company. If you are a large national company, the template means that your regional offices can adapt the process to their own region but each region is essentially following the same steps and using the same mechanisms to grow and build authentic, long-lasting relationships. We can also provide sample templates of the progressive instruments that can be used to document these evolving relationships (e.g. MOU, Statements of Intent and Cooperation Agreements).

6. Indigenizing Your Recruitment Strategies

Your company may have a robust set of recruitment strategies and practices but if they have not been customized for Indigenous audiences then you may have trouble attracting and recruiting Indigenous talent. We will examine your recruitment strategies, practices, and systems from beginning to end. What are some of the customizations your company should be considering with your Indigenous recruitment strategy? Advertisements and job posting should feature images of Indigenous people or specifically reference Indigenous career aspirations. Lack of customization in your advertising and postings makes your organization less attractive to Indigenous people as it does not convey that Indigenous people are working or will want to work at your company. Does your company screen its job applications with the utmost fairness? Are unconscious biases influencing who you select for an interview? How do you guard against this? What are you doing in your company’s onboarding processes to ensure that Indigenous peoples’ first experiences in your workplace are positive? What steps are you taking to create an inclusive workplace? The report we provide is not intended to be an Indigenous employment systems’ review but a thorough analysis of the recruitment strategies you use and how they should be customized for Indigenous talent audiences.

7. Indigenous Advancement and Retention Report + Recommendations

We will do a systematic review and analyze your current strategies and practices for Indigenous employee retention and advancement. The first stage review will conduct background research about your previous efforts in areas of Indigenous employment. We will develop a top-line picture of key issues, and themes relating to your journey in Indigenous employment. We will seek to document what has been working well so far and what challenges are presenting in your efforts to encourage Indigenous recruitment, retention and, advancement. We also will seek to understand any historical antecedents which have shaped your current workplace and workforce circumstances, as they pertain to Indigenous employment.

In this process, we will:

• Review documents. ie. previous reviews and reports about your past efforts in Indigenous advancement/retention, employee engagement surveys, etc.
• Conduct interviews. Develop both historical perspectives on current policies and practices as well as top-line captioning of key issues
• Host a virtual focus group session (group session with 15-20 HR, executives, HR policy owners and HR managers) to discuss past and current circumstances with Indigenous employment
• Gather baseline data. ie. Indigenous workforce analysis, number of Indigenous employees, numbers by occupation, gender analysis at all levels of the organization

First Stage Deliverable: Current Circumstances Report

The second stage review will look at the fine details of your workplace’s policies, strategies, practices and systems for Indigenous advancement and retention. This is an in-depth analysis. We will consider these matters from both human resources and a workplace perspective. For example, we will examine what specific HR strategies you are following to retain your Indigenous employees as well as consider what the workplace experience is for your Indigenous employees.

Some examples of the areas we can focus on include:

• Equity and perceived equity on compensation/benefits
• Onboarding/orientation practices
• Supervision of Indigenous employees
• Performance appraisals
• Advancement and promotion
• Learning programs/training programs/laddering
• Current accommodations in place
• Disciplinary actions
• Exit/Dismissal (layoffs, termination, recall etc.)
• Analytics for the above
• Teamwork
• Workplace harmony and cultural safety
• Effectiveness of organizational structures in place to support Indigenous inclusion or Indigenous employment (e.g. a Diversity Committee?)
• Organizational culture (identifying indicators of culture and its implications for Indigenous employment/advancement and retention
• Organizational climate, as it relates to Indigenous engagement
• Anti-racist policies and how they are implemented and upheld

Second Stage Deliverable: Comprehensive Report and Recommendations that will contain a roll-up chart which will provide an overview of the main observations and recommendations. A roll-up chart is important to communicate the report findings to different team members or groups that need to be part of their implementation.

Contact us for a Consulting quote: