Message from our Managing Director George Whyte
On behalf of Aggreko, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the living lands where our depots and project sites are located, and pay our respects to the Elders of those communities past, present and emerging.
Our purpose as an organisation is to make a massive difference by providing modular power, temperature control and energy services from the world’s busiest cities to its most remote communities. We achieve this on an organisational level through collaborative work with our customers, by providing global expertise and by investing in our people and our services.
To achieve our vision for reconciliation we continually look at how we can build stronger relationships, develop genuine understanding and respect by engaging with our employees, customers and suppliers. Our work towards reconciliation is underpinned by our desire to create a safer and fairer workplace within Aggreko. Many of our relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have grown organically, largely as part of our role in providing power in some of the most remote areas of Australia. Our RAP will help formalise this and it is only through engaging with our employees, focusing on cultural learning and building a respectful working environment that we can lay the foundation for our journey ahead.
Our Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP)
Whilst we celebrate diversity as an organisation, developing our Innovate RAP showed us that we were organically practicing some of the RAP requirements with the support of our Executive and Senior Leadership teams. We have previously invited Aboriginal Elders to perform Smoking Ceremonies, Traditional Owners to open our annual conferences with a Welcome to Country and employed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contractors at some of our remote project sites. It wasn’t until we reflected on these efforts that we realised we needed to formalise what we were already doing and still do more. We are only just commencing our reconciliation journey; however, we are positive that some of the ambitious targets we have set ourselves in our Innovate RAP, with the help of our Diversity and Inclusion Resource Group (DIRG) and our newly formed RAP Working Group (RWG).
The actions we are committing to in this RAP are centred around our customers, the communities we operate in, and our willingness as an organisation to adapt and lead change.
Developing and launching our Innovate RAP to the public means we will be held accountable on all deliverables and maintain a level of transparency and authenticity along the way.
Internally, our RAP is championed by our Communications Manager, who is assisted by our DIRG/RWG, including:
- Managing Director
- Senior Service Technician (who identifies as Aboriginal)
- Yard Hand (who identifies as Aboriginal)
- Sales Consultant (who identifies as Aboriginal)
- Head of Human Resources
- Transport Coordinator
- Operations Administrator
- Service Technician
- Senior Engineer
- Operations Supervisor
- Mining Sector Manager
- Learning & Development Manager
- HR Manager
This group has Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander engagement and participation as one of its areas of focus, and it is through this RAP that we will highlight new initiatives to our internal and external stakeholders and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples more broadly and take the necessary steps towards reconciliation.
One of the key priorities will be to develop an Indigenous Employment Strategy; an important area of focus for our Innovate RAP will be to produce and embed this.