Improved First Nations employment practices benefit everyone.
Creating a space where First Nations Peoples can thrive leads to better business outcomes, drives a more diverse talent pipeline and supports innovation and growth.
Despite significant progress over the past decades toward First Nations employment parity, a stark gap remains.
‘Parity’ extends beyond achieving a 3% workforce participation rate. True success will be realised when the economic and social disparities faced by First Nations Peoples are eliminated. When First Nations employees are present and included across all levels of the workforce. When employers recognise and value First Nations Peoples’ unique perspectives and knowledge systems.
And, when First Nations Peoples lead organisations and influence key business decisions.
The First Nations Employment Index 2025 builds on the existing understanding of employer practices and policies, delving deeper into the journey of First Nations employees. It positions First Nations voices at the centre of the narrative, ensuring employees’ experiences and perspectives shape the overall findings.
Index 2025 data is drawn from 34 organisations based right across the country and represents 12% of all First Nations employees in Australia.
Their insights and experiences provide a path towards meaningful employment outcomes for all.
Index 2025 guides employers on who to listen to, how to open a yarn to discuss ideas, and how to act by putting the right initiatives in place. This model, based on a First Nations worldview, helps to address barriers to sustainable First Nations employment.
The Theory of Change (ToC) for Index 2025, outlines the essential drivers, processes and outcomes for achieving sustainable, equitable and meaningful employment opportunities for First Nations Peoples.
Index 2025 reveals key findings and actionable insights, by providing a comprehensive analysis of employment trends, challenges and opportunities for Australian organisations and First Nations communities.
Key Findings
- Racism is pervasive and often subtle, requiring continuous awareness, education and action;
- First Nations Peoples’ voices must lead change that impacts them;
- Boards and executives need to be accountable and promote change to ensure it is long-term, embedded at a systems level and sustainable;
- Decision-making and actions need to be informed by robust data and should be measurable and achievable to ensure accountability;
- Authentic relationships with community need to be reciprocal, trust-based and respectful;
- Cultural capability needs to be contextual to the organisation and within a framework of continuous learning; and
- Pipelines to leadership with tailored training, together with visible First Nations leaders, must be prioritised.
Key Insights
Index 2025 highlights standout practices that employers should take note of. These practices make up five key domains in which employers can rethink and strengthen their approach to meaningful work for First Nations Peoples.
Maturity levels
Employers were assessed across four maturity levels, indicating the depth and effectiveness of their First Nations employment practices.
Level 1: Foundational
Basic commitment to First Nations employment with practices in progress or showing early outcomes;
Level 2: Growth
Several practices implemented with visible employment outcomes;
Level 3: Integration
Wide range of practices embedded with strong results across domains, with employment becoming integral to the business; and
Level 4: Advocacy
Leading practices, strong outcomes in all domains, and publicly supporting other employers in their journey.
DOMAIN 1
Attraction and Recruitment
To stand out, employers need to develop more strategic, culturally sensitive and holistic approaches to recruitment that go beyond meeting quotas. Employers must understand the impact of their reputation and demonstrate their commitment to inclusivity and cultural safety.
29%
Foundational
29%
Growth
38%
Integration
3%
Advocacy
DOMAIN 2
Retention, Professional Development and Leadership
Improving the retention and leadership of First Nations employees involves creating meaningful career pathways. It also requires fostering environments where First Nations employees can thrive, both personally and professionally. Retention requires a commitment to a broader strategy for career development.
26%
Foundational
35%
Growth
26%
Integration
12%
Advocacy
DOMAIN 3
Workplace Culture and Inclusion
Organisational culture is pivotal to an inclusive, supportive and respectful workplace for First Nations employees. Employers must become culturally responsive and move towards proactively embedding First Nations perspectives in their policies and practices. This should embrace First Nations ways of knowing, being and doing as strengths so employees can safely express their identity without fear of discrimination or ridicule.
15%
Foundational
79%
Growth
3%
Integration
3%
Advocacy
DOMAIN 4
Commitments and Accountability
For policies to be effective for First Nations employees, key accountability mechanisms must be enforced, with actionable targets embedded in KPIs for both line managers and executives. Employers must also take greater responsibility for delivering reconciliation promises, both organisation-wide and within individual departments.
24%
Foundational
50%
Growth
26%
Integration
0%
Advocacy
DOMAIN 5
First Nations Community Engagement
Employers have significant potential to build authentic, mutually beneficial relationships with First Nations communities. Community partnerships play a pivotal role in advancing reconciliation and improving First Nations employment outcomes.
21%
Foundational
59%
Growth
18%
Integration
3%
Advocacy
Where to From Here?
Much more must be done to create safer, more inclusive workplaces that offer meaningful work for First Nations Peoples.
To move forward, it is essential to translate policy commitments into actionable practices and make them measurable and accountable.
It is time for leaders at all levels to champion organisational transformation, making cultural safety and inclusion not just a policy but a lived reality for all employees.
This is our responsibility and our opportunity to take.
It’s Time to Listen, Yarn and Act
Explore our recommendations with the full Index 2025, to discover how your organisation can strengthen its First Nations employment practices.
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Ena’s Ngapuju [‘nana’] carrying toilet waste for kartiya at Jinparrak.
About the Artwork
The artwork used across Index 2025 is by Ena Oscar Majapula Nanaku (1957 – 2024).
Ena Oscar Majapula Nanaku was born in 1957 at Jinparrak (old Wave Hill Station) to Josephine Nyirtungali and John Jangayarri George. She is Gurindji and Mudburra. She follows her ngamayi (mother’s) and jawiji (mother’s father’s) traditional country, which is Yamarri (Cattle Creek outstation) and Warlijarrajarra (on Cattle Creek Station). Ena grew up at Jinparrak and worked in the kitchen as a young woman. She married Peter Limbunya Ngurriyila and they had two sons.
Ena and her husband worked on Cattle Creek Station and later moved to Daguragu where she lived with her five grandchildren. For a while, she worked at Kalkaringi school. Highly skilled in both Gurindji and English, Ena has worked as a translator on a number of Gurindji language and culture documentation projects with linguist, Felicity Meakins.
Ena and her younger sister, Sarah, started painting at the Karungkarni Art and Culture Centre in Kalkaringi shortly after it opened in 2011. Her Dreaming is the wayit (pencil yam), which she paints. Her artwork also includes themes such as kinyuwarra (bush onion), kamara (black soil yam), kalijpa (yellow kapok). In 2015, linguists Felicity Meakins and Erika Charola worked with Gurindji people and Karungkarni Art Centre to compile the history book, Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country. Artists were invited to travel to a local waterhole, Warrijkuny (Sambo Rockhole) for an art camp so that they could record their versions of history through paintings. Here, Ena painted the story of her ngapuju (‘nana’) working for the white cattle station owners on Jinparrak (old Wave Hill Station).
The artwork is called Ena’s Ngapuju [‘nana’] carrying toilet waste for kartiya at Jinparrak. It was made in 2015 with synthetic polymer paint on canvas.
The painting is a brave celebration of Gurindji Freedom Day - the day Gurindji people commemorate their walk away from slavery and inequality, deplorable working conditions and destitution. Ena was a young girl at the time of the Gurindji Wave Hill Walk-off on 23 August 1966. The painting celebrates that the kajirri (old women) no longer work in degrading roles such as those they endured while under the control of the Vestey Company and the kartyia (white men) who ruled their lives through force and terror. At first, Ena found it difficult to represent this story as she thought it might bring shame on her ngapuju but she then realised that theirs was a powerful story and she was proud to represent her ngapuju through this very graphic and public medium.
Ena Oscar Majapula Nanaku speaks about her painting:
“The painting is about my ngapuju (‘nana’), Judy Kutuwumpu, who used to carry a wooden yoke and buckets to get the dirty toilet waste from the kartyia, the white station people. One bucket was for soapy water and the other for dirty water. She used to take it right around, far from the main building to the jackaroos’ quarters, to the manager’s house, and then to the top and bottom quarters. She used to clean out the toilets and chuck it far away and wash the toilets, over and over again.
There were two of them working together. The other one was my other nana, Lena. They were both married to one husband, Butcher George. They used to take the buckets a long way to the west to the big creek, throw out the contents, and come back. One building used to be there - it is here in the painting – it is an outhouse. They used to put the clean buckets in there.
There’s a jackaroo in the painting just as a symbol. That kartyia’s got a hat in his hand. And the tree is a wanyarri (native bauhinia). Here on the left are the windbreaks, humpies made of branches and leaves, where people would sit by the fire in the cold season. The women and girls used to wait there for work. Every morning, they would come up from the camp and make a fire, have breakfast and stay there waiting for work. The footprints are where the two women, Judy and Lena, went all around.
I was happy doing this painting, but it made me feel sorry for the hard work they did for kartiya. You know they didn’t used to get paid. They used to work for sugar and tea-leaf, flour. Every Friday they used to get rations.”
Index 2025 Collaborators
