The importance of understanding Indigenous employment in the Indigenous business sector

Abstract

Indigenous employment has been the subject of numerous policies in Australia, with governments aiming to increase the workforce participation rate amongst Indigenous people in recent years. Indigenous‐owned businesses, formally defined as businesses that are at least 50% Indigenous‐owned, have been demonstrated in previous research to maintain substantially higher levels of proportional Indigenous employment than non‐Indigenous businesses. This suggests that Indigenous‐owned businesses maintain work environments that are more supportive of and conducive to Indigenous employment, meriting the influence of Indigenous‐owned businesses' workplace practices in future Indigenous employment policy design. Using administrative data from two Indigenous business registries (Black Business Finder and Supply Nation), this paper provides an updated empirical analysis of the Indigenous business sector. This paper demonstrates that Indigenous‐owned businesses of all sizes, industries, locations and profit statuses consistently average proportional Indigenous employment rates higher than the Indigenous proportional population. Of all the people employed in Supply Nation‐listed businesses, over 35% are Indigenous. The potential impact of the Indigenous Procurement Policy is illustrated by differentials in the size of businesses and their capacity to employ Indigenous staff. This paper provides analysis of the Indigenous business sector that can inform future policy direction for both Indigenous employment and Indigenous business policies.

“It's Self‐Determination. Blackfullas Making Right Decisions for Blackfullas”: Why Indigenous‐owned businesses create better Indigenous employment outcomes

“…Moreover, often these studies have a broader focus than purely Indigenous employment, which whilst often is interrelated with factors researched by these studies, does not necessarily articulate in specific policies and practices associated with Indigenous employment. Drawing on the findings of Eva et al (2023), it clearly demonstrates that Indigenous employment in the Indigenous business sector is not limited or constrained to certain areas of the sector at large. It is for this reason that this study focusses on the breadth of the sector, to learn from Indigenous businesses as to how they create such strong Indigenous employment outcomes.…”

“…Products or services that have embedded Indigenous knowledge create a comparative advantage for employment for Indigenous people with that relevant knowledge and/or skills (Blackwell et al, 2019). This would help explain why certain industries may maintain strong Indigenous employment outcomes, but as Eva et al (2023) show, these strong outcomes are not industry-specific. For non-Indigenous businesses and institutions, they may not similarly value Indigenous knowledge (Blackwell et al, 2019) and therefore can be viewed as disingenuous by Indigenous people where their motivations for Indigenous employment are a representational pursuit rather than one that seeks the value Indigenous employees could bring to their organisation (Brown et al, 2020;Minderoo Foundation et al, 2022).…”

“…This is reiterated by Jordan and Leroy-Dyer (2023), and expanded upon further by describing the differences between Indigenous and "Western" forms of leadership, arguing Indigenous leadership maintains a more collective approach opposed to the individualistic. Looking at the pre-existing literature, we can then see potential drivers of the findings of Hunter (2015) and Eva et al (2023), where Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations maintain divergent workplace and governance practices.…”

“…Indigenous businesses have been shown to maintain high levels of Indigenous employment in comparison with non-Indigenous businesses, and the overall proportional Indigenous population rate (Hunter, 2015). This is true across industry type, business location, profit-status and business size (Eva et al, 2023). This shows that rather than Indigenous employment in the sector being associated with demographic factors, that it may be driven by workplace and recruitment factors of Indigenous-owned businesses.…”

“…In a recent analysis of Supply Nation data (Australia's largest register of Indigenous-owned businesses), it showed that over 35 per cent of employees with Supply Nation businesses are Indigenous people (Eva et al, 2023). It is this context that motivates this study to focus on the strengths of the Indigenous business sector and to articulate what it does to create strong levels of Indigenous employment, thereby highlighting the potential deficits of policy and practice in relation to Indigenous employment from non-Indigenous-owned businesses.…”