Indigenous Psychological Services

Due to overwhelming demand on IPS' mental health services we are currently unable to provide services in Recruitment, Retention and Mentoring until 2011. Information provided below is for your information only. If you are interested in the services below please contact us to register your interest for 2011.

IPS has a successful and productive relationship with several national companies which focus on the recruitment and retention of Aboriginal people into employment. These services are relevant for companies who:

• Wish to increase the number of Aboriginal people in their workforce
• Wish to retain Aboriginal people in their workforce
• Develop or maintain an organisaiton culture that enables proactive recruitment and retention of Aboriginal people in the workplace

1. Recruitment Services

As a psychology-specific Aboriginal organisation, IPS has developed a number of unique recruitment tests which places it at the forefront of assessment within an Indigenous context. This reputation is based primarily on the fact that the Managing Director of IPS, Dr Tracy Westerman, completed her Doctor of Philosophy in the psychological assessment of Aboriginal clients. IPS therefore has continued to develop and validate a number of unique psychological tests for use with Indigenous clients focusing on the recruitment of Aboriginal clients, representing a first in the organisational psychology field.

IPS run assessment centres specifically for Aboriginal candidates. Assessment covers the following important areas:

• Work preparedness
• Aptitude Assessments
• Ability Testing
• Safety Assessment
• Team Assessment

To speak to an IPS consultant about your recruitment needs please contact IPS.

2. Retention Programs

IPS has a unique focus on the retention of Aboriginal people in the workplace. As a company this is achieved through the following mechanisms:

• Including a unique assessment protocol (the Indigenous Work Attitudes Beliefs Inventory, IWABI) within its recruitment battery that focuses on identifying issues that may impact on their long term retention of Aboriginal people in the workplace. The IWABI has attracted national interest primarily because retention is often a bigger issue for organisations than valid recruitment processes.
• IPS' comprehensive training packages ("Staying Deadly in the Workplace") which focus on the development of skills specific to retaining Aboriginal people in the workplace. This package has been developed over a period of five years and exists as twelve separate modules. The development of these modules has been based on research conducted by IPS which was able to identify the primary reasons for success and failure of Indigenous people in the workplace. All of these issues were psychosocial and cultural in nature, as opposed to being the result of a lack of skills in the job. Further, the package content has been rigorously evaluated as well as validated by Indigenous people, again making it unique within the field. Evaluations consistently indicate enormous skills acquisition as well as ability to apply new skills into both the home and work environment. IPS' evaluations are rigorous and compared at pre-workshop and post-workshop levels.