First Nations sales manager remembers her roots

Carmen Kootoo at work


by Diane Jermin, The Globe and Mail

When Carmen Kootoo landed a job in a call centre with telecommunications company Northwestel Inc. more than 17 years ago, it was a pivotal point in her life.

As the brand-new mother of daughter Andrea Gray, she was able to stay close to family in her Nunavut hometown of Iqaluit. Plus the company encouraged her to grow, sending her on courses to their Northwest Territories centre in Yellowknife and to “the south” to develop her skills.

Now a sales account manager, Ms. Kootoo is also active in Northwestel’s community outreach, focused on partnering with aboriginal companies and recruiting aboriginal employees.

“My mother was born and raised in Iqaluit and my father is from Quebec so I’m half Inuit,” Ms. Kootoo says. “It’s important for our work force to represent the community.”

Whitehorse-based Northwestel, a subsidiary of Bell Canada, has been named one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers for 2012 – along with Calgary’s Newalta Corp., an industrial waste management and environmental service company, and Winnipeg’s Boeing Canada Operations Ltd., a manufacturer of aircraft components and a subsidiary of Boeing Co. of Chicago.

These employers are among those that have developed initiatives to create meaningful engagement with aboriginal communities, including recruitment, employee retention, training and skills development, often partnering with band councils, schools and community organizations. They offer a myriad of post-secondary scholarships, apprenticeships, summer student positions and mentoring to help individuals become qualified for jobs.

Key to their success has been aboriginal awareness training to educate employees about the history and culture of aboriginal people – and to debunk myths.

“Aboriginal people are very wary of who’s coming from the outside,” says Tom Erasmus, a member of the Goodfish Lake First Nation in northeastern Alberta and an aboriginal consultant to Newalta. “When you’re engaged with first nations, don’t give the message, ‘We’re new, trust us.’ You have to put in the time and have skilled people who know how to engage. That means taking off the corporate hat and having a community spirit. Sometimes that’s hard for business people to do.”

While Mr. Erasmus believes training and job opportunities are important, he thinks it’s even more important to partner with aboriginal groups in building businesses to become part of the bigger business world.

“Companies need to move beyond just being the employer,” Mr. Erasmus says. “You have to look at the overall development challenges of aboriginal groups as well as at the culture and past issues that are still on our plate with today’s society.”

Jason Bilsky, chief financial officer and vice-president of corporate services for Northwestel, advises companies to think of it as a long-term investment with the goal of ultimately becoming part of the fabric in a community. While business should understand that the benefits will come, that shouldn’t be the primary focus up front. Since Northwestel’s talent pool has a high percentage of aboriginal population, they have to find ways that make sense for aboriginal people to work in their company. While the lack of formal education has been a challenge, Mr. Bilsky says “it’s not a gap in their smarts.”

“It’s almost as a paradigm shift for us as a company to get past that,” he says. “We have to find these people who are dedicated to being in the North that want to be part of the team, and if we can, we’re better off to grow them. We’ll go to great lengths to foster that. It comes down to attitude and aptitude and less about the diploma.”

Northwestel posts information about dates that are important to aboriginals on their communications networks and conducts employee aboriginal awareness training about what’s important at that point in time. As well as aboriginal employees, the company also has several aboriginal business partnerships specially created to do business on their terms.



Source: TheGlobeandMail.com