Les, as he's known, is co-founder and director of HR tech company Covocate, which helped Gina Rinehart's Roy Hill company increase the size of its Indigenous workforce by focusing on the values held by people it wants to employ rather than focusing solely on traditional factors such as qualifications.
"They're the only big four miner that doesn't have quotas around Indigenous targets, yet they've increased their Indigenous representation using Covocate," Les says. "It's all about having the right processes and structures in place to allow results like that to happen. And we're pretty proud."
Les credits the success of Covocate to taking part in the MURRA program for Indigenous leaders at Melbourne Business School's Asia Pacific Social Impact Centre. He completed the program in April last year, when he left the West Australian public service after 10 years in various roles as an expert on Indigenous affairs.
Les co-founded Covocate while still a public servant but, once accepted into the MURRA program, made the leap to devote himself to the business full-time.
