Latest / 360 with Katie Woolf / Vertical Scope Group CEO David Jam highlights how businesses are supporting veterans to enter the workforce with nominations now open for the Prime Minister’s National Veterans’ Employment Awards

Transcript

Vertical Scope Group CEO David Jam highlights how businesses are supporting veterans to enter the workforce with nominations now open for the Prime Minister’s National Veterans’ Employment Awards · 360 with Katie Woolf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A bit of a change of pace because we're going
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: to find out a bit more about the Prime Minister's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: National Veterans Employment Awards and how they support the veteran
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: community as nominations are now open and one of the
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: award recipients joins me on the line. His name is
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: David jam Here is the Vertical Scope Group CEO.
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  Speaker 2: Good morning to you, David, Hi.
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  Speaker 3: Katie, how are you doing. Thanks for having me on
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  Speaker 3: this one oh four point nine Darlin.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, wonderful to have you on the show mate.
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  Speaker 1: Firstly, what does Vertical Scope Group do and how does
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  Speaker 1: it support veterans?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure, So we're a security clear professional services company,
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  Speaker 3: so we work nationally providing the defense to national security
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  Speaker 3: community a range of different services as well as industry.
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  Speaker 3: So that brings us in turn to work closely with
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  Speaker 3: the veteran community, their partners and their and supporting their families.
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  Speaker 3: So what we do is get we provide. We're basically
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  Speaker 3: preparing the people of today for the jobs of tomorrow,
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  Speaker 3: providing innovative workforce solutions and helping the veteran community. In
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Australia's first people, those who served countries, those who come
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  Speaker 3: from country.
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  Speaker 1: So tell me, what is it about veterans and their
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  Speaker 1: skills and their skill set that make them such valuable employees.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question, Katie. So veterans bring a
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  Speaker 3: huge range of transferable I guess soft and hard skills
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  Speaker 3: to all employers. And I guess also they also bring
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  Speaker 3: a really strong set of values which all smart and
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  Speaker 3: inclusive employers should embrace. So I guess back to their values,
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  Speaker 3: they've really mission focused. It's probably one of the biggest
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  Speaker 3: things that you know that I think that is sort
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  Speaker 3: of underutilized and unrecognized for us. I know that that
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  Speaker 3: aligns with our sort of company's mission of advancing Australia's
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  Speaker 3: national interests in sovereign capabilities. But it's also I guess
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  Speaker 3: they're by nature of sort of how they've been trained
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  Speaker 3: and how they've been I guess grown. They bring things
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  Speaker 3: like attitude, aptitude, their IQ, their EQUE, their grit and adaptability.
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  Speaker 3: So you take for example, like an office who's gone
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  Speaker 3: through his General Service office, the commission course, there's already
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  Speaker 3: been an investment made of like anywhere up to like
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  Speaker 3: three hundred and four hundred thousand dollars by the Commonwealth.
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  Speaker 3: So when you when you employ these veterans, you get
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  Speaker 3: all of these other additional skills like their leadership, teamwork, discipline,
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  Speaker 3: ability to prioritize, as well as their hard skills. And
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  Speaker 3: you have to remember all pretty much within the defense course,
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  Speaker 3: there's all of those roles comparable. Most of those roles
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  Speaker 3: are comparable to the civilian world, like warehousing, logistics, administration.
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  Speaker 3: It so just about I guess, embracing that and then
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  Speaker 3: providing them that extra support so that they can be
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  Speaker 3: like a stick to purpose and enter into the civilian workforce.
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  Speaker 1: Well, and it's something that's really high on the agenda
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  Speaker 1: here in the Northern Territory at the moment, because the
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  Speaker 1: territory government earlier this week released their first Northern Territory
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  Speaker 1: Defense Veterans Strategy, and it does really look at trying
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  Speaker 1: to integrate people will veterans into different roles. How the
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  Speaker 1: Northern Territory government can sort of try to, I guess
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  Speaker 1: to support them so that veterans do choose in all
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  Speaker 1: then territory as their home.
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  Speaker 2: So I think it's a really important discussion to have.
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  Speaker 1: Why is it important to recognize businesses that then employ
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  Speaker 1: those veterans.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, great question. So I think it's really important
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  Speaker 3: to recognize businesses that employ veterans because it shows that
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  Speaker 3: investing in a veteran based workforce is not only good
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  Speaker 3: for community, good for giving back to I guess the
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  Speaker 3: men and women who have served and sacrifice for our country,
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  Speaker 3: but it actually just makes really good business sense and
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  Speaker 3: from it will improve a business's bottom line, will improve
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  Speaker 3: their morale, it'll improve their values and culture, and I
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  Speaker 3: think overall we just the narrative sort of needs to
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  Speaker 3: change from the broken veteran, although we do have veterans
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  Speaker 3: that we do need to I guess care for and
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  Speaker 3: look after their service, but I think the narrative needs
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  Speaker 3: to change to the capable and competent veteran because there
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  Speaker 3: is a whole range of men and women from the
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  Speaker 3: Australian Defense Force that if they're given the opportunity, if
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  Speaker 3: they're given the opportunity to sort of skill up and
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  Speaker 3: be like retrained or created into a new employment pathway,
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  Speaker 3: they will grab that with both hands and run with it.
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  Speaker 3: And you know, we're living in an I guess an
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  Speaker 3: economy we're candidate short where workforce short sort of economy.
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  Speaker 3: So I think it's really about highlighting the for the
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  Speaker 3: businesses that are thinking outside the box highlighting the benefits
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  Speaker 3: that employing veterans brings. But also I think it's just
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  Speaker 3: really important to recognize the veterans and the value that
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  Speaker 3: they bring to the workforce because it just improves everything.
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  Speaker 1: So last year, I believe it was, you won one
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  Speaker 1: of the one of the private assays National Veteran Employment Awards.
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  Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about what you were recognized for.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so we for our work Path Australian program,
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  Speaker 3: which is a veteran training, transition and employment program that
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  Speaker 3: we offered the industry and government. We won the Excellence
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  Speaker 3: in Supporting Veteran and or Partner Employment. So that was, like,
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  Speaker 3: you know, it was first of all fantastic just to
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  Speaker 3: be in the room with a whole range of other
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  Speaker 3: veteran organizations and you know, organizations that are supportive of it.
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  Speaker 3: For us, I guess it was nice to get the
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  Speaker 3: government acknowledgment and the award for the program. I guess
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  Speaker 3: it sort of allowed us to now start offering the
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  Speaker 3: program more broadly to industry and to government areas like
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  Speaker 3: ASD and Defact, so that they have the people they
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  Speaker 3: need to grow and protect that country in advance interest.
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  Speaker 3: And I guess the other really great thing about it,
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  Speaker 3: and it really speaks to the collegial nature of the awards,
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  Speaker 3: which was heavily supported by both sides of politics, with
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  Speaker 3: strong minister and support. Mc gosling was up there, a
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  Speaker 3: range of others were up there as well. But it
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  Speaker 3: allowed us to start collaborating and networking with like amazing
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  Speaker 3: organizations like the Bravery Trust, RSL Queensland you know who
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  Speaker 3: we're in the same category with, and that's the resulted
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  Speaker 3: in us having some now amazing news strategic partnerships with
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  Speaker 3: them where we can collaboratively assist them and work with
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  Speaker 3: the veteran community. So you know, I guess that speaks
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  Speaker 3: to the nature of the night, you know, around celebrating
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  Speaker 3: businesses that embrace veterans who share the same sort of values,
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  Speaker 3: who can come together and build something new based around
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  Speaker 3: that common goal, as well as celebrating the veteran community
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  Speaker 3: and veterans success.
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  Speaker 2: Well there you go.
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  Speaker 1: Congratulations to you, a big congratulations on the work that
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  Speaker 1: you do.
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  Speaker 2: How can people nominate?
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  Speaker 1: I know that the nominations for this year's Veterans Employment
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  Speaker 1: Awards are now open, So where can people go to
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  Speaker 1: nominate a business.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, great question. So there's eight award category that's really
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  Speaker 3: easy for people to nominate. They just have to head
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  Speaker 3: to Veterans Employment dot gov dot au and search for awards.
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  Speaker 3: So just Veterans Employment dot gov dot au, search for
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  Speaker 3: awards and they'll have no problem in finding that, Katie.
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  Speaker 3: And it'd be great to see a whole range of
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  Speaker 3: new businesses and a whole range of other successful stories
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  Speaker 3: there and celebrate that altogether.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, good on you.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, David for your time this morning. I
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  Speaker 1: really appreciate you having a chat with us.
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  Speaker 3: Likewise, Thanks Katie, thanks for the support.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you.