Accountable &
Collaborative Places

Landcom reports our alignment and contribution to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Landcom’s Sustainable Places Strategy is aligned to all of the SDGs. Each year we will continue to track our progress against meeting the SDGs and their respective targets relevant to Landcom and our operations.

To see our full alignment against the SDGs, and our targets and actions in FY21 to address them, refer to APPENDIX D: Sustainable Development Goals Alignment.

The Federal Modern Slavery Act commenced on 1 January 2019. The Act requires entities with an annual revenue of $100 million or more based or operating in Australia to prepare annual statements on potential modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains and disclose the steps they have taken in addressing those risks. As of FY20, Landcom is a reporting entity under this Act. Landcom’s Modern Slavery Statement is presented at APPENDIX C: Modern Slavery Statement.

In FY20 Landcom adopted a Modern Slavery Management Plan to guide the way our organisation identifies, mitigates and remediates the risks of modern slavery within our operations and supply chain.

During the reporting period modern slavery training was launched to all staff, delivered in partnership with the Supply Chain Sustainability School.

Landcom also continued its membership of the Property Council Modern Slavery Working Group throughout the reporting period. The group is represented by risk, sustainability and procurement experts. In 2019 the cohort formed a consortium to design and deliver the ‘Supplier Platform’.

The Platform provides a consistent approach to engagement on modern slavery across the industry’s shared supply chain, and leverages the consortium’s collective influence to mitigate or remediate instances of modern slavery. Suppliers complete a single questionnaire that is accessible through an online dashboard to the consortium members for whom they work, or wish to work. The Platform also provides capacity building links and resources to suppliers, and is intended to encourage and track continuous improvement, enabling consortium members to collect and evaluate data, or monitor skills gaps and supply chain advances.

In FY21 Landcom adopted a supplier pre-qualification requirement for contracts with a value over $150,0000, and all new Landcom Panel appointees, to complete the Platform questionnaire. During the year we renewed our Civil and Landscape Works panels, and tested our new pre-qualification requirements. We’re pleased to report that all new panel members (31) and suppliers with new contracts issued³⁰ over $150,000 completed the modern slavery questionnaire, providing Landcom a deeper understanding of the inherent risks within our immediate supply chain.

The questionnaire results confirmed the majority of participating suppliers included the following risk profile attributes, making their operations or supply chain susceptible to modern slavery:

• very high proportion of sub-contractors
• high volume of labour hire
• little or no oversight of suppliers’ sub-contractors or third-parties
• products and materials sourced from overseas, with little or no oversight of their production.

These findings are consistent with where the property and construction industry is likely to encounter modern slavery. Low skilled, manual, low-waged work is an area where workers are more likely to be subjected to forced labour, and where the risk of harm to people may increase. These workers may be poorly educated, lack decent work options and be more likely to be migrants from high-risk countries. This is relevant to both operations in Australia, and the overseas supply chain.

In response to this, Landcom has updated our existing integrated management system, typically used for work, health and safety or environmental notifications. We have leveraged this to include a modern slavery option, which automatically alerts key Landcom staff when an incident is lodged.

As the property and construction industry is also characterised by long and complex supply chains, stretching across many countries, we have also adopted new contract clauses for all works or engagements requiring our principle contractors or consultants to notify Landcom of any suspected or confirmed incidents of modern slavery, and to collaborate with us in any investigation or remedy.

We’re committed to driving accountability and performance along our supply chain. This means proactively engaging with our suppliers, particularly those we partner with to deliver our projects. As part of our management approach Landcom is a member of the Australian Supply Chain Sustainability School.

Launched in Australia in 2015, the School works to develop the sustainability skills and knowledge of those working in complex property and construction supply chains. Through self-assessment tools and free resources, it helps organisations of all sizes address issues such as modern slavery, sustainable procurement and materials innovation.

In FY22 Landcom will continue to deliver against its Modern Slavery Management Plan, including the development of a remediation approach.

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30 Commenced from mid-March 2021.

Landcom has continued to promote diversity and inclusions (D&I) across our business throughout FY21.

Our D&I Policy outlines our commitment to providing a workplace culture that embraces equity, diversity and inclusion at all levels of our organisation enabling staff to thrive and do their best work.

Throughout FY21 we continued to monitor the progress of Landcom’s D&I Action Plan, which focuses on the following key goals:

• create an environment that values diversity & inclusion
• increase attraction, retention, and development of staff from diverse backgrounds, initially prioritising women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, culturally and linguistically diverse people, people with disability, generational diversity and LGBTQIA+
• reduce bias and embed diverse and inclusive practices into how we work.

As part of the Action Plan, and to help enable the above goals, Landcom has adopted a suite of D&I measures and metrics, benchmarked against several Australian datasets. Our FY21 results are presented in Landcom’s Annual Report.

Landcom recognises that managing work, relationships, caring responsibilities, finances and other life needs can be challenging at times for us all. To support our staff, in FY19 Landcom introduced LifeStreet – a new Employee Assistance Program focused on wellbeing and an individuals’ life as a whole.

Accessible to all staff, LifeStreet offers usual assistance services to employees and immediate family members, and has resources and tools for staff to use in their lives more broadly.

Digitally based, users can access their own LifeStreet profile via a secure login, and use self-assessment tools to help direct them to the appropriate resources on their platform. Topics span health and wellness, family and relationships, work and career, psychological and emotional wellbeing, carers needs, financial management and planning and purpose and contribution. Users can also be connected to coaches or medical professionals – such as sleep psychologists if that is an area of personal wellbeing improvement a user may need support with.

In FY21 Landcom responded to the impacts of COVID-19 by encouraging higher engagement with LifeStreet, and making health and wellbeing classes available to staff online.

Further detail of our FY21 activities are presented in our Annual Report.