Teressa Visits the Australian Red Cross

Thursday, March 20, 2014 – 6:15 p.m. Mt. Waverly time

By Teressa Jackson

Today, I had my final vocational day at the Australian Red Cross. I spent the morning in “Induction”, which we would call New Hire Orientation at home. It was interesting to hear about some of the human resources aspects of a not-for-profit organization in another country. Like our orientation at Rauch, theirs runs over the course of three days. The staff was very nice and welcoming to me, and interested to hear about my organization and my trip.

In an interesting connection, Chris, Red Cross’ Human Resources Director, was actually on a GSE trip to Denmark 27 years ago. I really enjoyed his perspective as he thanked the employees for making the “conscious decision” to work at the organization. He stated that an average person works at the agency for three years, and their average salary is $60,000 – so they see each person as a $180,000 investment and want to make that investment as meaningful as possible for all parties.

I enjoyed learning about some of the benefits offered to the Red Cross’ 3,000 staff. Just a few include:

• Study leave (they receive up to 10 days off for studying/coursework).
• 4 weeks holiday leave, and can “purchase” up to an additional 4 weeks.
• Up to a year of parental leave, with six weeks of that time paid for employees who have been there for a year or more.
• 10 days carers leave.
• Up to $16,050 of their salary can be used to pay for expenses such as a home loan, health insurance, and a car before tax.
• At the Red Cross’ discretion, employees may receive “Recognition Leave” at the holidays, where they will get extra time off at no cost to them. 

I later met with Bev Patterson, the National Training & Resources Coordinator of International Humanitarian Law. Bev explained the Red Cross' role in helping to ensure that parties abide by the Geneva Conventions, and I really enjoyed her passion for her work. She also made a great effort to try to guess Indiana's location correctly, including drawing me a rather impressive map. 

The Australian Red Cross has a budget of around one billion dollars. Half of that is a government contract for blood services, and the other half supports humanitarian services. Fundraising supplements the humanitarian services budget, and their 50 marketing, fundraising, and communications (MF&C) staff raise around $70 million in philanthropic dollars yearly. I was interested to learn that their MF&C department includes a division devoted to business improvement and benchmarking.

Tomorrow, I head to Bendigo for the Rotary District Conference, my grand finale prior to heading back to the homeland. 

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