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Many employers' reconciliation and cultural inclusion efforts are failing to achieve meaningful change, due to widespread fears of having difficult conversations, according to authorities in the space.

Evolve Communities directors Aunty Munya Andrews and ally Carla Rogers, who have worked with more than 3,500 organisations, note that despite a surge in Reconciliation Action Plans this decade, racism against First Nations Australians has been rising, and more than half still experience racial abuse at work.

One reason why some employees still respond to cultural awareness and reconciliation initiatives with an attitude of, "Here we go again, aren't they over it yet?" is that they don't realise the ways in which past injustices continue to manifest as present-day problems, Aunty Munya tells HR Daily.

Reconciliation Week is a good time to acknowledge "how much we have to learn from First Nations peoples and wisdom and culture, and also how much we share in common", Rogers adds. This is why employers should seize opportunities to help people consider why they might be resistant or afraid, or paralysed by uncertainty about what they should be doing...