Enabling our communities to thrive, with our community of passionate and incredible people

Downer is proud to be a leading provider of integrated services across Australia and New Zealand, supporting our customers to create and sustain the modern environment.

Our continued success relies on our people. We strive to create an inclusive and flexible workplace that is both challenging and fulfilling, and we recognise and value the experience, skills, knowledge and strengths of our people who deliver for our customers and business.

With over 30,000 people across our business, our success is based on the unique contributions each employee brings to the team. Celebrating these differences helps to engage and motivate our people towards greater innovation, creativity and inclusiveness. Our people can be their best by bringing their most authentic selves to work every day.

Supporting our people to grow and thrive

As a large organisation that has a footprint in all corners of Australia and New Zealand, we value the unique opportunity of providing our people an environment in which they can be focus on and own their development and thrive to be their best, whole selves. Here are just a few of our initiatives and focus areas designed to support our people:

A focus on gender equality and representation is key in our Inclusion and Belonging (I&B) strategy. We recognise our responsibility in ensuring we have diverse representation across our business - from the Board level, leadership and management roles, general employee population and non-traditional roles. Our I&B Strategy ensures we have targets and strategies to bring this to fruition.

Flexibility is a part of our everyday culture at Downer. Across our workforce, flexibility looks different for every role and every person, because just the way every person is unique, so are their needs. Flexibility across our business is always evolving – we actively listen to what our people are telling us works, and doesn’t work, through employee engagement surveys to ensure we stay on the forefront of ensuring our people have a healthy work-life balance.
Our THRIVE Program is designed to empower women within the company, foster their professional growth, and address gender disparities. Thrive is an exciting initiative for Downer as a collaborative leadership, professional development, learning, wellness and capability program that has the specific objective of cultivating and developing talented women at all levels across our business.
Our women's network EmpowHER aims to create a supportive and inclusive environment for women across the organisation. The network provides a platform for female employees to connect, voice their thoughts, share experiences and receive guidance, ultimately fostering their professional growth and career.
LEAD (Leadership Excellence at Downer) offers our frontline and function leaders the opportunity to undertake a formal development program, focused on developing and strengthening core leadership capability, resulting in a Certificate IV in Leadership Management.
Our regular Share & Learn sessions provide our people with the opportunity to gain insight and knowledge across a multitude of topics in short, interactive bites.
The work that Downer does is almost as diverse as its workforce. Downer is constantly looking to support its people to gain new skills through formal development programs, engagement in different areas of our business through Graduate and Apprenticeship programs, mobility within the business and formal secondment opportunities.
Downer’s impact on the communities we service is vast, and being conscious about and giving back to the communities in which we work in is a key part of our purpose and values. Through our focus on Sustainability, Zero Harm policies and practices and community partnerships, we ensure we keep our people and communities safe.

Our commitment to Reconciliation

Our vision for reconciliation is one where all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are treated equally in all relationships, their cultures and histories are celebrated and respected, and they have equitable career opportunities so that they may have secure economic prosperity. With more than 30,000 employees and a footprint covering all corners of Australia, Downer’s operations are deeply embedded in local communities.

We understand that our footprint provides a unique platform to drive real change in the communities we operate in, and we honour this responsibility by focusing on making a difference through our Reconciliation Action Plan, partnerships, sponsorships and donations.

Read more about our Reconciliation Action Plan here, and learn more about our partnerships, sponsorships and donations here.

Thousands of people. Millions of stories. Join our team of passionate, diverse and supportive people that make a difference in our communities every day.

ILS Manager