Impact of Engagement in Front-Line Service Roles on the Subjective Well-being of Indigenous Employees

Indigenous (Aboriginal) populations in advanced economies such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US are severely disadvantaged in comparison to wider society across most socioeconomic, health and wellbeing indicators (Manning, Ambrey and Fleming, 2016).For example, in Australia when compared to the community at large, Aboriginal members of the Australian society are still overrepresented in key social areas such as infant mortality rates, poor school attendance, literacy and numeracy levels, and labor force participation (Commonwealth of Australia, 2017).Moreover, according to 'Australia's Health 2016', a recent report by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2016), there are large gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on many health and well-being measures, after adjusting for differences in age structure.However, effective solutions to this ongoing policy concern is further complicated in Australia because of the long history of endemic racism towards the Indigenous community.Racism is known to be intrinsically linked to Aboriginal health and subjective wellbeing (e.g.Mellor, 2004; Dury, 2010;Ziersch, et al., 2011) so its presence further exasperates the inequities, injustices and lack of opportunity facing these citizens.In an effort to help remedy the situation, during 2008, an accord was signed between the Australian Federal and State governments with the aim of taking affirmative action across a broad range of social and economic areas designed to help improve the lives of Aboriginal Australians.This initiative, also known as 'closing the gap' indicates some progress in certain areas however the most recent Closing the Gap Report (Commonwealth of Australia, 2017) still shows there is a long way to go in improving the lives of Aboriginals.One area that still needs to be addressed is increasing Aboriginal work participation rates because high unemployment is identified as a primary factor underpinning many of the disadvantages these members of society face (Daff and Pearson, 2009).Boosting Aboriginal employment rates has become a key policy measure adopted by successive Australian governments in more recent years.This is an important policy setting because being employed is known to have positive benefits across many domains of the lives of Aboriginals (Biddle, 2010;Pearson and Daff, 2010;Daly and Gebremedhin, 2015).However the theory of social exclusion, largely underpinned by rejection and ostracism (Wesselmann et al., 2016), implies that if the level of racism in Australian society still exists this has the potential to dampen the positive outcomes associated with workforce participation.In the context of this research, three questions are examined, namely: (1) does racism directed towards Aboriginals exist with the Australian work setting, (2) are some employment types more susceptible to such activity than others, and (3) does employment is specific work settings make Aboriginals more resilient to racism than others?Answers to these questions could provide the clue to policy and industry actions designed to improve Aboriginal wellbeing and overall life satisfaction, and in turn help to remedy injustices of the past that are still omnipresent today (Mellor, 2004).The core proposition that underpins this research is that the healing process for Aboriginal persons, and in turn the wider Indigenous community, is not only linked to participation in the workplace but also a function of the specific employment role undertaken.In this regard, meaningful engagements with their Non-Indigenous counterparts in the workplace and other stakeholders such as customers potentially lead to greater self-esteem and self-efficacy for them, as well as reinforcement of a positive self-identity.Specifically, it is postulated herein that service

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