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Project Lotus: protocols for an inclusive, safe, and secure workplace

Cattle Dog Digital is the first Lotus Certified organisation. This meant working with Cattle Dog’s founders, employees and leadership team to establish a set of safer workplace protocols that would extend beyond the HR policies, and compliment the company’s vision and values.
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Introducing Project Lotus

Source: Australian Human Rights Commission

Introducing Project Lotus

End workplace harassment with a core protocol for awareness and action.

Project Lotus is a non-profit division of Cattle Dog. Our mission is to prevent workplace harassment. We do that by raising awareness of staggering workplace harassment statistics and sharing a values protocol to guide and improve workplace behaviours.

Our inspiration comes from Cattle Dog’s founders, who created a values protocol for employees that complement the company’s HR and strategic goals. The protocol is shared and agreed with employees in a written contract that establishes the company’s expectations of behaviour and outlines consequences of non-compliance.

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Introducing Project Lotus

What is workplace harassment?​

Workplace harassment can take many forms:

It might occur as physical harassment, sexual harassment, psychological harassment, discriminatory harassment, verbal harassment, power harassment, retaliation harassment, or cyberbullying.

Sometimes it is loud and overt.

Sometimes it is quiet and sneaky.

All forms are damaging.

To the individual, your brand, sales, and business relationships.

Why adopt Project Lotus

The first Project Lotus-certified organisation

Cattle Dog’s Managing Director, Luke Orell, has almost 20 years of corporate experience. In that time, he’s heard countless distressing stories of workplace harassment that damaged individuals’ health, happiness, earning potential, and careers. As the leading principal of his own firm, he committed to creating a protocol to prevent workplace harassment.

An executive sponsor of Project Lotus, Luke made the development of Cattle Dog’s core values a crisp priority. The company’s values framework was created with input from the entire team and is reviewed annually. The framework is the basis of Project Lotus: a protocol to help create a workplace culture and environment that is inclusive, safe, and secure for all employees.

Why adopt Project Lotus?

Everyone deserves to feel included, safe, and happy at work. And, as the world’s best-performing organisations know, happy employees are motivated, productive employees. Business performance, employee engagement, and morale aside, every employer has a legal responsibility under Occupational Health and Safety and anti-discrimination law to provide a safe workplace.

What does being Lotus-certified mean for your organisation?

Becoming a Lotus-certified organisation means committing to a tangible framework, shared with
employees, to create an inclusive, safe, and secure workplace. It requires including the mandatory Lotus protocols in your company’s values and sharing those expectations with your employees. It also demands standing by those protocols; no matter how uncomfortable the conversation.

Ending workplace harassment takes all of us working together.

Are you ready to become Lotus-certified?

Get Lotus Certified

Lotus Protocols

Cattle Dog established ten protocols by which they live and run their business. These protocols form the core of our values and are understood and honoured by our entire team.

Organisations must implement the first five mandatory protocols to become Lotus-certified. We encourage every Lotus-certified organisation to include its unique values in the protocol to help create a culture that supports an inclusive, safe, and secure workplace.

Mandatory Project Lotus Protocols

  • 01
    Absolute. Zero. Tolerance. Absolute zero tolerance for any form of harassment. This protocol extends to customers, partners and the collective. If you see something, say something. Bark and stand up for what's right!
  • 02
    Cultivate integrity. Do the right thing when no-one is watching. Practice outstanding work ethics, including sound judgment, honesty, dependability, and loyalty in all actions.
  • 03
    Foster authenticity and shared values as part of your organisation's culture. Genuinely act to represent your workplace values.
  • 04
    Act with compassion, act with care. Show empathy and compassion for everyone. Look out for one another.
  • 05
    Learning from your failures is part of success. It's what you do after you fall down that matters. Remind teams that failure is part of success. Encourage employees to "own" mistakes when learning happens and not shy away from difficult pathways that often offer rich growth opportunities.

The Cattle Dog Project Lotus Protocols

  • 06
    Live to the standard of 'best of breed'. Use your skills and knowledge, give your full attention to tasks and execute projects with intention.
  • 07
    Autonomy is a gift. We trust and believe in our pack. Cattle Dog does not keep their employees on a short leash. Cattle Dog believes in giving everyone freedom to create their destiny.
  • 08
    The waves we don't catch matter as much as the waves we do. The opportunities we choose not to pursue are as critical as those where we engage.
  • 09
    This kennel has no room for ego. Our culture doesn't tolerate narcissists, egomaniacs, micromanagers or dictators.
  • 10
    Stay alight, don't burn out. We encourage employees to take personal accountability to refuel when needed. As a high-performance pedigree team, our customer impact relies on everyone playing their role to the max. How we self-manage to sustain ongoing performance is part of what differentiates our brand.

Project Lotus

Be a Project Lotus Certified Organisation

Join Cattle Dog in becoming Lotus Certified.

Get Lotus Certified