SHAPE has been recognised as a Great Place to Work, receiving certification from the global authority on workplace culture, Great Place to Work Institute.
Great Place to Work is a world-recognised survey tool that partners with some of Australia’s best employers, like Adobe, Salesforce, Atlassian and REA Group. To achieve Great Place to Work certification, SHAPE’s 526 employees undertook the Trust Index survey. The research-backed employee experience survey measures the three key relationships that drive an employee’s experience in their workplace – relationships with management, colleagues, and their job.
Employees were asked more than 25 questions, including whether the company is a great place to work. Incredibly, 94 per cent of employees at SHAPE say it is a great place to work. This compares with 56 per cent of employees at a typical Australia-based company[1].
SHAPE’s vision is to be ‘the place where everyone wants to work’. As a result, SHAPE has invested in building a constructive culture that promotes the personal and professional development, and the health and wellbeing of its people.
Kate Evans, Group Executive – People, Brand, and Communications at SHAPE, said: “We’re honoured to be certified as a Great Place to Work. People are at the heart of our strategy, and we work hard to build a culture where they feel valued and supported to be themselves.
“Despite our people growing 22 per cent in the last 12 months, and after a couple of challenging years due to the pandemic, we’re proud that another organisation has recognised the constructive culture we’ve built. It’s a reflection of our business performance and how our people feel working here.”
The Great Place to Work certification is the latest culture measurement tool to recognise SHAPE’s culture, diversity, business performance and corporate responsibility. Last year, SHAPE was named as one of Australia’s Top 10 Best Places to Work in Property, Construction & Transport by Australian Financial Review’s AFR BOSS. For seven years in a row, SHAPE has been awarded the Culture Sustainability Award for maintaining a constructive culture by Human Synergistics. Over the last 12 months, SHAPE has also maintained an impressive employee engagement score of 85 per cent, 11 percentage points higher than the average for Australian businesses in the ‘500-1000 employees’ category, as measured by Culture Amp.
We’re proud to have built a workplace where 94 per cent of employees say SHAPE is a great place to work. We know that our customer experience is a reflection of the employee experience, because we believe that people do their best work when they feel valued and supported to be themselves.
Our constructive culture is a result of our commitment to shaping an inclusive, diverse workforce and providing initiatives to promote the health, personal and professional development of our people.
Here are some of the reasons that make coming to work at SHAPE great.
The highest score from the Great Place to Work Trust Index survey is that 98 per cent of our people say SHAPE is a physically safe place to work.
The health and safety of our people and subcontractors is our number one priority at SHAPE. Our safety-first culture is driven by our goal for everyone to return home somewhat better for their experience with us. We maintain this safety-first culture through industry-leading technology innovations, people development programs and continuous improvement of our safety management systems.
When we redefined our vision to place people at the core, we focused on building and improving leadership capabilities. Through our Leadership Development Program, we defined and communicated the desired behaviours to be a SHAPE leader. In 2019, we expanded this to include training for all of our people managers.
We see this as one of the key reasons why 96 per cent of our people say management is competent at running the business and 94 per cent believe our executives fully embody the best characteristics of our company.
We know that every one of us is different and brings their own unique skills, knowledge, and experience. That’s why we foster an individual approach to careers to ensure everyone can achieve their own work and personal goals.
Our Individual Flexibility Plans allow our people to choose their own work/life balance, which includes the equivalent of an additional 12 days’ leave every year on top of annual leave entitlements. We also offer professional memberships, free training courses, and mentorship programs to support our people in upskilling. With our strong culture of supporting one another, it’s no surprise that 93 per cent of our employees say people care about each other at SHAPE.
The Great Place to Work certification is the latest culture measurement tool to recognise SHAPE’s culture, diversity, business performance and corporate responsibility.
We firmly believe that having a diverse workforce will help us to forge strong connections with our partners. This, in turn, facilitates innovation and inspires us to create better business solutions. We strive for every person to feel included, celebrated for their differences, and comfortable being themselves, sharing ideas and supporting each other.
Our approach is fostered by initiatives and policies such as our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan, Reconciliation Action Plan, Workplace Gender Equality Agency certification, and our annual salary benchmarking and review.
We’re proud to be an organisation where 96 per cent of our people say they are treated fairly regardless of their sexual orientation, and 94 per cent are treated fairly regardless of their race.
Each year, we support a range of organisations that do incredible work for those in need in Australia and overseas. In FY22, we committed close to $1 million to our charity partners, with the support and generosity of our subcontractors. As well as annual charity fundraising events and volunteer programs in each state to support local organisations, we also salvage redundant furniture from strip-out and demolition activities which we donate to charity partners, through our ReSHAPE program.
We offer volunteer leave to encourage our people to take part in giving back. In FY22, our people dedicated 4,220 hours – the equivalent of 528 working days – to social impact initiatives around Australia. This may be the reason why 95 per cent of our people are proud to tell others they work at SHAPE.
We’re growing and expanding, and always on the lookout for new talent to join our teams.
Explore our current job opportunities and help us shape our cities and regional centres.
[1] Source: Great Place to Work® 2021 Australia National Employee Engagement Study
We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land, sea, and skies. We’re grateful to those who have cared for, nurtured, and protected Country for future generations, and we pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.
