Winning Secrets: Employee satisfaction goes up by 15% at Aurecon upon implementing work-life harmony strategy

This was through its 'Ways of Working' approach which places trust in people to manage their work in a way that serves the needs of their team members and clients.

Aurecon is a design, engineering and advisory company, with the purpose of bringing ideas to life, and co-creating with its clients a better future for people and the planet.

At the third annual edition of Employee Experience Awards - Singapore in 2023, Aurecon won the coveted bronze award for 'Best Work-Life Harmony Strategy'.

To celebrate this milestone, we catch up with Ashley Yeo, People Experience Business Partner, Asia, Aurecon, on establishing a strong foundation of support and accountability from the People team in order to successfully embed behaviours around work-life harmony.

Q How do you ensure your employee experience initiatives are aligned with your business objectives?

At Aurecon, we pride ourselves as an organisation that cares about our employees. Our prominent feature is our work-life harmony strategy, which is embedded in our organisation’s 'New World of Work' strategic priority as a philosophy and way of working. This approach helps us attract and retain a diverse range of talent, enables teams to work together effectively, and supports our people to thrive. It provides employees the autonomy and flexibility to manage their personal commitments while continuing to build a career with us. At the core of this approach is trust in our people to manage their work in a way that serves the needs of their team members and clients.

Q Can you provide examples of how the organisation has invested in the employee experience?

Regular engagement with leaders and the ability to be nimble and make refinements to cater to the specific needs of our nine Asia locations were critical for a successful roll-out of our Aurecon Ways of Working.

This includes investing time and effort to conduct frequent stakeholder engagement sessions, leadership workshops, curating the initiative to suit each location, and getting regular feedback through surveys for continuous improvement. This is to ensure that stakeholders were engaged in a shared vision to enhance the employee experience at Aurecon through our work-life harmony strategy.

Q What are some of the key challenges that you faced in implementing your EX initiatives, and how did you overcome them?

Many of our leaders were initially resistant and fearful to introduce the option of remote working as they felt that they might lose control of their teams, leading to a drop in productivity. 

To successfully embed this new approach, we need to establish a strong foundation of support and accountability from the People team (PT). We aimed to inspire leaders, managers, and teams to learn and adapt, taking a holistic view of our ways of working. This was critical to enable us to continue delivering value to our clients while helping our people achieve a successful work-life harmony approach.  

Q Do you have processes to measure the effectiveness of your EX initiatives, and what metrics do you use to evaluate success?

The successful implementation of our work-life harmony strategy has garnered positive feedback from employees across Asia through our employee engagement survey results. Our measure of remote work satisfaction assesses whether people feel they have a satisfactory amount of freedom to work remotely. The results showed that since the implementation of the work-life harmony strategy, employee satisfaction has increased by 15%. Furthermore, the higher degree of freedom to work remotely has had a positive spillover effect on other aspects of staff welfare, such as employee engagement, support from management and freedom to express opinions.   

Q Finally, what role do leaders and managers play in driving a beautiful employee experience, and how are they held accountable for the success of these initiatives?

To ensure our leaders felt competent in leading the 'Team Charter'* conversation successfully, the PT conducted workshops for this purpose. The workshops were curated to suit the management style of each office so that leaders/managers felt comfortable embracing the new change.  

We also emphasise that the Team Charter is not a one-off activity but an ongoing and evolving conversation that takes place whenever there is a new member or when a new project starts. Leaders/managers can see the positive impact on staff morale. Staff know that their opinions are being heard and this helps shape their work environment in a way that works best for them and their teams.  

*A document to agree on the behaviours and practices committed by the team to ensure that our clients remain at the forefront while we roll out our work-life harmony strategy

Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section!

Photo / Provided by Aurecon