WiredCo. has made its public holidays fully flexible with the launch of its ‘Public Holidays Just Got Personal’ initiative.
The initiative, which aims to respect cultural diversity, allows staff to choose when and how they take them.
David Kennedy, WiredCo. partner, said: “The more diverse our business becomes – not just in ethnicity, but also intergenerational working, beliefs and ability – the more obvious it has become that the fixed traditional public holiday approach was no longer right.”
The agency’s move follows a recent study by Perkbox Australia that reveals 58% of respondents want flexibility on how they use public holidays. It also concurs with changing attitudes to handling Australia Day, which has become a sharp focus for many businesses over the last five years.
Angela Hampton, founder and managing director of WiredCo., said: “For us, it wasn’t just about finding a solution to Australia Day. We also had to think about people who don’t celebrate Christmas and Easter for religious reasons and those who don’t celebrate The King’s birthday because they don’t place value in a monarchy.”
“When we consulted our team, we discovered they were 100% in favour of ‘Public Holidays Just Got Personal’ because it showed trust, cultural-connectiveness and helped them create a personal working style that was respectful and effective for them,” Michelle Hampton, WiredCo. partner.
Launching the initiative didn’t come without challenges for the agency. Nikki Cranley, WiredCo. CFO, said: “We’re an independent business, so any change presents a host of questions.
“We had to think about how to track these days, how best they accrue, how the team take them and how they communicate that flexibility with their teammates and clients.”
The agency created WiredWellness to ensure staff not only get support in their mental and physical wellness, but also the flexibility to do their job in the most effective way and was another step in deepening employee engagement and building trust.
Hampton noted: “WiredWellness wasn’t a response to the pandemic lockdown working environment, it started long before that. We wanted to give our team space to decompress, so we created our monthly ReWired events. Then we gave our people access to a counselor to help them manage their mental wellbeing, so we made access to that unlimited.”
The agency was an early adopter of remote working from anywhere in the world and last year, offered parental leave for pets, aptly named Pet-ernity.
Kennedy said: “We’re proud to say that WiredWellness has helped us achieve 95% team happiness, 97% job satisfaction and stabilised retention at 81%. And we firmly believe it’s helped us commercially, with the business almost quadrupling in three years.”
–
Top image: WiredCo. team