Employees in the contract are represented by characters which is free of legal jargon and akin to a comic strip format
A global engineering firm has come up with an effective method to eliminate more than 5,500 words from their employment contracts.
Indeed, Aurecon will be the first company in New Zealand to use a visual employment contract that uses illustrations to complement the text.
The idea was developed in partnership with law professor Camilla Andersen from the University of Western Australia, who set out to develop legally binding contracts in which Aurecon and its employees are represented by characters – free of legal jargon and akin to a comic strip format.
Professor Andersen said that Aurecon is the first company in Australia and New Zealand to do anything like this, and globally this is the first time a visual employment contract has been focused “at all levels of an organisation in a commercial context”.
Aurecon’s regional director – New Zealand, Carl Devereux, added that the issue of engaging talent and building trust is becoming one of the biggest competitive differentiators across many industries and companies.
The firm also decided to use the employment contract as an “exemplar of thinking innovatively” as part of its focus on shaping the future of work.
Devereux said the company looked at the employment contract and “reimagined and reframed it to be meaningful”.
“We also saw the Visual Contract as a way to demonstrate to our staff and new hires the culture we are seeking to build, particularly around two of our Aurecon Principles: Make the complex simple and Be playful with serious intent,” he said.
“What better place to start meaningful engagement than when people are hired.
“Aurecon is a New Zealand firm operating across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, South Africa and the Middle East, with a culturally diverse workforce. Meaning can often be lost between offices, countries, cultures, and languages.”
Devereux added that we should live in a world where contracts are written in accessible language — where people truly understand and feel comfortable signing an employment contract.
“A world where relationships are set-up to succeed by aligning expectations and developing the right culture at the outset,” he said.
“Too often, contracts are too complicated for their own good. Those who develop the agreement often lose sight of the original purpose.
“We also expect these contracts will lead to easier on-boarding, and a more open and transparent employee relationship.”
After launching the initiative in New Zealand in August 2018, more than 70 new employees have signed Aurecon’s new visual contracts in New Zealand.
The model has also been rolled out by Aurecon in Australia and Africa and by the end of 2018, the company expects to have 1,200 employees signed-up from the new visual contracts.
Traditional employment contracts are unnecessarily complex, particularly when you consider words like “severability”, and “contemporaneous”; and phrases such as “cumulative covenants”, “breach of duty”, “waive any moral rights” and “execute all instruments”, according to Aurecon.
The company said that by transitioning the employment contract into a visual contract format it has been able to not only dramatically reduce the number of words, more importantly, improve understanding with the removal of legalese and use of illustrations to explain concepts.
