'We operate like a mean, lean machine. We're efficient, we're fast, we're nimble'

When it comes to employee engagement, Jackie Holley is proud to reveal her company’s most recent results.

“Last year… our engagement results hit an all-time high, especially coming out of COVID,” Wellington Airport’s general manager of people and culture told HRD New Zealand.

“We generally sit between 70% and 75%, which is high, but we had 88%.”

And while Holley acknowledged that it may be hard to keep engagement at the level because “that’s really high”, she added, “but we strive to continue to do better each year.”

To keep the work culture engaged, happy and positive, Holley said Wellington Airport ensures it hires people that are a really good team fit.

“Often, it's an attitudinal thing, it's just a feeling of knowing that they'll fit,” she said.

“We do comprehensive interviews; we try to make sure that there's a female and a male in each interview. We do an informal catch-up coffee, get to know them on that informal level and then we do a more formal interview. And then we'll actually get them to meet the team as well, which we think is really good, because it means the team also feel like they've got a say in who [we] hire in.”

Workplace wellbeing at the Hauora Hub

Holley runs the Hauora Hub at Wellington Airport, which organises social and wellbeing activities for employees.

“Hauora Hub stands for spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing,” she said. “So we roll all of those things into our program.”

The hub organises team building activities such surfing lessons, cooking classes, paint and sip classes, snorkelling activities and monthly team lunches.

“And at those lunches…we ask who wants to speak about a particular project or initiative or work program that they're doing, so that everyone gets to learn and understand what everyone else is doing in the business,” Holley said.

In addition, there is a Hauora Hub standard calendar of events that rotates every year and this year’s theme will be around sustainability.

“I always try to create new ideas and new things to tap into what's topical in the world,” she said. “Last year, I ran ‘The Amazing Race’, a concept that's held in Wellington City where you run around to different destination points and explore the city.

“So I took that from Wellington City and I asked the company to run it on the airport precinct. And so all of our staff were doing all these fun events running around the airport precinct, learning about different things along the way. So that was great.”

Supporting diversity at Wellington Airport

In 2022, Wellington Airport rolled out a parental leave policy that went above the current legislation in New Zealand, Holley said.

“We have 100% salary top-up, inclusive of the government payment for up to 18 weeks,” she said. “We offer KiwiSaver contributions that continue while on leave and we top up annual leave while people are on parental leave as well. That's over and above legislation. We also offer paid parental leave of two weeks and that's, again, over legislation.”

The company also monitors its gender pay gap, Holley added.

“We pride ourselves on our proactive and transparent approach to pay gap data,” she said. “I report on it, I develop and run a comprehensive diversity report that goes out to the business. It's got a whole lot of analysis in it and it talks about our pay gap year on year. I publish that to the staff and to the management and the board, so it's really transparent.

“For December 2023, our median gender pay gap was 5% compared to the national median of 8.6%. That's down 10.6% in 2002, which shows that we're moving in a really good direction and we're favourably comparing to the national median across New Zealand.”

Holley also pointed out that Wellington Airport does a lot of internal promotions.

“There's a lot of internal promotions and movements,” she said. “People learn so quickly on the job that they're constantly moving and changing roles and moving up the ladder. One example is we've got a GM that started 15 years ago at the ground, grassroots [level]. So people love to stay here.”

Advice for HR on employee engagement

If there is one thing Holley would say to other HR teams about strengthening employee engagement, it’s that “not everything costs a lot”.

“Explore your community connections,” she said. “And also, don't be afraid to be creative. And don't be afraid to engage the staff to come up with ideas themselves because that way they've got skin in the game; they're part of it.”

Holley also suggested that HR teams try to embed their policies into everything they do.

“If diversity inclusion, and fairness for instance is high on my radar, I make sure that when I review my policies – there’s about 36 or so –  I always make sure to run that lens over each policy.  And think, ‘Okay, does this policy apply a lens of diversity, inclusion and fairness?’” she said. “‘Does it read in a way that's gender neutral?’

“And then if I recruit people, I make sure, for instance, to run a gender bias decoder across the adverts to make sure I'm not tailoring with male-dominated language. And I'll also make sure there's a female or a male presence in the interview at some stage.”

Looking forward to tech changes in 2024

One of the things Holley is looking forward to in 2024 is implementing a new HRIS system at Wellington Airport that will reduce the amount of manual paperwork they have to use. So rather than sending a new hire 16 documents that they have to print, fill out, scan and return, they will have a system that is automated and seamless.

And it will also serve as a one-stop central portal for all team members internally, “which will mean that there's more time given to me and my team member to do more things that will add value to the business,” she said.

And while Wellington Airport operates on a smaller area compared to its Auckland Airport counterpart, Holley used it as an analogy to describe how efficient it can be when getting things done.

“We work really hard,” she said. “If you look at Auckland Airport, it's massive. It's got a huge footprint, lots of acres. At Wellington Airport, we're small, we've only got a certain footprint to work on. And so we're so efficient and lean because we have to be. And that translates in-house to our staff. We operate like a mean, lean machine. We're efficient, we're fast, we're nimble.”