Lifestyle Communities® Rated Amongst Australia’s Best Places to Work

Friday, 21 April 2023

Business for purpose, Lifestyle Communities®, has been recognised as one of Australia’s Best Places to Work following the release of the Australian Financial Review’s annual list.

Lifestyle Communities® builds, owns, and operates beautiful downsizer centric communities across Melbourne, Geelong, Regional Victoria, the Bellarine, and Mornington Peninsulas. Complete with best-in-class amenities its mission is to enable working, semi-retired and retired people over 50 to live enriched and independent lives at an affordable price.

Their ethos of delivering an unrivalled purchaser experience extends to their team and the developer has been duly awarded with their latest commendation.

The ASX 200 listed company, based in South Melbourne, ranked in the top 10 places to work in the Property, Construction and Transport Category.

It’s the developer’s first entry and accolade in the prestigious list and follows their recent award for Employer of Choice for Gender Equality Citation (EOCGE) by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).

The Australian Financial Review considers a number of factors including Flexibility, Equality, Wellbeing and Growth, while also asking entrants to highlight their Most Innovative Work Practice.

“Culture is central to everything we do and for our team, our culture is brought to life through our ‘ADAP+’ program,” said Simône de la Harpe, Head of People Experience at Lifestyle Communities®.

“The program was developed to highlight the ingredients that make up our unique people experience recipe. It focuses on connection, further opportunities for development and growth, work-life balance and a recognition program tailored to the changing needs of our team.”

Forming part of the ‘ADAP+’ program is the organisation’s popular Lifestyle Long Weekend initiative, created in response to the impact of COVID-19 and the feedback from the team, with value being placed on the opportunity to enjoy more time with family and friends. Lifestyle Long Weekends enable staff to take off a Monday or Friday each quarter and enjoy a long weekend.

“The Lifestyle Long Weekend offers our team four extra paid days off throughout the year on top of their annual leave,” added de la Harpe.

“We encourage staff to relax, recharge, socialise or reconnect with loved ones and explore their personal interests. It’s been a really successful initiative with over 80 per cent of the team using their Lifestyle Long Weekend every quarter.”

In addition, team members are able to take a day off to celebrate their birthday and are also entitled to a Christmas Shopping Day off.

Adhering to a key company value of being ‘Constantly Curious,’ Lifestyle Communities® empowers their team to continuously explore, challenge and evolve their thinking in all aspects of their role to better business process and the overall homeowner experience.

This is achieved with a library of over 85,000 courses available through an online learning hub, ranging from interpersonal skills, through to technical skills.

Other benefits include the ability to work from home, like many organisations, Lifestyle Communities® adjusted to remote work during the pandemic.

“Working from home and the ability to ‘flex’ the various office-based and customer-facing roles is now embedded in everyday ways of working.”

With over 27 working locations – and growing - Lifestyle Communities® is continually focused on the challenge of proximity.

“We have recently invested in upgrading our amazing Support Office environment, expanding our footprint and creating more opportunities for collaboration and connection,” de la Harpe continued.

ADAP+ is a result of Lifestyle Communities® periodic review of their Behaviour and Cultural Framework, ensuring they are delivering outcomes around strategy and growth of the business.

As part of this, a team engagement survey was recently conducted where all team members were asked ‘What we are doing well?’, leading to the top answers; their culture, supporting and empowering their team.

For over 20 years, Lifestyle Communities® have lived and breathed the wants and needs of the downsizer homeowner; consistently refining their approach, communities and homes to not only meet customer needs, but exceed them.

A growing portfolio of over 4,500 homeowners feel included, supported, seen and heard, respected, engaged, and valued. This has led to the strong referral rate Lifestyle Communities® experiences today.