Consult Australia’s Medium Firm of the Year, Umwelt, was a rare beneficiary of the ‘Great Resignation’, attracting more than 131 talented professionals between the peak of the pandemic and today. What is Umwelt’s secret sauce? Managing Director Barbara Crossley gives us the scoop.

Umwelt – from the German word for ‘environment’ – was established in 1993 and has grown to become one of Australia’s largest employee-owned environmental and social consulting business.

 
Umwelt’s team works on an impressive array of projects, from renewable and alternative energy technologies to defence, critical minerals, and infrastructure. But it is the work to enhance Umwelt’s culture that caught the attention of the Consult Australia Awards judges.

“We’ve always had a ‘culture focus’ that recognises we are nothing without our people,” says Umwelt’s Managing Director, Barbara Crossley.

At the start of 2020, Umwelt had a 134-strong team, footprints in four states and an ambitious growth strategy. But 2021 was also the year that the Great Resignation began to bite, with one in five Australians quitting their jobs. The “great consultant shortage of 2021” was leading to burnout across the sector, as high achieving professionals shouldered unsustainable workloads during lockdown after lockdown. But, move forward to today, and Umwelt has an “incredible team” of 265 consultants spread across 6six states and territories and eight office locations.

Consult Australia's Thinking smarter about skills paper offers a range of solutions to the “systemic” skills shortages which plague the sector. Most solutions – whether that’s to grow the pipeline of STEM graduates or reform the migration system – are reliant on government leadership. One strategy is in the hands of employers: creating diverse, inclusive and mentally healthy workplaces.

“All consultants work hard. Our biggest risk – and the biggest risk in any consultancy – is burnout,” Barbara says. “We were racking our brains about what else we could do to help people achieve balance.”

The solution – or what Barbara calls the firm’s “secret sauce” – is #MeDay. This initiative gives every member of Umwelt’s team an extra 12 days of leave each year.
“We decided to give people one day a month to do whatever makes them happy. We labelled it ‘MeDay’ because it’s all about them.”

#MeDay is not intended as compensation for excessive working hours. Rather than specifying study leave or volunteer days, #MeDay does not dictate what may be best for the individual to rest and recharge. 

Umwelt's LinkedIn page shows how people spend their #MeDays. “It’s not a competition to see who can have the biggest adventure. There are also plenty of photos of people lying down to read a good book.”

Umwelt's leaders hoped 80% of #MeDays would be taken but overshot the target to hit 84% last financial year. “We did this while maintaining our productivity,” Barbara notes.

#MeDay has also become a talent magnet. “We recruited nearly 100 people last financial year. Some wonderful people have joined our organisation because they heard about our values and our flexible working arrangements and wanted to be part of our culture.”

#MeDay is “deliberately radical,” Barbara adds. But it complements long-established workplace programs, including family-friendly policies, generous gender-neutral parental leave and an employee share plan.

Fifty-seven per cent of Umwelt’s workforce identifies as female, in comparison to the industry average of just 13%. But Umwelt’s diversity and inclusion initiatives extend beyond gender to recognise neurodiverse talent, the LGBTIQ+ community and Indigenous Australians.

“Our focus on people requires constant renewal. It’s not a set and forget strategy. It’s an ongoing process that continually asks: ‘What can we do to attract and retain the best people, with aligned values?’”

Umwelt’s broad-based employee share ownership, which kicked off in 2018, is open to any employee after a year of service. Barbara, who has been with the firm for 28 of its 30 years and is the largest shareholder, is “progressively” selling down her shares. “Our success is driven entirely by our people working together and they deserve a share of that success,” she says. 

In a delightful show of serendipity, Umwelt was presented with the Consult Australia Award for Medium Firm on the Year on its 30th birthday. “We were very excited and humbled,” Barbara reflects. “It was a wonderful gift of recognition for the whole team. We are proud of what we are doing – and none of it is possible without our people.”

This is the second in a series of profile stories about the Consult Australia Awards winners. Next up? Consult Australia’s Large Business of the Year, Jacobs.