It’s great to see you back working in a team environment with Rowan, Christian and Annabel where you all have so much history together. What have you been doing, and what drew you back?
It’s very exciting to be working with the Athena Blue Global team again. I’ve spent the last couple of years running my own interior design practice, designing liveable and environmentally friendly commercial spaces and homes across the South Coast. The Athena Blue Global team are a very knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and fun group of people, and I’m really excited to share my sustainability and wellbeing expertise with them.
Your new role is to lead Athena Blue Global’s Sustainability & Wellbeing services to our clients. What is involved with that?
My role is to help organisations identify sustainability and wellbeing targets and to develop a framework and action plan to transform their business, the way they operate, how they engage with their community, and their workplace culture. Employees are supported to do their best work when they are provided a sustainable place to work with robust well-being practices and policies.
What are you looking forward to most?
I’m most looking forward to working with business leaders. The decisions we make today have profound and long-lasting effects on the people within the organisations, as well as their families and communities beyond. The butterfly effect is real!
Where do you see the opportunities within the market?
People are a company’s biggest expense, and a healthy staff has the potential to be 3 times more productive through higher levels of goal attainment and resilience. Now more than ever, personal and community relationships, health, and wellbeing are at the forefront of our minds. By focusing on supporting an organisation’s people through industry-leading sustainable design and wellbeing practices, a business has the opportunity to unlock this potential and achieve their biggest return on investment.
What advantages did you see with the way Athena Blue Global deliver their other services and with the services you’re going to lead?
Many projects have separate consultants who work individually and then coordinate at key moments. At Athena Blue Global, the workplace strategy, accommodation support, change management, technology, sustainability, and wellbeing components are integrated and discussed holistically throughout the project to ensure that the plans’ made today are vigorous and comprehensive for your project moving forward.
What role does Sustainability & Wellbeing play in a company’s overall strategic plan?
Sustainability and Wellbeing are essential within a company’s overall strategic plan from both an employee and consumer standpoint. Workers expect that their health, both mental and physical, is considered within their workplace. Also, consumers expect the businesses they are supporting are working in an ethical way in all facets of business life; from the suppliers they buy from, to the way they deal with waste and how they support their community as a whole. Discussing and planning for these multi-faceted scenarios is vital to a business’s long-term profitability and success.
What business value have you seen from your Sustainability & Wellbeing efforts?
I have seen clients double their business turnover, increase their headcount and staff retention, increase their employee culture and happiness ratings, change their business partners’ perception of their company for the better, and enable their business to be resilient when faced with change by integrating sustainable design and wellbeing practices into their business model.
