Life in the Shoal
Welcome to ‘Life in the Shoal’ where you will swim with like-minded species, all working hard to maintain our culture of trust and collaboration in a safe and supportive environment. As with any ecosystem balance is key, and this is reflected in our people who display the perfect blend of high intellect, emotional awareness and sociability.
In the Shoal you will be engaged in a variety of work, challenges and learning opportunities across defence, space, energy, transport and infrastructure sectors. We harness your creativity and enable you to explore, discover and realise the skills and talents you have while encouraging you to go beyond the shallow into deep waters with our full support.
Life in the Shoal ebbs and flows with the tide. We work hard while ensuring our personal and work priorities are given the attention they need. In the Shoal your wellbeing matters. Supporting you to be your best means Shoal can be at its best.
What’s it like to work at Shoal?
As systems thinkers, you won’t be surprised to hear that we see our workplace as a complex system, with many interrelated parts and programs that impact our results. We understand that a workplace is more than just a ‘job’. We understand that for you to thrive and achieve your full potential, there are many interrelated aspects that you need from us, so we offer a broad range of benefits and a level of flexibility to meet your personal commitments. Here’s a snapshot of what life is like in the Shoal…
We’re all involved
We understand that to do your best work, you need to know how your work contributes to the company’s vision. At Shoal, we look for opportunities to share the company strategy, engage in technical and professional development, learn about the future of our profession and strengthen team bonds.
Every second Monday we meet virtually or in-person as a company for an ‘all-in’. Our team shares updates across the company, so we’re all informed. We understand that how we deliver is just as important as what we deliver. As Shoalers, we value being self-aware, creative, bold, sociable and resilient. These values don’t just evolve by accident; but are developed through frameworks to support and develop our people.
Accelerate your career
Our staff have access to Shoal’s Experiential Framework, a tool through which our team can plan their professional development to target the experiences and qualifications they require to take the next step in their career. With a framework in place and corporate support to achieve development objectives, we’re able to support our people to grow and develop.
This framework is also used to drive career progression discussions, where the growth and development of every one of our people is considered in terms of their readiness for promotion. We’ve promoted many through this process, with a commensurate salary increase, and most importantly, clarity for individuals on what is required to progress to the next level.
You can also develop your career at Shoal by getting involved in R&D as part of our Blue Water innovation team, a place where we share innovative ideas and pursue them to become reality. These projects are an excellent way for our people to use their skills in different contexts. Part of this is generating ideas, which we explore through our Ideas Club. We read a particular book or article or listen to a podcast or have a guest speaker and then come together to dissect, divulge, discern and discuss great ideas. We then take the best ideas through an assessment process to identify the concepts we want to research, develop and commercialise.
At Shoal’s Knowledge Sharing Sessions, our people are given time to focus on technical and professional mastery. Technical engineering sessions are interspersed with sessions devoted to business, professional and personal skills development and wellbeing.
Salary plus benefits
Our people enjoy gift vouchers to celebrate their work anniversaries and can choose to salary sacrifice a range of items, including salary sacrificing into superannuation, to maximise personal circumstances. We also offer additional paid leave and contribute to your professional membership fees.
We manage outcomes
Shoalers enjoy a flexible, family friendly, work environment built on trust. We understand that work and life doesn’t happen in isolation and that sometimes you need to be present in one area more than the other. We don’t consider this an employee ‘benefit’, it’s about being able to perform in and enjoy all areas of your life, work being but one of those areas. We support workplace flexibility in a number of ways…to name a few:
- Working from home – even before COVID we were at the forefront of flexibility. Our focus is to deliver quality outcomes to our clients and if you have a safe work from home option, we support this.
- Adjusting your work hours to attend a kid’s school assembly or undertake that morning ride
- Logging off part way through the day to attend an appointment and logging on later when it suits better
- Providing easy to use tools that allow us to collaborate remotely
- Fostering a culture of trust where flexibility is able to be discussed with your manager, knowing we’re all focused on our priority of achieving excellent outcomes through exceptional service for our clients.
Personal support
Shoal’s Employee Assistance Program supports Shoalers and their families with counselling through the tough times, but also focus on the more common day to day opportunities to become truly high performing. We have team members trained in Standard Mental Health First Aid. We’re also a Breastfeeding Friendly Workplace, accredited by the Australian Breastfeeding Association.
Positive change for our communities
At Shoal, we invest in programs and projects that make sense of a complex and changing world, to bring about positive change for our communities – because that’s how we fulfil our purpose. Shoal has a climate-conscious workforce, who are personally motivated to take action on environmental issues and enabled in the workplace to do the same, led by our Environment Officer. We take a ‘think globally, act locally’ approach to get involved in our community. Shoal has an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) working group that leads the development of policy and implementation of EDI into our culture and workplace. For example, they have established an Indigenous Action Plan, and provide education and awareness to Shoalers so that we can embrace, engage and thrive. Working on these types of projects and initiatives is open to staff across our company, enabling you to contribute to wellbeing and communities inside and outside of Shoal.
We have coined a new term…Shocial (social)
Shocial. It’s what happens when our people come together for regular gatherings at work for social occasions. It’s what happens at Shoal’s end of year party and social events.
The Mario Kart competitions are fierce! (We’ve seriously contemplated working a game of Mario Kart into the recruitment process).
Archive your suit and tie
You’re not expected to suit up every day. We have lapel pins to smarten any outfit and Shoal merch too! We want you to feel comfortable being you while still representing Shoal in the best way possible.
Location, location, location
Many of our team work from home or on client sites. If you’re in Adelaide or Canberra, you have the option to join us in our CBD office. We are always surrounded by restaurants, bars and places for a great coffee.
