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, 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, and a self-inflating life vest!
Life in the Shoal ebbs and flows with the tide. We work hard then we rest, 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 an employer, so we offer a broad range of benefits and a high level of flexibility. 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 continually look for opportunities to discuss 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 boldness, self-awareness, professionalism, creativity and sociability. These values don’t just evolve by accident; but are developed through frameworks to support and develop our people.
Accelerate your career
Our employees have access to Shoal’s Career Development 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 our bi-annual 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 team, where many of our innovative ideas 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 weekly 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, including building your personal brand, financial planning and superannuation and managing your energy with better sleep, as an example.
Salary plus benefits
Our people enjoy gift vouchers and/or airline points 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 maternity and paternity leave and contribute to your professional membership fees.
We manage outcomes, not hours, so you’ll have flexibility
Shoalers enjoy a very flexible, family friendly, hobby friendly work environment. 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 walk the talk on workplace flexibility in a number of ways…to name a few:
- Working from home – even before COVID we were at the forefront of flexibility
- Arriving at work a little later so that we can attend the 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
- Working from a café, a library or the park to inspire our thinking
- Providing easy to use tools that allow us to collaborate remotely
- Fostering a culture of trust where flexibility is normalised and we feel comfortable to work in this way, knowing we’re all focused on achieving our objectives in full and on time.
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.
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 mission. 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 is working on our Indigenous Action Plan and have an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) working group that plans to achieve more through integrating EDI into our culture so that all Shoalers 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, their partners and the kids come together for Board Games night (and Board Games weekend – epic!). It’s what happens at Shoal’s Christmas party and social netball. For us, Shocial explains how we actually enjoy spending time with the people we work with…we choose to go out for dinner or have a drink on a weekend with the people we work with.
The Mario Kart competition is fierce! (We’ve seriously contemplated working a game of Mario Kart into the recruitment process), and everyone’s whole family joins us for our annual Christmas party (kids too).
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, you have the option to join us in our CBD office, in other states we have optional city facilities. We are always surrounded by restaurants, bars and places for a great coffee.
