Working together with employers
This video can also be found on YouTube here: Aussie Gardening & Cleaning
Aussie Gardening and Cleaning, St Marys NSW.
Meet Jess, owner of Aussie Gardening & Cleaning, and one of atWork Australia’s employer partners.
[Jess: Director of Operations for Aussie Gardening & Cleaning] “My name is Jess, and I’m the Director of Operations. I’m one of the owners of Aussie Gardening and Cleaning. The business has been established since 2011. However, we started full time in April 2017, and from there it’s gone boom!”
What roles are available within the business?
“So we hire two main roles at the moment, and the first role is a cleaning role. The cleaning role is really flexible. It’s based on around the availability of the person who is looking for a job and they need to have their own car and their own driver’s license to be able to be successful for the job.
Most of our cleaners are mums and they work school hours, so 9am til 2pm or 9.30am til 2pm, close to home or within a reasonable distance to get back in time to get their kids in the afternoon. We have others as well who work full time, so 8am til 4pm, 7am til 3pm, those are for cleaning clients who usually have a service early in the morning before their clients are there for the day or are a morning person like the complete opposite to me.
Our gardening roles, they’re not as flexible unfortunately, as cleaning roles.
They’re a bit more rigid. Our gardeners work 7.30am to 3.30pm, five days a week and most of the time they meet here in the office in the morning because they travel in pairs. So for safety reasons, we usually don’t let them go out by themselves. They’re always working with somebody else, which is quite good for upskilling, but also to support people’s mental health, so they’re not working alone in the workplace and they travel all over Sydney. With gardeners we require them to have experience driving a manual vehicle because all of our utes are manual, and then we support them to use the tools that we have available.”
What are the benefits of hiring a diverse team for your business?
“So the benefits of employing people from a diverse background for us have been, the ability for our clients to have people that they can relate to. The majority of our clients are either on the NDIS or through My Aged Care or have an injury through insurance claim, that kind of thing. And so our team coming from a variety of backgrounds have been able to support our clients the best because they understand what it’s like to live in the real world.
So we all have barriers, we all have things that are going on and to be able to have job providers who provide information to us as the employer and ensure that the candidate is supported as best they can in the workplace, that’s been really successful for us.”
What are some of the workplace modifications you make for parents?
“Our parents that work for us, the modifications that we make for them is we allow them to work within the timeframe that they’re available for. So we don’t want to set anybody up to fail if they’re not available to work from 3:00pm onwards, why would I schedule them a job?
We provide them with work between 9am to 2pm or 9am til 1.30pm, whatever they’re available, close to home and usually with somebody else so that they have that connection during the day because sometimes it can be quite lonely. The other thing that we help support them with these during school holidays is if they are not available to work, then we take their services or take their clients out of their calendar, but also if they are available to work longer because their children are in vacation care or supported by other people in the family, then we provide them with more work to help fill their schedule up.”
What have been some advantages of hiring employees through atWork Australia?
“The support from atWork Australia has been terrific in terms of especially for our candidates. So having someone who’s in your corner and supporting you as you’re returning to the workforce or starting a new job like that in itself is a really scary experience for anybody. And to have people who that they know and trust, that’s an added benefit for them, which then inturn helps us because they continue to stay employed in meaningful employment.
It’s also encouraged our business to grow as we now offer traineeships for team members coming through for both cleaning and gardening. If they meet the criteria that we have then successful atWork Australia candidates can then get a qualification as well as a meaningful job with us”.Connecting people and business, so both can thrive.
For more information, visit us at www.atworkaustralia.com.au