AFR Best Place to Work 2023 - Lifestyle Communities®

We are thrilled to announce that Lifestyle Communities® has been recognised as one of Australia’s Best Places to Work by the Australian Financial Review’s annual list. As a purpose-driven company, we build, own, and operate beautiful downsizer-centric communities across Melbourne, Geelong, Regional Victoria, the Bellarine, and Mornington Peninsulas. Our mission is to enable working, semi-retired and retired homeowners to live enriched lives at an affordable price.

We are delighted that our teams ethos of delivering an unrivalled customer experience that also extends to our team has been recognised and we have received this commendation. As an ASX 200 listed company, we were ranked in the top 10 places to work in the Property, Construction and Transport Category across the nation. This is our first entry and accolade in the prestigious list, and it follows our recent award for Employer of Choice for Gender Equality Citation (EOCGE) by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).

At Lifestyle Communities®, we consider culture to be central to everything we do, and for our team, our culture is brought to life through our ‘ADAP+’ program. The program was developed to highlight the ingredients that make up our unique people experience recipe. It focuses on connection, further opportunities for development and growth, work-life balance, and a recognition program tailored to the changing needs of our team.

As part of the ‘ADAP+’ program, we have our popular Lifestyle Long Weekend initiative, created in response to the impact of COVID-19 and the feedback from our team. We place value on the opportunity to enjoy more time with family and friends, and our Lifestyle Long Weekends enable staff to take off a Monday or Friday each quarter and enjoy a long weekend. This initiative has been really successful, with over 80 per cent of the team using their Lifestyle Long Weekend every quarter. In addition, our team members are able to take a day off to celebrate their birthday, and they are also entitled to a Christmas Shopping Day off.

The entire team at Lifestyle Communities® adhere to a key company value of being ‘Constantly Curious,’ and we empower our team to continuously explore, challenge and evolve their thinking in all aspects of their role to better business process and the overall homeowner experience. This is achieved with a library of over 85,000 courses available through an online learning hub, ranging from interpersonal skills, through to technical skills.

Like many organisations, we adjusted to remote work during the pandemic, and we now have the ability to work from home, the support office or one of 27 other working locations – and growing - and we are continually focused on the challenge of proximity. We have recently invested in upgrading our amazing Support Office environment, expanding our footprint and creating more opportunities for collaboration and connection.

ADAP+ is a result of our periodic review of our Behaviour and Cultural Framework, ensuring we are delivering outcomes around strategy and growth of the business. As part of this, a team engagement survey was recently conducted where all team members were asked ‘What we are doing well?’, leading to the top answers; our culture, supporting and empowering our team.

For over 20 years, Lifestyle Communities® have lived and breathed the wants and needs of the downsizer homeowner; consistently refining our approach, communities, and homes to not only meet customer needs but exceed them. A growing portfolio of over 4,500 homeowners feel included, supported, seen and heard, respected, engaged, and valued. This has led to the strong referral rate Lifestyle Communities® experiences today, and I am proud to be a part of this incredible team.