Generational

Australians are increasingly working later in life, and the demographic structure of our workforce is continually changing. Soon, five generations will be working alongside each other for the first time in history.

Generational inclusion at GHD includes understanding the career journey of employees and achieving positive outcomes through initiatives that support the collaboration and contribution of people at all ages.

Smart Seeds

Smart Seeds started in 2012, when a group of graduating students joined GHD in Melbourne. The group had diverse skills, great energy and new ideas with the potential to transform our industry, but like many emerging leaders, they had limited connections and experience to mobilise their ideas. Recognising the potential, we designed a program to build the connections, capabilities and confidence of these emerging leaders.

Today, the Smart Seeds programs is run globally. It brings together our people, our clients and partner organisations to respond to challenges set by local industry leaders. Collaborating with teammates and mentors from different industries and disciplines within a structured innovation framework develops entrepreneurial and ideation skills.

Young Professionals

We are focused on connecting and developing our future leaders through our Young Professionals (YP) networking groups. Our YP program provides a strong support network for our early career professionals and opportunities for them to participate in a range of professional development activities. Active in every state, our YP groups help our people build strong working relationships with their peers and clients. The YP program brings together people with less than 10 years of professional experience from various disciplines to assist in developing skills.

GHD Mentoring Program

Through our formal Mentoring Program, our people can apply to be a mentor or mentee. The program matches experienced professionals with upcoming practitioners and helps people to meet their career objectives. The relationship is based on encouragement, feedback, mutual trust, respect and a willingness to learn and share.

Global Graduate Development Program

We refreshed our graduate program to create a globally aligned, structured development program balanced with a blend of experiential learning, coaching and training that will develop our graduates as future problem solvers and leaders. As part of the program, 400 GHD graduates from more than 50 offices in 10 countries gathered virtually for the our Global Graduate Forum in November 2021, aiming to connect graduates to what matters via networking and learning opportunities.

Talent management and succession planning

We have robust talent management and succession planning processes in place. With 20 percent of our employees aged 50+ we have undertaken consultation with our mature age employees to better support career planning and development needs, and to facilitate greater knowledge sharing and mentoring of younger employees.

Leveraging intergenerational diversity

Generational diversity is complex, but research demonstrates that organisations can leverage its benefits through proactive management. As part of our efforts to encourage optimal work practices that support mature employees’ participation, engagement and health at work, we are a Stakeholder Reference Group member of CEPAR’s ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research. This membership helps CEPAR to translate their research knowledge into practical business applications, it also facilitates our access to data, personnel and other resources that will help us promote successful ageing in our workplace.

Through our partnership with CEPAR and the application of its model for the effective management of age diversity (include, individualise and integrate), we are seeking to identify where our current policies and practices are effectively supporting age diversity and where improvements can be made by either changing current or introducing new policies and practices.

Furthering leveraging this model, to seek a better understanding the attitudes and perceptions towards generational diversity within GHD, we conducted qualitative interviews with our own people, and are in the process of assessing the results to further our review of policies and benefits.

“The fact that I get to work with a diverse range of people and challenges every single day is exactly why I’ve stayed at GHD for 16 years.

Over that time, I've enjoyed considerable change, and still feel energised to work with a diverse team to win work and see an idea turn into a design, then an asset that silently serves the community for decades to come.

And along the way, sharing the important lessons that were gifted with me by my mentors earlier in my career is both a responsibility and a pleasure."

Steve Fox Australian Dams Leader

“Since joining GHD as a graduate, I’ve been involved in a broad range of exciting projects including Integrated Water Management, water security planning, catchment modelling, water quality modelling, dam inspections and master planning.

I was also invited to attend one of GHD’s global Technical Summits, as well as the Summit Client Challenge. This was a fantastic opportunity to meet GHD's greatest water technical leaders from the around the globe. And being part of the graduate program meant that I’ve had the cohort’s support along the way."