SixPivot and Slalom claim top honours in AFR BOSS best workplace list
The consulting sector has come up trumps on this year’s list of best workplaces compiled by the AFR, with SixPivot named overall winner and Slalom taking home the medium bracket award.
As judged by behavioural science consultancy Inventium, the annual AFR BOSS Best Places to Work list also selected SixPivot as the top company in the ‘technology’ category, while public sector consultancy Grosvenor received the honours in the ‘professional services’ category.
Alongside Grosvenor and Slalom, other consultancies to feature in the top ten of the latter section included leadership & organisation firm Bendelta, global management consultancy Kearney, design boutique Meld Studios, and culture & leadership development advisory People Measures.
SixPivot
Established in Brisbane in 2015 by former DWS products & practices director Faith Rees, SixPivot is a full stack software development and cloud consultancy which supports “startups, corporates, government and venture builders to conceptualise, build and modernise operations, platforms and delivery practices.” The company has a headcount of around 40 professionals, earning it the ‘small organisation’ title.
In awarding it the overall honours, the judges noted SixPivot’s “radical transparency” as to its HR approach, with the firm having publicly released its employee handbook which includes SixPivot’s work and promotion policies, employee entitlements, professional development programs and salary bands. The result has been a 120 percent-plus increase in the number of job applicants in a tight tech talent market.
“SixPivot’s collaborative employee handbook is a great example of making knowledge retrieval easy but also collaborative through having a handbook that is open source, thus allowing all employees the ability to update it,” stated Amantha Imber, the founder – and reluctant current CEO – of Inventium, which has also been previously lauded for its people and workplace innovations.
Slalom
Meanwhile, global digital consultancy Slalom – having built its local headcount to more than 330 professionals in just four years since arriving down under – took out the ‘medium-sized’ organisation bracket as Australia’s best place to work, with the implementation of a rigorous internal leadership feedback and assessment tool credited for enhancing the firm’s work culture.
“I was impressed with Slalom’s approach to obsessing over employee experience,” Imber stated. “The company’s Experience90 tool allows leaders to get regular data on the impact they are having on their teams rather than trying to lead through guesswork. The tool also provides personalised guidance and recommendations to leaders to improve their scores.”
