spark’s mahi tahi wellbeing framework in action.

Under each of the four pillars of the Mahi Tahi framework, Heather and her team are actively working on supporting Spark’s people in several ways, while also driving forward the company’s strategy and helping the broader community.

A central focus is on personalisation over a ‘one size fits all’ approach. This includes carefully curating who Spark partners with or what tools are used to ensure personalisation is accessible to everyone and is also scalable. For example, the pandemic highlighted the divergent needs of Spark’s people and provided visibility over priorities.

The company also shifted Spark Give, its planned giving programme which sees Spark matching the charitable donations peoples make, and Spark Volunteer, an initiative where every full-time person working for Spark receives a day each year to volunteer their time and/or skills for a registered charity, under the Mahi Tahi umbrella due to the connection between ‘giving’ and wellbeing.

Overall, the framework also led to assistance in financial wellness for various demographics, creating more flexible and fluid personal and shared working spaces within the office, and far greater access to one-on-one learning development and mental health assistance.

On flexible working and leadership, Heather says, “In reference to the learning and development driver, we've done a lot. We continue to push adaptive leadership as a gene in our DNA. This has become a link across all pillars. So, for people to really feel the essence of that flexibility and what's possible, we push for what some call ‘work-life balance’ but we call ‘work by choice’.”

According to Heather, this breaks open a potential binary that can come from a ‘work-life balance’ approach and brings greater adaptability on an individual basis. People work where they want, when they need to, and are trusted to get the job done.

Opening the conversation and our ideas on what constitutes success is a central theme, Heather says, with Spark promoting the understanding that sustaining high performance outcomes is a continuous loop of learning and is personal to each of us.

On the learning and development front, Spark has also improved access to workshops and knowledge, which has seen more than 1,000 people go through 3-4 different webinar formats and masterclasses on the wellness piece alone.

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