The Hiway Group has grown from a small New Zealand family business established some 35 years ago with a passion for infrastructure recycling to drive environmental benefits for customers, to be becoming Australasia’s largest specialist in-situ pavement recycling and reuse contractor in the Transport infrastructure sector.

The Group business is now Australian centric with over 80% of its revenue being generated across all states in Australia. The real success story for the business is the approach to maintaining the original family culture despite growth and geographical diversity. The Hiway Group has over 210 staff working across State and country boundaries.

The strategic vision for the Hiway Group is to change the world and recycle infrastructure rather than consuming vast amounts of resources to support an ever-increasing population growth and demands for connectivity. Hiways is on this journey with people being at the centre of this. Hiways are passionate about people, customers and the communities they serve. There is a significant investment in personnel development, training, communications, wellbeing, and safety. Many organisations say their most important asset is their people, at Hiways not only do they truly believe it, they act on it, every moment of every day.

Organisational Culture and Leadership
The company values of Pride, Respect, Honesty and Drive were developed by the workforce and focused on how they felt as individuals, what they wanted to become, how they wanted to behave, and are very much inwards facing, written in a language that resonates with frontline facing team through to senior leadership. The company values are the very cornerstone of the Hiways business, the centre of their DNA for a passion of recycling and delivering environmental benefits.

The Hiway Group pride themselves on visible, genuine and authentic leadership. Leaders are expected to and are measured on leading by example, demonstrating company values and supporting a positive and respectful workplace culture.

An important part of developing culture and engagement with all employees across the business is communication. Hiways actively engages with employees through roadshow, newsletters, engagement surveys and continuous improvement workshops.

Education, Training and Development
The Hiway Group are committed in supporting people to reach their full potential and have increased their education, training and development budget by 64%. Hiways take an individualised and personal approach to understanding employees career aspirations and have implemented development plans for every single employee. In the last year Hiways have introduced Senior Leadership; Supervisor Development and Mentoring; Key Talent and Aspiring Leader Programmes, and to assist with recruitment diversity, conscious and unconscious bias training for line managers.

Performance, Recognition and Remuneration
The Hiway Group human resources framework supports all employees to perform to their best and to be recognised and rewarded for their efforts. The annual performance appraisal process has been in place for over five years. All employees receive a quarterly catch up and six-monthly check-in meeting with manager contributing to high levels of performance and engagement.

The Hiway Group has a culture of recognising and thanking employees for their hard work. Employees who have demonstrated the Hiway values and who have contributed to safety and performance are recognised through peer nominated awards on a regular basis. Hiways look to provide renumeration packages above the market to reflect on the importance people play in the success of the business. Their CEO’s approach to renumeration is “we don’t want to pay the minimum; we want to pay the maximum the business can sustainably afford”.

Health, Safety and Satisfaction
The Hiway Group recognises that it is the responsibility of leadership at all levels in the organisation to develop and maintain a healthy, safe, secure and supportive work environment. The Team Hiways initiative involved every employee on what safety really means and the actions to keep themselves and their mate’s safe at work. This led to Team Hiways next evolution of the industry leading, Zero Harm Two programme focusing on situational awareness and and variability. Hiways is now implementing a further programme of Strengthening Zero Harm Culture to challenge those factors that foster casual safety behaviour. Through organisational and employee efforts Hiways have achieved an industry leading zero TRIFR result.

As an employer, Hiways also considers employee wellbeing to be equally as important and along with the Wellbeing Strategy, Hiways have trained wellness support champions in the business who can respond and support their employees on wellness and mental health challenges, as well as Hiways providing a dedicated EAP provider. Hiways has also introduced a detailed Annual Medical Assessment and non-invasive body composition analysis to provide detailed health and wellness information for all employees.

To evaluate the success of all business strategies Hiways undertake an annual employee engagement survey with the outputs discussed with all employees. Employees also have the opportunity to be involved in workshops to develop change initiatives to further improve employee engagement. The Hiway Group is a business built on people and our commitment is to people reaching their full potential both professionally and personally.

For more information about Hiway Group visit hiwaygroup.com.au