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Case study: How work-life balance translated to 9% attrition rates at Arvato

Chloe Gan, HR director at Arvato Systems Malaysia, narrates a story of building a culture of trust that emphasises work outcomes, rather than the number of hours spent in the office.

In 2010, IT specialist Arvato Systems Malaysia was facing a major problem - it’s attrition rate had gone up to 32%. Its employees, 65% of whom were younger than 35 at the time, were leaving the company at an alarming rate. This was made worse by the fact that some of these employees were fresh recruits.

Delving deeper into the matter, its management found that stress and a distinct lack of work-life balance were main contributors to its high attrition rate. Given that, it realised the dire need to create a better workplace culture for its employees.

However, the journey wasn’t always smooth sailing. It faced its set of challenges as the company adopted a better work-life balance. For one, educating and convincing the line management was in itself a battle. As a flexible work-life balance programme required a certain degree of trust, both management and employees needed to be convinced that such flexible arrangements could actually produce quality work; especially when compared to regular working hours. Senior management was strongly encouraged to be role models by staying proactive with the initiative.

Thus, Arvato set about building a culture of trust that emphasised work outcome rather than the number of hours one spends in the office.

Ong Seng Hock, business unit lead, SAP Technologies, noted how having trust within the team was crucial. “As a team leader, giving my team members more flexibility enabled them to produce excellent results, within the timeline and with good quality of work,” he said.

Happy staff at Avarto

The result: Happier employees stay longer

All these measures have helped Arvato become a model company in terms of creating a work environment with a good work-life balance.

Through these series of innovative policies and programmes, Arvato has successfully lowered its attrition rate to just 9% in 2015. In fact, employees are lauding the company’s flexibility and work-life balance by scoring these two elements the highest in annual employee surveys.

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