Levelling up with our Study Assistance program
Did you know we offer financial assistance and study leave options to complete further education?
Our Community Engagement Lead, Sarah , is one of the many employees that has recently taken advantage of our Study Assistance Program.
Designed to support employees and provide financial assistance for course fees and time off for study, 28 of our employees have accessed the Study Assistance in the last 2 years.
Over her time with us, Sarah has explored multiple career opportunities, including Community Engagement Advisor, Key Customer Specialist and more recently, Demand Programs Lead.
Looking for a new challenge, she began considering further studies to complement her career aspirations and landed on the Social Impact course offered by the University of Western Australia.
A balancing act
Sarah's 12-month part-time intensive program took her just over 18 months to complete after taking a short break to get married.
"Thanks to the flexibility of the course, I could complete it at my own pace," she said.
"I was pleased to discover the class schedule had been specifically designed with working professionals in mind. With classes on various Fridays and Saturdays, it allowed me to maintain my full-time work commitments.
"Although I never accessed it, it was reassuring to know there was additional study leave available to me if I needed time to prepare for assignments.
"I was very grateful to receive financial support through the program. I received lots of encouragement and support from colleagues, which even extended to the option of studying at our Leederville office one Sunday during a power outage at home!"
Sarah on her graduation day to receive her Graduate Certificate for Social Impact.
Applying new skills at work
Since graduating, Sarah has already seen the results from her studies at work put into practice.
“Over the last 6 months I was acting as Manager of Community Engagement, which was a great opportunity to apply the lessons I learnt in a unit that covered leadership in highly collaborative environments.”
But it doesn’t stop there. Sarah was also able to use her new skills in evaluating and monitoring social outcomes during the development of a new project planning and evaluation tool which is now used across multiple teams.
“My studies in this area directly informed our development of a new project planning and evaluation tool,” she explained.
“The tool encourages project managers to consider monitoring and evaluation methods alongside project planning. It was developed to aid designing new waterwise offers but has been applied in other contexts. It covers theory of change, risk, communications and more."
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Sarah and her colleagues transforming the gardens of a public housing complex in Mosman Park.
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