Current at: 29 July 2008
Honour Bound - Jennifer Weller
Jennifer Weller is a successful and, as it turns out, modest, woman who has won a Telstra Business Woman’s Award, worked as a microbiologist in a brewery, was a sensory evaluator for a cereal manufacturer and has also dined with Nelson Mandela.
Explaining how she’s managed to do it all, Jennifer says, generously: ‘I have the most amazing husband who has put up with years of me being away for weeks at a time!’
Now general manager of Hadar Homes – aYarrawonga-based home builder – where she’s worked for the past three years, Jennifer has brought about a number of changes and programs which are all based around having a belief in people. ‘Hadar,’ she explains, ‘means to bring honour.
‘Why should I expect people to do things that I’m not prepared to do myself?’ she asks, when explaining that Hadar’s organisational chart is upsidedown, effectively putting her at the
bottom of the structure. ‘My job is to
support and train my staff and to make their job easier. Hadar is my mission as much as it is my job.’
Jennifer personally mentors as many staff as possible and freely admits this isn’t the typical role of a general manager.
‘Hadar is family and we encourage staff to see if there are positions available for family members. For example, all family members attend the HIA awards and we socialise with each other on weekends. In this environment staff put their families and Hadar ahead of themselves.’
Hadar Homes also runs several training programs for the local community at no cost, aimed at giving people tools to use, build their capacity and self-confidence and ‘empower people’.
Jennifer, who is also mum to Daniel (21) and Ethan (15), decided to take a step sideways off the corporate ladder after spending many years working with companies who were providing a culture of ‘temporary thinking’. ‘I was sick of working in environments where people were being treated as expendable … there was always new management and people [were being] hurt.’
Another innovation of Hadar’s is the Failing Forward concept, based around people being challenged and having the courage to take on risk and responsibility.
‘We give our contractors a few cards at the beginning of a contract and tell them if anything goes wrong, to just give me back this card and it will be ok. We then tell them at the end of the job, if you haven’t used any of your failing forward cards, you haven’t worked hard enough or taken enough risks!’
Though Jennifer doesn’t travel as much as she did during her microbiology days, she says the key to managing work and family commitments is knowing what is important.
‘I make sure when I’m home, I’m home. I don’t worry if the carpet looks like it needs to be vacuumed, and I have a cleaner’.