Why working at Deptive is good for my soul

The Great Regeneration: Why working at Deptive is good for my soul

By Louise Heeney

We heard a lot during the pandemic about the Great Resignation, the hoards of people reevaluating their careers and deciding to ditch the 9 – 5 work life and start their own business or go contracting.

I did the exact opposite. For 16 years, I’d been working in sports administration, managing numerous kids’ sports clubs around north Auckland.

I loved my job, developing junior sports modules across codes including touch, tag and baseball. But I was burnt out, working long hours without any structure to my days.

Covid didn’t help. Social distancing measures saw my sports programmes grind to a halt and it was very difficult to earn a regular income. I had a side business as a fitness instructor and during lockdown, I took some spiritual and health coaching lessons to develop my skills.

On the courses, I was struck by how many people were there with the aim of leaving their job and reinventing themselves as self-employed health coaches. They were part of the Great Resignation we’ve heard so much about.

But it was different for me. I was already self-employed and dealing with all the uncertainty and stress that goes with running a business. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine came to one of my fitness classes with her sister, Jenni Stent, who is the Operations Manager here at Deptive.

It turned out that Jenni was looking for an assistant. A whole new world opened up for me, one that eventually saw me take up a job in an industry I never expected to work in.

To say that joining a technology company filled me with trepidation is an understatement. I’m no Luddite, but I’d always kept a paper diary and done things the old-fashioned way. From the first day at Deptive I was navigating Microsoft Teams channels and learning project management tools. Now I’m almost paper free.

What’s smoothed the transition has been the culture at Deptive, where Jenni and the team have become my second family within the space of a month. This is a company that doesn’t pay lip service to health and wellbeing. Everyone works hard but is encouraged to maintain a genuine work-life balance.

No longer am I having to deal with late-night text messages from someone urgently wanting something at the last minute. Deptive has also embraced flexible hours and remote working. That’s a godsend for me. While I’m currently only part-time at Deptive, I’m a mother of six kids and my eldest son has been in and out of the hospital much of the year. To have the autonomy to do my work while being able to take time for family as required gives me the best of both worlds.

Deptive’s commitment to learning and professional development also opens up huge opportunities to pursue the career pathway I want to. I’m not necessarily going to train as a cloud computing engineer or learn to code. But the tech sector requires all sorts of skill sets and mine is helping with the practicalities of getting things done to support Deptive’s staff and customers. I’ll be able to learn new skills and confidently take on new challenges as a result.

Joining the corporate workforce hasn’t meant being stuck in front of a computer all day. Deptive encourages us to get out and exercise, take breaks and focus on our physical well-being. I still teach fitness classes four times a week. As someone who has suffered several bouts of depression in my life, physical activity is absolutely crucial to maintaining my mental health.

I need to get out in nature, move my body and breathe fresh air. It’s early days for me at Deptive, but already I see myself still working for the company in five or ten years’ time.

Forget the Great Resignation. For me, the move to Deptive has been the Great Regeneration. I feel more relaxed, more confident and centred than I have in many years. This for me is the definition of Deptive’s ‘live well’ philosophy.

I’m fortunate to be able to be part of it and to have come out of the pandemic with a new perspective and a new career.

Deptive is on a journey to empower its staff to live well, a value that underpins everything we do. Find out about our Live Well progress to date here and how the lockdowns and disruption of the pandemic saw us double down on the team’s wellbeing.

Lousie Heeney is Operations Assistant at Deptive.