What we celebrate at HBF

What an organisation chooses to celebrate says a lot about the culture it is building.

Formal recognition matters. But so do the smaller signals that show people what is valued day to day. It is about the ideas people back, the behaviours that get noticed, and the stories that are repeated across the business.

At HBF, those stories are often about people deciding to go one better. That idea is also built into the way we work, with Bold Goals forming part of HBF’s performance process and giving employees a practical way to stretch beyond the day-to-day.

Sometimes that means finding a smarter way to move through your day. Sometimes it means improving the experience of members and colleagues in ways that are easy to miss but actually make a big difference. And sometimes, it looks like opening the office doors on a Saturday so families can see the people, place, and energy behind HBF.

Together, they shape a culture where progress is measured through influencing the moments that matter, for our members, for each other. And the boldness people practise along the way.

Bold enough to code for coffee

For Jacob McGrath, Senior Business Analyst, the opportunity was hiding in plain sight.

On Level 4 of HBF’s Perth Head Office, the daily coffee ritual at Café 41 is part of office life. The only catch was the queue.

Jacob saw a chance to make the experience easier, deciding to build a web-based mobile app that would allow people to order their coffee from their phone and pick it up when ready.

He built it himself from scratch, while learning new technical and coding skills along the way. With support from his leader, David Beer, and input from internal experts to make sure the solution was cybersafe and secure, Jacob created a standalone app designed specifically for Café 41.

For anyone who understands how seriously people take their coffee, this was a workplace improvement hiding inside a technological feat. Jacob also managed to build it at no cost.

By the time the story was shared internally, the pilot already had 20 people processing over 100 orders collectively and successfully, giving Jacob early proof that the idea had moved quickly from curiosity to something people could actually use. But for Jacob, this project was about more than just coffee.

“Applying new skills and learning to write code is something I’ve wanted to lean into. Launching the Café 41 app has pushed me beyond my day-to-day role.”
— Jacob McGrath, Senior Business Analyst, HBF

That curiosity turned into action is the kind of boldness HBF celebrates because many great ideas have started with a morning coffee.

Bold enough to bring people together

For Geoff Hardegen, Team Lead in the Member Contact Centre, boldness looked different.

Geoff started with a desire to boost engagement across the Member Contact Centre. His Bold Goal then grew into a way to make work feel more connected and more shared.

An invitation for the people of HBF and their families to come behind the scenes at the Perth Head Office and see where their loved one's work.

Family Day took a lot of planning. With the support of his manager, Christine Bell, Geoff began working on the idea in October 2025, he stepped outside his day-to-day role and worked with teams across Health, Safety & Wellbeing, Events and Facilities to bring it to life.

On Saturday 21 March 2025, 65 family members came through the doors.

Children, partners, parents and grandchildren explored HBF from the inside, collected t-shirts, played ping pong, spent time in the massage chair and, of course, met HBF’s quokka.

Employees had the chance to share part of their working world with the people who support them outside of it, while families could see more of the place, people, and energy behind HBF.

A workplace is shaped by the moments that help people feel proud of where they work. Geoff’s idea did exactly that.

Bold enough to shine

Some forms of boldness are easy to see. A coffee app changes a daily ritual almost immediately. Family Day physically fills the office with the people we love outside of work. Other boldness happens through systems and processes that most people may never see.

Formal recognition gives HBF a way to name the ways people go one better every day. Through Shine and CEO Excellence Awards, those contributions are brought into view and the people behind them are recognised.

That might look like Kira Carter, Ancillary Claims Lead, seeing an opportunity to reduce manual work in claims and proposing a smarter way forward. Or Grant Plumb, Product Owner, recognised for his leadership on initiatives that helped frontline teams better visualise outbound calling queues, prioritise calls and support members considering leaving HBF.

It’s also the acts of boldness that make it better for our people to work well. Like Jamie Leigh Richards, Team Leader, strengthening the onboarding experience so new starters feel supported from the moment they’re hired.

And when our people are supported to work well, they are able to go one better for our members in the moments that matter.

These kinds of contributions can be easy to miss from the outside but are essential to how HBF keeps moving forward. This is the work that sits behind a better member experience. The Shine and CEO Excellence Awards make sure that work does not stay invisible.

Bold enough to celebrate

What HBF celebrates is not one kind of achievement, one kind of person or one kind of work. Recognition brings that into view. It shows that the contributions shaping HBF are not only the big visible moments, but the everyday acts that help the organisation go one better. And if those contributions are bold enough to shape HBF, they are bold enough to celebrate.