Page 15 - Adnews magazine Sep-Oct 2022

“The reason I work in this business is to work with incredible people and so it was a real privilege to get to spend that time together.”
The future
Anathea says she is surprised how quickly time has flown by since her return and has loved reconnecting with so many people from across the industry.
“But I’m also so aware that our industry needs to do much more to bring different voices to the table,” she says. “Even more critically, we need to ensure that our ways of working and work environments are sustainable for all, and the only way we can achieve that is by listening to what is important to people and creating a workplace that reflects that.”
She says that her goals for the next 12 months and beyond “remain focused on our people. I am so proud of the work we have done in the automation space.
“This is genuinely making a difference to the workloads and work focuses of our people. As an industry we want to attract the best and brightest - and we do. We just then make them do repetitive, lower value work that is not satisfying and not making a difference to client outcomes.
“By automating that we can ensure our people are focused on work that is closer to the reason we all got into this business.
“I am also really committed to ensuring that we know what each person that works with us wants to get out of the investment they make in UM. It is different for every person, and it changes over time, so it is only by encouraging open conversation that we can really understand.
“We have created a quarterly space for our people to focus on thinking about what that means for them, and to have a conversation with their manager to ensure they are planning for it. I am excited for more con- versations like that.”
A family affair
Anathea, her husband Matt, and sons Isaac, 19, and Oliver, 16, are now ensconced in their old family home in Melbourne. But it has been far from smooth sailing to get there.
The family was unexpectedly separated for the best part of six months due to changing COVID lockdowns and restrictions.
When eventually her husband and sons arrived in Melbourne last September, they were placed in a “family” quarantine facility for two weeks. Three tall men in a small space.
“We all went
into that high intensity, fuelled by adrenaline, period where no-one knew what was happening.”
CEO, UM Australia Anathea Ruys
“Moving back home - literally back to the home we left years ago - has been a really unusual experi- ence,” says Anathea.
“To go back to your old house, your old neighbourhood is sur- real. We left with a 10 and a sev- en-year-old and came back with an 18 and a 15-year-old. As my older son said to me: `It’s strange. I wake up in the same bedroom that I left when I was 10 and now I’m, like, a completely different human being’.
“I always thought that, oh, my children are remarkably good at adapting. I’ve moved them around a lot in their lives but it turns out [that adapting] has been that they were just young. It’s easier then.
“While moving a lot and living overseas has led to some wonder- ful experiences for my sons, I think this last move from LA back to Melbourne has really tough for them, particularly on Oliver.
“He’d been in LA for four and a half years. His whole independent life, from 10-15, was in the US and he really struggled to say goodbye to his friends and life there.
“So much is the same, and yet so many changes have happened to us as a family. We have all found that challenging in different ways. The trauma of the last couple of years I think will play out in peo- ple’s lives for years to come.”
Anathea Ruys and her work family.
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