Australia's festival for the HR industry in Melbourne has kicked off - and it's epic
For many Australians, Bunnings is more than a hardware store — it’s a national institution. From the familiar red aprons to the weekend sausage sizzles, it’s a brand synonymous with community and authenticity. But behind the scenes, maintaining that trusted culture across more than 400 sites in Australia and New Zealand requires deliberate leadership and daily commitment.
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Speaking today in front of hundreds of senior HR professionals at HR Futurefest in Melbourne, Damian Zahra, Chief People Officer at Bunnings, shared his insights into how the company continues to balance transformation with the people-first culture Australians know and love.
“Boards and executives have certainly woken up to the fact that organisational culture isn’t something you can leave to chance,” Zahra said. “Culture is something that we have to work on every single day — and it’s largely underpinned by leadership.”
Local Leadership, Local Values
While many large organisations rely on a single set of company-wide vision and values, Bunnings takes a different approach. Each store creates its own localised version, empowering teams to make those principles meaningful to their own communities.
“If you went to our Port Melbourne store just around the corner,” Zahra explained, “the store itself would have a vision and a set of values that the leadership team are entrusted and responsible for bringing to life. When leaders have skin in the game, you can do tremendous things.”
This decentralised model gives store leaders a sense of ownership, driving engagement and accountability. With 80% of Australians living within 20 minutes of a Bunnings store, Zahra said the customer experience — and by extension, the company’s reputation — is shaped at the local level every single day.
Culture in Action
Zahra acknowledged that even with a deeply ingrained culture, maintaining consistency at scale is never simple.
“We don’t always get it right — that’s a fact,” he said. “But it’s something that we work really hard to drive every day.”
At the heart of that effort is Bunnings’ belief that leadership happens on the ground — in the stores, among teams, and within communities. By trusting local leaders to live and breathe the brand’s values, the company has built a culture that feels personal, authentic, and unmistakably Australian.
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And yes — as Zahra reminded the audience with a smile — “Who doesn’t love a sausage sizzle when you go to a Bunnings store?”
HR Future Fest is an epic conference and festival for the HR Industry that is happening today in Melbourne. With 60+ industry leading speakers, essential business topics and a raft of festival activities, HR Future Fest is the must attend event for the whole industry.
