From administrative management to genuine wellbeing: La Araucana’s success story with Buk and Building Happiness

La Araucana, a leading institution in social wellbeing in Chile, faced the challenge of practising what it preaches: how to nurture the happiness of those who care for others. Prior to implementation, it operated under a model that presented common friction points in large institutions: manual and fragmented processes that prevented the people team from focusing on strategic tasks, lack of real-time visibility into wellbeing, and one-way communication. It was difficult to measure employee morale and happiness, and there was no single platform to integrate culture and benefits.

The implementation of Buk was not just a software change, but a shift in mindset. La Araucana adopted a comprehensive platform that enabled: strategic automation to free up administrative time and dedicate it to talent development, centralisation of benefits to facilitate intuitive access to health, education and recreation agreements, and data-driven culture using the Building Happiness survey to obtain a real and actionable Net Happiness Score (NHS). Participating in the Building Happiness ranking allowed La Araucana to benchmark itself against the best companies in the market and identify specific gaps in the pillars of Wellbeing, Engagement, Recognition and Sustainability.

La Araucana achieved a place in the Top 10 best large companies to work for in Chile, particularly standing out for its ability to manage wellbeing sustainably. It achieved reduced turnover by increasing happiness and engagement, decreasing talent loss. Employees gained greater autonomy to manage their holidays, settlements and benefits from their mobile phone. The company moved from believing its employees were well to knowing it backed by hard data.