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What’s making our phone ring?

Our phones are ringing hot, and recently we’ve seen a number of businesses considering changing their staffing structure or levels, generally as a result of the financial climate we’re in.  With increased costs, higher interest rates, and a dropping payout, our dairy farming clients, are seriously considering all their costs. The most common scenario we’re seeing at present is farm owners ‘coming back’ onto farm – that might be something as simple as doing all the relief mi...

Big News!

 Following our social media reveal last week, we thought it would be a great idea to tell you a little more about our new GM, Nick Coster, and what’s happening in the No8HR team.As some of you will know, Toni has been seeking an opportunity to increase her focus on client work and, as a result, Nick has joined us to lead the team and business and help us scale to even bigger heights.Nick comes from a Waikato farming background, having grown up on a sheep and beef farm in Waitomo. He bring...

What's making our phone ring?

This is a new segment we thought we’d introduce to our newsletter – each month we’ll pick out the most common (or problematic) people related question that we’re getting, and share some insights.  For our farming clients, there are often ‘themes’ in the questions that tend to follow the season.So what are we getting asked at the moment?  One thing that we are coming across a lot lately is a whole lot of rhetoric and questions around ‘renewing contracts’ for dairy farm e...

How Hard (or Easy!) Is it to get Employment ‘Right’?

You may recall that in the last issue we were asked about the value we bring to the recruitment process…well, in a similar vein, we’ve found ourselves working through some challenging employment relations issues recently.  Clearly we can’t go into details here, but we have recently come across a couple of articles that highlight the risks and costs involved in getting this wrong.The first article describes a ‘landmark judgement’ and highlights the risks and potential penaltie...

People trends we’re seeing this quarter

As people specialists we’re dealing every day with issues that are coming up for our clients.   This enables us to have early insights into trends within the people sector as they impact small to medium sized businesses.  Below is a quick summary of the trends we’ve seen in the last three months: Salary queries – a lot of employers looking for up to date market remuneration data, as they’re renegotiating with existing team members and want to make sure they’re compe...

Potential recession and the implications for the labour market

This month we’ve decided to tackle the talk of a potential recession head on and discuss what some of the implications for the labour market may be.  As your people specialists we think it’s important to have full and frank conversations about what’s on the horizon and how this could impact you.The below information is from an article from XPG Insights, specialists in the staffing sector from the USA. Economists have been discussing the possibility of a recession for months....

Make time to Reconnect

We’re constantly dealing with people under all sorts of unhealthy stress and pressure, and we see the impact that is having…it’s Mental Health Awareness week, and we’re right behind this year’s theme of RECONNECT.  For our farming friends and clients in particular, who often have physical isolation on top of the pressures they’re feeling, it’s especially important to Reconnect – with the people and places that lift you up. There’s a whole lot of good information ...

Measuring up for success!

What are the right things to measure when it comes to people in my business?When there is a tight labour market and your investment in your people is under the microscope we’re fielding a lot of questions from our clients around how do they measure their performance when it comes to people, and how do they measure the value we’re getting out of our people.  Here’s a few key measures that every business should calculate around their people…because knowing your numbers means...

Small group coaching reaps dividends

No8HR’s Lee Astridge recently completed a small group coaching session with a team from a Hamilton Building Company.  Participants said the small group size and incremental sessions was like ‘having access to our own expert who encouraged us to identify and face into the things that were challenging us.’ We’re about to kick off our next coaching group …if you’re looking for a ‘shot in the arm’ for your leadership and would enjoy sharing and learning with a small nu...

Fair Pay Agreement Update

The Fair Pay Agreements Bill has an overarching policy objective to enable employers and employees to collectively bargain industry-wide or occupation-wide minimum employment terms. At present, New Zealand’s employment relations and employment standards regulatory system only allows for collective bargaining at an enterprise level (i.e. between individual employers and unions). There is no mechanism for parties to co-ordinate collective bargaining across enti...

Being deliberate about who you listen to and finding perspective . . . 

It’s easy to focus on difficulties at the moment – let’s face it, there are plenty to choose from; whether it’s your workload, the challenges of running a business, the inability to get a tradesperson or find a great job, or maybe it’s the challenges as costs increase for our families.   Here are some tips for finding perspective: Talk with people and connect with othersIf you’re too busy doing the doing, take a step back and think about what you really want to spend your t...

Upskill your people, keep your people, maximise productivity!

Over the next few months as the temperature drops and the days seem shorter it’s a great time to increase morale with some team training. Upskilling your team has multiple benefits for your employees and your business, including: Improved knowledge – giving your team members knowledge increases performance and produces a flow on effect to other colleagues that results in positive changes throughout the workplace Increased retention – investing in your team shows you value them and have a c...

How Ready is Your Business?

As the government makes decisions and brings in new rules, there are a number of changes that are either here already or coming soon that businesses need to be across. Like ‘em or not, the truth is, they’re here – as a business the key is to understand, adapt and act on them.  We thought we’d help with the ‘understand’ bit here...Minimum Wage increaseWe thought we’d start with this one – because it’s the simplest to understand.  From 1 April, the adult minim...

We know – it really is faster to do it yourself….this time!

If you’ve ever uttered the words, “It’ll be faster if I just do it myself,” then the leadership challenge of finding time to delegate is one that’s likely at the top of your list.   And we get it – it IS often faster if you just do it yourself. But here are the problems if you do this too often:  That may be the case today, but ultimately does that mean that no-one else will ever be able to develop your level of skill (we doubt it, no one is that special)Every time you do i...

Creating clarity for your team members around COVID-19 leave payments

As COVID spreads widely through the community it’s time to create clarity with your teams about how any COVID-19 leave will be treated, particularly where the absence from work is a requirement as a household contact.  The rules on this are changing frequently (this week we saw household contact mandatory isolation change from 10 to 7 days) and these changes will keep coming at us as the population builds up some immunity and the health system rides the COVID-19 storm. It’s importa...

Smarter Recruitment Systems

Behind every great business are systems that keep it running. After 12 years we’re upgrading our recruitment software to ensure we continue to provide quick visibility on jobs that are right for our valued applicants and a recruitment experience that’s user friendly and fit for purpose in today’s fast paced recruitment environment.  From 1 March the No8HR recruitment experience will be powered by i-Get. The i-Get database will hold applicant information on behalf of&nbs...

Action Beats Deliberation

It’s the time of year when so many teenagers are heading off to university, and for the first time this year that’s also happening in our house, with the eldest child leaving later this week to start the next chapter of her life. She asked me the other day “what’s the one piece of advice you’d give me Mum?”   Reflecting back on my own time at uni, it was very tempting to launch into advice about what not to do, or something around staying safe etc – but you don’t o...

The Challenges of Stepping into Leadership

It’s all over the media: job vacancies were the highest they’ve ever been in a January and there’s a lack of skilled and qualified people available to fill them. Certainly it’s  tough – with record numbers of vacancies and nearly full employment in NZ, there are a lot more roles than there are candidates to fill them. One of the interesting trends we’re seeing in the on-farm sector in particular but also more broadly across businesses is the consideration of people for lead...

The Challenge of Strategic Leadership

We came across this article which speaks strongly to strategic leadership and thought it captured some key messages around innovation, resilience and being brave…definitely worth a read to understand how one small group of family-owned businesses is dominating its market and challenging itself to be ready for the future. https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Finnish-dairy-company-Valio-is-feeding-the-future...

How Will You Choose To Do 2022?

This time last year as we welcomed in 2021, naively assuming that the horror that was 2020 was behind us, we faced the year with faith that the worst was over, and hope that 2021 was when the world would tilt back to ‘normal’.  Instead we’ve seen another year of friends and families kept apart and businesses badly affected by border disruptions and lockdowns in the second half of the year, the brunt of the latter being borne by those in Auckland. Fair to say, as we look forward t...

Three simple steps we can all take that will make our lives easier….

Nearly five million people have already watched this YouTube clip (I confess, five of these have been me)It has been named one of 2020’s top 20 You Tube clipsAnd it’s by a really smart (and resilient) Kiwi woman Three good reasons why you can’t afford not to take a look…and if you’re one of the five million who already have watched it, take another look because there’s always a new reflection to be had. This clip doesn’t just pose questions, it gives answers that we can all ea...

The Great Resignation

Not sure if you’ve heard about this global phenomenon yet, but the ‘Great Resignation’ is a thing that many commentators are already saying has hit NZ….and whether you believe it’s already here or not, chances are it will be.  There’s a perfect storm for employers catalysed by two things:At times of change (and let’s face it, COVID has been a big change for us all) people re-evaluate their lives and often make changes to the things they can control….their work...

Understanding the 2021 Resident Visa

A large number of our clients and others we talk to have been asking us recently about the 2021 Resident Visa; this is a pretty exciting opportunity that is likely to be a ‘one-time-only’, so we would encourage you to act now.   Our friends at PathwaysNZ have supplied us with the latest information in a simple to read, simple to understand format…check it out here.  No8HR is happy to recommend PathwaysNZ if you or any of your team members need any advice around immigration o...

Workers & Vaccinations

This is a story that will be set to run for a while but employers in non-mandated workplaces naturally have questions about requiring current workers to be vaccinated.   We’re expecting case law to evolve in this space but at the moment the process you need to follow is: If your worker is unvaccinated (or refuses to tell you if they are vaccinated or not which means they need to be treated as unvaccinated) and you have concerns about whether they can safely do their job unvaccin...

2021 Resident Visa

Recently one of our team sat in on a DairyNZ hosted webinar discussing the 2021 Resident Visa.  There were a lot of people on the webinar, and plenty of interest, so we thought it worth sharing some of the key messages: The 2021 Resident Visa is a one-off, simplified pathway to residence which will allow approximately 9000 primary sector workers who are currently on eligible Visa’s to apply and remain in New Zealand for work.Migrants can submit a 2021 Resident Visa application a...