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Learn more about key topics concerning productivity and wellbeing. Gain insights direct from our team and our partner experts.

Unleashing the power of AI for faster survey results and actions

Unleashing the power of AI for faster survey results and actions

After 12 months of rigorous research and testing, AskYourTeam is pleased to announce a significant product enhancement. It allows customers to generate top line user friendly analysis of their survey...

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Targeted support for kaimahi’s Māori cultural competency journeys

Targeted support for kaimahi’s Māori cultural competency journeys

Across Aotearoa, New Zealand, many organisations are celebrating Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week), kia kaha te reo Māori. There’s a huge resurgence and interest in te reo Māori and...

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Solve your retention issues early

Solve your retention issues early

Labour market woes are set to plague New Zealand employers for the foreseeable future. Unemployment is expected to remain close to record lows, an EMA survey says that 90% of businesses are...

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Addressing new hire performance - a must do for every leader

Addressing new hire performance - a must do for every leader

Most of us avoid conflict and difficult situations like the plague. Maybe it’s because we don’t know how to broach the subject, or haven’t had the training. Maybe we can’t separate the person from...

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Next Step in Your Māori Cultural Competency Journey

Next Step in Your Māori Cultural Competency Journey

If Mahuru Māori (Māori language month) has your team fired up to venture further on the journey to Māori cultural competency, and you’re not sure how to take a meaningful next step, then help could...

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Be purposeful about communicating purpose

Be purposeful about communicating purpose

Are you clear on your organisation’s purpose? And can you articulate it? Research by KPMG showed that purpose is fundamental to a great employee experience, and builds the crucial connections between...

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Regular conversations with your people

Regular conversations with your people

Do you remember what it’s like to land a new job? The interview process, the hope, the anticipation? You turn up on ‘Day One’, bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready. Ready to make a difference,...

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Rewards and recognition

Rewards and recognition

Revolving Doors - our latest insights paper - offers guidance for leaders looking to slow down rates of employee churn and increase retention in this tight labour market. For the first time we’ve...

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Enhancing Workplace Mental Health Post-COVID: A Guide for Employers

Enhancing Workplace Mental Health Post-COVID: A Guide for Employers

As New Zealand emerges from the global pandemic, it’s time to reflect on the immense impact that COVID-19 has had on our collective mental health and wellbeing. Workers are more stressed now than...

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Take your step towards Māori Cultural Competency

Take your step towards Māori Cultural Competency

Kia ora, this week, whānau, school students, community groups, and organisations across the motu are celebrating Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, Aotearoa New Zealand’s annual celebration of te reo Māori....

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Ignore poor performance at your peril

Ignore poor performance at your peril

Managing poor performance is one of the most challenging aspects of leadership. It requires tactful conversations that meet business needs, preserve employee dignity and wellbeing, and stay on the...

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Worker voices essential for integrity of RSE scheme

Worker voices essential for integrity of RSE scheme

10 August 2022: Recent stories of shocking conditions and ill treatment of migrant workers in Marlborough show that New Zealand has work to do to ensure the integrity of the RSE scheme and prove that...

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Let's stand together to stamp out worker exploitation

Let's stand together to stamp out worker exploitation

In this second in a series of blogs on how transparency is the greatest shield in being an ethical employer, our Chief Executive Chris O’Reilly talks about recent examples of alleged exploitation and...

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Labour Mobility and Ethical Practices: A Guide to Due Diligence

Labour Mobility and Ethical Practices: A Guide to Due Diligence

In this first in a series of blogs on how transparency is the greatest shield in being an ethical employer, our Head of Product Craig Whitcombe talks about some of the challenges the country is...

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Tips for employers faced with cost of living remuneration expectations

Tips for employers faced with cost of living remuneration expectations

If you’ve been inside a supermarket lately, or to a petrol station, you’ll know that the cost of living is rising rapidly. The pandemic, supply chain issues, interest rate rises, and the war in...

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Mānawatia a Matariki | Celebrating Matariki 24 June 2022

Mānawatia a Matariki | Celebrating Matariki 24 June 2022

Koinei te tau e tohu ana i a Matariki hei hararei tūmatawhānui mō Aotearoa. This year marks the launch of Matariki as a rā whakatā ā-ture (public holiday) for Aotearoa, New Zealand. Matariki, or the...

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Leadership trust - the glue that will make your employees stick around

Leadership trust - the glue that will make your employees stick around

Recruitment and retention is taking a disproportionate amount of bandwidth as organisations struggle to fill roles, and deal with the downstream impact of the pandemic, government lockdowns, and two...

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Local Government emerging leaders celebrated

Local Government emerging leaders celebrated

Late last month Taituarā celebrated achievement with its annual Excellence Awards, recognising the mahi, innovation, and dedication of Aotearoa’s local government professionals. AskYourTeam is proud...

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Is your business suffering from high employee churn?

Is your business suffering from high employee churn?

Job ad data hot off the press from Seek paints a sorry picture for New Zealand Inc. Vacancies were up 3 per cent in April compared to March, up a sizeable 15 per cent compared to 12 months ago, and...

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Standing together on Pink Shirt Day - building respectful workplaces

Standing together on Pink Shirt Day - building respectful workplaces

Today as Pink Shirt Day is celebrated for the 15th year, it would be nice to believe its future is finite. Unfortunately though its cause is as important as ever as the issue of bullying remains...

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Employee Experience: Key to Recruitment and Retention Success

Employee Experience: Key to Recruitment and Retention Success

The latest unemployment figures are cold comfort to businesses up and down the country desperate for staff. In this tight labour market workers are in the driver’s seat, while employers wring their...

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The Great Reset: Hybrid Workforces and New Leadership Strategies

The Great Reset: Hybrid Workforces and New Leadership Strategies

A little over two years ago New Zealand plunged into lockdown due to the appearance of COVID-19. Overnight our working world changed. Bustling office buildings became like ghost towns, complete with...

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Is financial stress taking its toll on organisational productivity?

Is financial stress taking its toll on organisational productivity?

Today is the World Day for Safety and Health at Work. While it is primarily focussed on preventing workplace accidents, it’s worth reflecting on how the concept of workplace health and safety has...

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NZ's Unique Opportunity with Modern Slavery

NZ's Unique Opportunity with Modern Slavery

Proposed legislation released on Friday by Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood is “heartening” and offers New Zealand an opportunity to position its produce as “the most ethical in...

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Ensuring freedom, fairness, and dignity a heartening call

Ensuring freedom, fairness, and dignity a heartening call

Wilful blindness is not an excuse. That’s a phrase I have repeated many times since we first started looking into how to help organisations rid their operations and supply chains of modern slavery...

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Open your eyes to blindspots

Open your eyes to blindspots

The Covid pandemic has been challenging for leaders and their teams. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity have taken a massive toll on leadership effectiveness. With huge and...

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Taking a stand for our people

Taking a stand for our people

Despite targeted legislation and overwhelming social pressure from consumers, vulnerable workers are failing to be identified and protected through current accreditation processes and practices. As a...

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It's time to up the ante on employee experience

It's time to up the ante on employee experience

New Zealand is not immune from the Great Resignation. Large numbers of workers are resigning, and with the labour market tighter than a drum, those workers are not so easily replaced. Through...

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Breaking the bias - Celebrating International Women's Day

Breaking the bias - Celebrating International Women's Day

Today as we celebrate International Women’s Day, it could be easy to question the need for a day to promote diversity, inclusion and breaking biases. After all, its 2022 and some significant inroads...

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Businesses at risk as Omicron bites

Businesses at risk as Omicron bites

As Omicron bites and takes a bigger chunk out of the workforce, pressure will come on those remaining to pick up the slack. It’s a watch out for leaders, to make sure they don’t accidentally pile too...

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Pre-pandemic leadership won’t cut it in a post-pandemic world

Pre-pandemic leadership won’t cut it in a post-pandemic world

The professional development needs of managers and leaders are forever changed by the global pandemic. Over the past two years the way we work, market, communicate, and collaborate has changed,...

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When cultures are more like cults - and how to avoid it!

When cultures are more like cults - and how to avoid it!

Healthy organisational cultures are often characterised by a common sense of purpose and shared values. However, most of us know a story or two of company cultures that go beyond this, and the...

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Working from home again? Key learnings for managers and leaders

Working from home again? Key learnings for managers and leaders

One could have been forgiven for having a bit of a deja vu moment when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the move to red light status. News that the Omicron variant is now circulating in many...

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Unbeatable insights for next level customer experience

Unbeatable insights for next level customer experience

In today’s competitive environment, taking the time to understand your market is a must if you want to be successful. It’s not enough to maintain brand loyalty based on good customer service or...

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Start 2022 the right way - it's time to reinvigorate your organisation

Start 2022 the right way - it's time to reinvigorate your organisation

While New Zealand and the world is experiencing a phenomenon called the Great Resignation, at AskYourTeam we like to think the glass is always half full. We’re focused on the Great Reinvigoration....

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The summer holiday – essential respite from a busy job

The summer holiday – essential respite from a busy job

Well, here we are almost at the end of another work year - and what a year it has been! 2021 certainly was reminiscent of 2020 with lockdowns, the need for people to work remotely, lots of...

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AskYourTeam’s modern slavery detection tool has global application

AskYourTeam’s modern slavery detection tool has global application

AskYourTeam has developed a new tool that shines a light on supply chain integrity and helps to stamp out modern slavery not only here at home, but around the world. And I have never been prouder....

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Revolutionary Tool Exposes Modern Slavery in New Zealand

Revolutionary Tool Exposes Modern Slavery in New Zealand

On the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, Ethical VOICE, powered by AskYourTeam, launches to replace “broken and dangerous” worker social practice accreditation systems 100% anonymous...

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Are New Zealand’s Local Government leaders effective?

Are New Zealand’s Local Government leaders effective?

There’s some good news for New Zealand communities – council employees report feeling highly motivated to put their customers first and are proud to serve. They also believe in the value of the...

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It’s time for leadership to evolve

It’s time for leadership to evolve

If there is one universal truth about leadership, it’s that there is no single way of doing it right. To be authentic, leaders must be themselves and, as we know, everyone is different. However, in...

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Why self-awareness matters

Why self-awareness matters

Self-awareness. As I write this, I think I can hear collective sighs. That old chestnut, I hear the detractors say. What about it? And therein lies the problem. It’s one nut leaders across our most...

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State sector employees want their leaders to lead

State sector employees want their leaders to lead

In the war for talent one of the most demotivating aspects for top performers is to see non-performance go unaddressed. This is an area where leaders consistently fail to deliver. Failing to act is...

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Social practice audits will not prevent worker exploitation

Social practice audits will not prevent worker exploitation

AS PUBLISHED IN THE NZ HERALD 27/10/21. Photo / Mike Scott, File Would you buy overseas hazelnuts grown and packed by exploited children? Or canned tomatoes produced by abused migrants? No? As...

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Organisational trust – does it matter and should leaders care?

Organisational trust – does it matter and should leaders care?

Organisational trust. It can take years to build and only moments to erode. But it’s absolutely critical to business success, given the close alignment between trust and performance. The COVID-era...

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Why leaders should be questioning everything they think they know

Why leaders should be questioning everything they think they know

As a leader you know your organisation inside out, right? You’re connected to your people, you’ve got a handle on your organisational strengths, you’re confident that you know what’s going on, and...

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Project management – good, bad, or ugly?

Project management – good, bad, or ugly?

Everybody loves getting their teeth into a good project, particularly when there is hope of transforming an area of the business. But what happens when it goes wrong? What happens when projects go...

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Are New Zealand’s business leaders struggling?

Are New Zealand’s business leaders struggling?

The latest research into the effectiveness of New Zealand’s private sector leaders should be ringing warning bells in boardrooms across the country. Chris O’Reilly, CEO of AskYourTeam says the...

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Are you up for the wero (challenge)?

Are you up for the wero (challenge)?

This week Aotearoa New Zealand celebrates Te wiki o te reo Māori. Around the country and online there will be events and activities, with lots of ways to get involved. Developing Māori cultural...

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Meaningful work: a must have in the war for talent

Meaningful work: a must have in the war for talent

In an earlier post, we talked about Global HR analyst Josh Bersin’s latest research into employee experience, which is fast emerging as the new frontline in the global war for talent. For...

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Employee Experience: The Secret Weapon to Attract Top Talent

Employee Experience: The Secret Weapon to Attract Top Talent

The war for talent is being waged on the new frontline of employee experience, and it just got a whole lot tougher, according to latest research from global HR guru, Josh Bersin. With the number of...

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Unleash the power of the AND

Unleash the power of the AND

COVID-19 has changed and challenged everything. What you knew about your customers pre- pandemic has either lost its relevance in 2021 or even worse, is wrong and could be a major hindrance. Today’s...

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Maximising Impact: Effective Strategies for Acting on Feedback

Maximising Impact: Effective Strategies for Acting on Feedback

Whether you are looking to improve your customer experience, increase productivity, revenue, or enhance your employee wellbeing, a regular feedback process can be one of the most powerful ways of...

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Beware of willful blindness

Beware of willful blindness

Ask around your colleagues at work - if you saw something wrong going on in the street, would you try to intervene, speak out, call the police? In my experience, just about everyone says yes they...

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How to create psychological safety at work

How to create psychological safety at work

We recently heard about a company that was going through a period of major change, and had started a monthly ‘blue sky’ session where staff were asked to throw around big ideas and chat about...

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Has Covid put workplace social capital at risk?

Has Covid put workplace social capital at risk?

News that Covid-19 vaccines will soon reach New Zealand is giving us hope that we’re finally turning the corner on the pandemic. Yet, there are concerns that our working lives may never quite be the...

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Leading effective and human-centred change management

Leading effective and human-centred change management

2020 showed us that business is everything but predictable. The social and economic disruption of the past year is reflected in the new vocabulary we use. Speaking about a business planning a ‘pivot’...

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Three Phase Approach to Project Management Success

Three Phase Approach to Project Management Success

The world of work is becoming more complex and unpredictable. Covid-19 has made the term ‘business-as-usual’ seem almost redundant. So how do we begin to grapple with these complexities when leading...

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Project management a critical weakness across all sectors

Project management a critical weakness across all sectors

Our data shows that managing projects from concept to review is a critical weakness across all sectors of New Zealand’s business leadership, as evidenced by the chart below: Our Energy Sector...

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Workplace bullying - red flags and safeguards

Workplace bullying - red flags and safeguards

Workplace bullying is New Zealand organisation’s elephant in the room: it’s underestimated, misunderstood and unknown. Our research validates Stats NZ’s findings that New Zealand organisations are...

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Survey fatigue: triggers and tips on how to avoid it

Survey fatigue: triggers and tips on how to avoid it

Survey fatigue. Not a problem…We have probably all heard of it and some of us have experienced it but with a bit of thought it can be relatively easily avoided. Before we get into how, let’s think...

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HR’s biggest Covid-19 challenge is yet to come

HR’s biggest Covid-19 challenge is yet to come

The Covid-19 crisis has tested HR leaders like never before. Globally, hundreds of millions of people have had their work lives upended. The rule book is being rewritten. It’s safe to argue we are...

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How lockdown brought New Zealand bosses and workers closer

How lockdown brought New Zealand bosses and workers closer

AskYourTeam CEO, Chris O'Reilly, talks to TV One Breakfast team on the positive and surprising findings about working from home during lockdown. The insights shared are from our recent Wellbeing and...

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Five ways Kiwis’ work lives improved under lockdown

Five ways Kiwis’ work lives improved under lockdown

Time apart for Kiwi workers and bosses during lockdown has had some surprising benefits, according to a nationwide survey of more than 20,000 New Zealanders working from home. It found bosses are...

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Why resilience and mental wellbeing have never been more important

Why resilience and mental wellbeing have never been more important

Most employees won’t put on a public display of their grievances for fear of being labelled difficult or missing out on future promotion opportunities, they simply take their frustrations home...

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Are wellbeing and employee productivity mutually exclusive?

Are wellbeing and employee productivity mutually exclusive?

As Sir Richard Branson famously said, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” That’s the kind of mindset that leaders and business owners must give...

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Leveraging technology to enhance a human workforce

Leveraging technology to enhance a human workforce

While historically it has been manufacturing and low-skilled labour roles that have felt the biggest impact from technological revolutions, today barely any role remains unaffected by its influence....

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Success through meaningful involvement

Success through meaningful involvement

Diversity and inclusion drives brighter and better business. I’m sure you know that and are familiar with the terms demographic diversity and cognitive diversity. Demographic diversity gets the most...

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Are you doing diversity and inclusion wrong?

Are you doing diversity and inclusion wrong?

The fact is that most of us have been doing diversity and inclusion wrong. Despite the volume of articles, think pieces, strategies and whitepapers being churned out week after week, D&I related...

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Four tips to secure top survey uptake

Four tips to secure top survey uptake

As the ‘highly effective’ Stephen R. Covey said: “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Employee feedback is the pure gold that can enhance...

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The Three Cs for creating a culture of involvement in your workplace

The Three Cs for creating a culture of involvement in your workplace

It has become the number one jargon buzzword in business over the past five years. “Culture”. It gets used a lot, but seldom explained. “Good workplace cultures” get celebrated, “bad workplace...

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Are the robots really coming?

Are the robots really coming?

There’s no doubt the future of HR will be tech-enabled. Every HR professional is either using a tech feedback tool or looking around for one to implement. Many of these tools are excellent and the...

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2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends - Report Summary

2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends - Report Summary

The Deloitte 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report identifies the major trends in business and employment over the last year. The key findings from this report are that it’s now more important than...

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Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men

Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men

The book Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men by Caroline Criado Perez, outlines the many ways in which data about women in the workplace is frequently excluded from...

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Keeping the Human in HR

Keeping the Human in HR

The rapidly evolving digital world is bringing changes to the landscape of the HR workplace. These are exciting times. But, with the excitement we should exercise caution and not underestimate the...

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The Impact of “Big Data” on HR

The Impact of “Big Data” on HR

Big data is not a new paradigm. It has been promulgated since Roger Mougalas of O’Reilly Media coined the term in 2005. The 14 years since its inception has seen the growth in storage data worldwide,...

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Goodbye old school hierarchies, hello team mates

Goodbye old school hierarchies, hello team mates

Global consultants McKinsey say organisations are like living organisms. Their “trademarks include a network of teams within a people-centered culture that operates in rapid learning and fast...

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All hands on deck

All hands on deck

Over a 17 year period, US Naval Captain David Marquet was a rising star moving up the elite ranks of the submarine service, being groomed to command the state of the art nuclear attack sub USS...

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Designing a better employee experience

Designing a better employee experience

Is your thriving organisation really involving and empowering people to do their best work? We think it’s timely to share some fresh insight from Deloitte’s new 2019 Global Human Capital Trends...

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Three golden rules for successful change management

Three golden rules for successful change management

This year we welcomed Jen McKay, our new Client Services Director. Jen has over 15 years experience in top level corporate management consulting and programme management and specialises in complex...

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Pulled apart – how HR actually deals with sexual harassment

Pulled apart – how HR actually deals with sexual harassment

“We had a head researcher who told one of our in-house lawyers that if you stood in a certain spot under the glass stairs, you could look up women’s dresses,” says Alice*, an Australian HR...

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Workplace culture starts with involvement

Workplace culture starts with involvement

It’s a human truth that we operate best in groups - in fact one of our most fundamental human instincts is the desire to cooperate and work together. Our most well organised and effective groups are...

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How do we get balance in all respects?

How do we get balance in all respects?

Thinking about the theme of International Women’s Day this year of #balanceforbetter, it struck me what a great theme it is. It sums up nicely one of the key challenges we all face, and with no...

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Gender balance in business

Gender balance in business

The race is on, for men and women to work together, to unleash the power of gender equality in business, politics, media coverage and wealth across the world. Diversity of thought informs better...

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How #MeToo has changed HR forever

How #MeToo has changed HR forever

As 2018 began drawing to a close, New Zealand was hit with several high profile accusations of toxic workplace cultures. First, it was accusations of bullying by Commissioner for Financial Literacy...

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Collaborative teams

Collaborative teams

Many collaborative teams work together frequently but can spin off to other projects and collaborations when necessary. Building collaboration into teams allows team members to push each other to...

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Beating the bullies

Beating the bullies

Ask any foreign visitor about the areas in which New Zealand leads the world, and you’re unlikely to hear “bullying” in the top ten. But that might be luck rather than a reflection of reality. In...

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Beyond engagement

Beyond engagement

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, engagement was heralded as the answer to every organisation’s challenge. Highly engaged employees equalled better business performance and companies all...

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Checking the pulse

Checking the pulse

Digital disruption is reshaping the HR landscape, creating new opportunities for those organisations that are ready to transform. The most exciting are new digital HR tools that extend the influence...

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What is this thing called workplace empowerment?

What is this thing called workplace empowerment?

It’s clear that empowerment is one of today’s great positive buzzwords in management and HR, and creating an empowering culture is near the top of every HR professionals’ agenda. And there’s good...

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Attraction and retention of millennials through learning and CSR

Attraction and retention of millennials through learning and CSR

As the global talent shortage persists and new jobs are created as fast as others become extinct, business success depends on organisations having an effective career development strategy in place to...

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From talent to team: HR’s generational change

From talent to team: HR’s generational change

As Mohammed Ali finished addressing 2000 graduating Harvard University seniors in 1975 he responded to a call from the crowd to “give us a poem”. Ali paused, locked eyes on the audience member who...

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Are you implementing a culture of empowerment in your organisation?

Are you implementing a culture of empowerment in your organisation?

Empowerment in any workplace starts with leadership. It has to because at its essence, empowerment is a transfer of power from a leader in authority to someone lower down in the organisation chart....

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A time to reflect, redefine and upskill

A time to reflect, redefine and upskill

Change is constant, we hear, and nowhere more so than in the world of work. A few years back the loss of a job was met with severe consternation by the employee and varying degrees of career...

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How to make continuous performance management work?

How to make continuous performance management work?

For many decades in HR, performance management has been centred around annual performance appraisals. These occurred at both the individual level (the dreaded annual review), and the company level...

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Anonymity key to overcoming unconscious bias

Anonymity key to overcoming unconscious bias

Diversity and inclusion are priorities for every HR pro today, but too often we shy away from conversations about the biggest barrier to creating more inclusive organisations -unconscious bias. This...

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The dictator is dead. Killed by technology.

The dictator is dead. Killed by technology.

History can teach us a lot about changing HR practice. The first principle of history is the same as HR -the technology that drives economic activity in any society also dictates the shape of that...

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Digital tools create a people-led business revolution

Digital tools create a people-led business revolution

Digital disruption is reshaping the HR landscape, creating new opportunities for those organisations that are ready to transform. The most exciting are new digital HR tools that extend the influence...

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Building workplace cultures where unsafe behaviour is not tolerated

Building workplace cultures where unsafe behaviour is not tolerated

Every organisation should have a zero-tolerance to workplace bullying and intimidating behaviour, and no-one should be put in the position where they dread coming to work. Building a positive culture...

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Why the future belongs to HR

Why the future belongs to HR

There’s been seismic shift in the dynamics driving today’s most successful organisations that is being led by HR practitioners using the technology of our highly networked age. It’s the shift from...

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Strengths and weaknesses of New Zealand leaders

Strengths and weaknesses of New Zealand leaders

Having the ability to measure and analyse aspects of organisation, team and leadership performance, helps us find out what’s really going on. Both large and small company CEOs are often left...

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