Many of the small and medium enterprises we spoke to, including migrant-owned businesses, are not formally networked to business agencies such as chambers of commerce or employers’ associations. This means they are reliant on either informal sources or professional services for advice about employment relations, anti-discrimination law and good employer issues.
|
“There’s been lots of change in legislation recently (breast feeding, flexi working). It’s easier for big companies to respond to this when they have resources, but smaller companies struggle to understand the legislation, the impacts and how to deal with it. Government could provide more accessible information and advice.” |
Age is a dominant anxiety in many businesses around New Zealand. We heard again and again in different industrial sectors and across the regions about the issues relating to an ageing workforce. Whether it be succession planning for small business owners, older truck drivers, mentoring schemes in factories, or how to manage transitions to retirement, the ageing demographic of New Zealand’s labour market was firmly on the agenda. However, most businesses acknowledge they are neither actively planning for nor currently managing their ageing workforce.
|
“Government needs to provide leadership for the ageing population. Lead the way and demonstrate how to retain older people in work.” |
At the other end of the spectrum some employers are strongly biased against young people because of their perceived attitudes to work and because of stereotypes about the youth work ethic. Some employers believe they have to make a much greater investment in younger people to get them up to speed. Youth unemployment is generally higher during periods of economic recession, but employers’ attitudes towards young people were a marked and worrying feature of the National Conversation about Work.
Employers want greater employment flexibility. The majority were in favour of the 90-day probationary period and some wanted to be able to roll over temporary contracts during the downturn because of the unpredictability of forward orders. Many employers were upset at new immigration criteria involving migrants who were having to reapply, and while businesses could understand the desirability of “Kiwis first”, they relied on the skills and availability of migrants for production.
“People don’t leave good jobs, they leave bad managers.” Both employers and employees raised a number of management issues with us throughout the project. Universally workers identify superior management with good communication, personal knowledge of employees and high-trust workplaces. Head office management perceived as being remote from workplace issues was criticised by both middle management and employees. Staff in one large Taranaki organisation stated that compulsory management training and mandatory refresher courses would improve the consistency of decision-making and management variability. One business owner also said that big private sector employers would benefit from the “good employer” obligations currently applied to the public sector.
There was a prevailing attitude among many managers, business owners and human resource specialists we spoke to that there was a lack of innovation and forward thinking around employment issues in New Zealand, whether that related to fringe benefit tax issues for small business or policy relating to performance management.
|
It seems that employment legislation in NZ is now always about dealing with the problem, but not helping with the policy and how to avoid issues. Government needs to find a way to help employers deal with the two or three steps before a problem, not just legislate for the outcome.”
|