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The importance of hiring standards Robbie McIlraith is the New Zealand general manager of Stellar Recruitment. robbie@stellarrecruitment.co.nz
The resources boom in Australia during the last 10 years and subsequent construction activity has seen employee wages skyrocket and many businesses become unsustainable. Now, companies scrambling to remain competitive are making significant redundancies with some sectors seeing as many as 20,000 jobs disappear in one state. From 2006, wages in the resource and resource-related construction sectors increased by as much as 100 percent. In many cases, companies paid workers above market salaries to simply attract and retain them - in some cases at the sacrifice of hiring for competency, experience, cultural fit and attitude. Ultimately, businesses and companies performed poorly due to high wage costs, poor employee engagement, lack of leadership and high staff turnover. Like the Australia resource boom, New Zealand, and especially the Canterbury earthquake rebuild, has entered an unprecedented growth period similar to the one we noticed in our Brisbane office in the 2006 boom. Companies that continue to focus on hiring staff with the right cultural fit, attitude, level of competency for the position, and ultimately keep a conservative approach to salaries, will build a workforce that is sustainable, engaged and will ultimately deliver high productivity. The key to growing staff numbers sustainably in any business is having competent leadership, as staff generally leave their leader and not the business. A salary increase is a short term motivator. If businesses focus on strong leadership, especially in middle management, promote career development opportunities, drive a high performance culture in a fun environment, and give staff challenging work, pay will be well down the scale as to why staff will leave your business. Like Australia, some sectors in New Zealand could experience a changing market at some stage in the future.
Business head in the clouds? Martz Witty, head of the Martz Group, aligning chartered accountancy with the creativity of business development. www.martz.co.nz
It’s topical… should your accounting solutions be “in the cloud?” We’re going to answer that with a… maybe. No, that doesn’t mean we are not prepared to commit – instead we are making a stand that one size does not fit all. Imagine for a moment you’re wearing a business “onesie”. Yes it might look cute, yes, it might be functional – but is it right for you long term? Maybe! A study from the Ministry of Economic Development in September 2011 showed 68.9 percent of New Zealand enterprises had zero employees, a further 20.8 percent had five or less employees… so 89.7 percent cumulatively have five or less employees. Compliance costs can be out of hand. For the small business owner cloud accounting solutions can be just the ticket for you – especially with so many add-ons for the little idiosyncrasies that your business may have - from costings, quoting, job costing, payroll and the list goes on. On the whole, small business owners underestimate how much cloud solutions can offer, especially when the very solution enables your outside advisers to login and work with you on a joint project; be that more clients, getting them back more often and thus increasing the transaction frequency, increasing prices and margins, or being better at your business processes. They all accumulate to building a better business. There are a number of online solutions available and it is all a matter of finding your needs and placing the perfect solution over the top. Herein lies part of the magic solution - you see you may not know the needs you have because it’s not uncommon to not know what you don’t know… so find someone who can help you with the basics, help you through the intermediate steps and then on to the big wide world that is self employment.
However, this may not be to the same extent as the impact of the resources downturn in Australia, so businesses who kept their cost base competitive or had flexibility to handle cost pressures, would remain sustainable into the future.
Okay, so here you are in your onesie and maybe it’s a bit tight around the middle? Are the legs a bit short? Is the collar tight? Yes it is functional – but it’s not going to get you where you need to go.
More importantly, businesses that place emphasis on attracting and nurturing ‘A-players’ through driving an engaged and productive workforce will not only prosper, they will flourish.
Your business adviser is just the same. Regrettably one size does not fit all. It might for a short while, but ultimately you’re going to outgrow it.
People are the foundation of any business and if hiring standards drop to meet the growth demand, learning and development ceases and middle management are promoted beyond their competency, long term business sustainability will be hard to achieve.
So find someone who can grow with you, as personality and ability are part of the equation. So are ability and expertise. Above all let’s remember the purpose of a business is to ‘fund’ your lifestyle and create some fun on the way. If you’re not having fun, then maybe there’s a change afoot.
Perspiration matters more than inspiration Colin Clapp is a founding member of The Business Factory. Visit www.accountable.co.nz and www.thebusinessfactory.org
Thomas Edison was quoted as saying “Genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration”. I am reminded of this quote as I observe elements of our tall-poppy syndrome manifesting itself again in the under performing NZ business world. An award winning business I know quite well has started to attract some derogatory attention. These disrespectful (and sometimes vitriolic attacks) come from a place that perfectly fits the Wikipedia definition of the tall-poppy syndrome; ‘a social phenomenon in which people of genuine merit are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements elevate them above or distinguish them from their peers’. But I can tell you the reality is somewhat different. This company started out like many other NZ SMEs; a part-time venture, operated out of the back garden by a young set of parents. As the years have rolled by and their workforce and profits have grown, all they are doing is daring to learn, daring to invest and daring to be accountable. In personal terms, they are simply daring to dream, daring to play and daring to win so they can share their successes. Behind the scenes what people can’t (or prefer not to) see when viewing successful people, is the relentless commitment they have to realising their potential. They don’t see the 99 percent perspiration Edison applied to his one percent inspiration. The sad thing, in respect of NZ’s productivity performance, is the company in question is not doing anything that other companies could not do. When the owner told me about the derogatory remarks he’d received, he said it was because competitors are effectively “leaving their lunch on the table”. What he means is that the marketplace is happy to invest in mediocrity and complacency, while his company is willing to invest in continuous improvement and regular accountability. In other words, they are seizing opportunity others are passing up. Remember, not everything that inspired Edison demonstrated genius. Most people know he failed far more times than he succeeded. Likewise, modern business is the same. The company I am talking about have had their fair share of hits, but they continue to display courage, self reliance and a determination. And like most successful people, any rewards they earn are simply a result of the 99 percent perspiration they apply to their one percent inspiration. Be sure to remember the gravy train does not deliver without continuous effort. If you are not willing to continually perspire in the pursuit of fulfilling performance potential, don’t be surprised if someone wants to eat your lunch.
www.aucklandtoday.net.nz October 2015 | 7