Many of NZ's industries are facing an increasing employee health problem, but what can employers do during the 9-5 period to help? HRM asked Vicki Caisley, Southern Cross Health Society’s Head of People and Talent, just how healthy is the Kiwi workforce?

 

This video originally appeared here.

Keeping businesses relevant in today’s volatile and globally hyper-connected world, where the technology fuelled disruption of entire markets and industries alike, presents a real and ongoing challenge for business leaders.
The simultaneous impacts of factors such as the speed of technology-induced change and globalisation further accelerate these changes.

Established organisations whose business models are predicated on the assumption that a fine tuning of their current strategies, structures and business processes will guarantee future viability may be ill prepared when faced with the inevitability of disruption.

20/20 hindsight is a good thing. The litany of cases where organisations have failed to read the signs of disruption are well known and researched. Kodak and Polaroid are well known such examples.

The question is: What can business leaders do to ensure their organisation thrives and survives in the face of increasing technology-induced volatility?

The inertial organisation meets disruption: Who wins?

All organisations, whether public, private, for-profit, not-for-profit or Government, intrinsically face the same challenges in ensuring their ongoing financial viability and efficiency whilst remaining relevant and valued in the eyes of their stakeholders.

Even though the latest technology offering may be compelling, the acid test is how, if at all, organisations can exploit these technologies and innovations to their advantage with known cost, value and risk. This tests the organisation’s intrinsic ability to truly deliver when it comes to making the necessary changes – not everyone will come out a winner.

Past successes contribute to organisational inertia, and overcoming this inertia presents business owners and executives with a complex set of challenges. For incumbent and mature organisations, the foundations on which the capability for ensuring enterprise-wide resilience and adaptability has often little to do with the latest technology.

This post first appeared on CIO Upfront by Rob Livingstone (CIO New Zealand)

The AuSAE TV platform is jam-packed with interviews of NFP sector leaders and topic experts. The latest episode features Sarah Sladek (Founder & CEO of XYZ University), who joins us all the way from America and shares with us her views of the future of association membership and best ways to engage with Gen Y. She describes in the episode how associations must bridge the generational gap in order to survive, and describes some ways in which to do this [watch now].

AuSAE TV is made possible by Redback Conferencing and is housed within their platform. Click here to watch. Not a member? Visit our membership page to see what else you are missing out on and join today! AuSAE TV is a platform consisting of various insightful interviews and webcasts with sector leaders and topic experts. New episodes are released every month.

(Breaking News) Sam McLean will address the AuSAE Conference & Exhibition (ACE) in an exciting keynote titled "Mobilising members through grassroots campaigns in the NFP landscape." Join us at ACE, to hear Sam share his and GetUp's impressive work in the advocacy field throughout Australia.

Sam McLean is National Director of GetUp, an independent movement of more than 800,000 people working to build a progressive Australia and bring participation back into our democracy. Sam started as a volunteer eight years ago and by 22 had risen to become GetUp's Communications and Campaigns Director. At 24, he succeeded Simon Sheikh as National Director. From his early days as a grassroots campaigner and field manager, including time as international climate change campaigner at Avaaz.org, he has advocated for progressive activism at the local level. He helped to establish CommunityRun, a tool that empowers GetUp members to start and eventually run their own campaigns. Sam is also a Director of Australian Progress and of ControlShift Labs, which provide platforms for local activists to start and run campaigns across the world. Follow Sam on Twitter: @samuelmclean.

To see the full program and more information about ACE please click here.

Recruitment firms are being enlisted not just to find skilled candidates, but to make sure a wider range of people are considered for leadership roles.

Karen Greenbaum knows what it takes to hunt down top talent. For three decades she has been recruiting, advising and managing leaders, in a career that has taken her to the highest echelons of global consulting firm Mercer, top 100 law firm Nixon Peabody and boutique executive search company Pierce Consulting Partners.

But it was recruiting for the head of the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC) that was her toughest assignment - this time she was the one in the hot seat. Before taking the top job at the AESC last year, she was not only shoulder tapped by an executive recruitment firm, but also faced a selection panel made up of leading recruiters.

"It was all search, all the time," she says. It's what you'd expect from the trade organisation that represents the firms that help corporate clients find top-flight talent for executive and boardroom roles.

The Chicago-based Greenbaum says there is a common misconception that by employing an executive search specialist you're getting access to someone with a Rolodex of likely candidates at their fingertips. "That is not at all what we do," she says.

It's about assessing talent, understanding the business environment of the organisation, making sure it will be a good fit for the candidate and helping bring that person successfully into the organisation, she says. "We really do search and it's very specific for the client, for the assignment." Signing on top talent will become increasingly competitive this year, says Greenbaum.

The AESC's annual Executive Job Outlook survey, set for release next week, shows 72 per cent of executives around the world are optimistic about job market opportunities. This is a "huge jump" from 51 per cent last year and 36 per cent in 2013, she says. Greenbaum says as growing economies create more opportunities for those at the top, the war for talent will become a reality for many firms.

"People are also looking around the world to fill top positions, not just locally," she says. New Zealand's quality of life is an advantage in this respect, Greenbaum says, making it an attractive market for local executives and those looking for opportunities in another market. Greenbaum is in New Zealand speaking with government officials and organisations working on board diversity.

Please find full NZ Herald article here.

At the following link, you can find the accounting standards and other pronouncements to be applied by Not-For-Profit public benefit entities (NFPs) in New Zealand for preparing general purpose financial reports for periods beginning on or after 1 April 2015. The Accounting Standards and other pronouncements for periods beginning on or before 31 March 2015 are on a different page found here.

Please find full information about the New Standards here.

Sourced from IRD information hub on non-profit organisations.

Find out about your responsibilities for volunteer, paid or contracted staff members. You can also find out about honoraria.

• Honoraria and taxing payments to volunteers
  

Find out about reimbursing volunteers for expenses, including the reimbursement of petrol. You can also find out about tax rates for honoraria payments.

• Becoming an employer
  

You’ll need to register with us as an employer if you employ staff. Find out more about how to decide whether your staff are employees or self-employed contractors.

• Employing staff
  

Find out about what you need to do when staff members start/stop working for you. You can also find out about employing your spouse or foreign workers.

• Your payroll responsibilities to employees or contractors
  

If you’re an employer, you’ll need to deduct PAYE from payments made to employees or contractors. This includes tax on schedular payments from payments made to staff or contractors. Find out how to make deductions for student loan repayments, child support, KiwiSaver, or any benefits, bonuses or other allowances that you pay.

• If you're issuing payroll giving donation receipts
  

Find out about what your payroll giving receipts should look like and how they should be issued.

An Employment Court decision could mean a big pay day for 35,000 New Zealand workers. In Wellington’s Employment Court last week, the Service and Food Workers Union won a case against the Ministry of Health and Capital & Coast District Health Board over the pay of one of its employees.

Jane Lowe was being paid a “subsidy” of $75 for a 24 hour shift – ultimately leaving her with just over $3 pay per hour. The judge’s ruling means that Lowe is now eligible to receive the minimum wage plus holiday pay.

John Ryall, the union’s secretary, said the case is exemplary for 35,000 other home care relief workers who are typically paid in “subsidies”. He added that the court had asked the union to come back in a month to discuss how the change in pay should be implemented.

A case on behalf of the thousands of other workers the change might affect is yet to be filed, but there are plans to do so. Ryall said that the issue of back-pay for Lowe and the other workers will also be addressed. “Home care relief workers allow family carers a short break from looking after disabled or ill relatives by stepping into their role,” he said. “Without these workers the family care system would fall over.”

The back pay could be “quite large”, Ryall said. Judge Bruce Corkill said in the legal documents that the Ministry of Health and health board had argued against claims that Lowe was a home worker – the ERA had previously argued that she was not.

However, Corkill found that although Lowe referred to herself as a “friend” of her clients, “she did not provide these services only as a friend” and was indeed a homeworker. “[Lowe] provided a service to the Ministry and C&CDHB required to be undertaken so that their responsibilities could be met,” the judge ruled.

He said that all parties involved should resolve pay issues directly, but would be able to file for court help if this was unsuccessful. The Ministry of Health’s chief legal advisor Phil Knipe said that the Ministry was considering the judge’s decision and working with legal advisors regarding its next steps. A spokesman for the health board said that it was complying with Ministry of Health guidelines in relation to carer support.

Article sourced directly from: http://www.hrmonline.co.nz/news/courts-decision-could-affect-35000-kiwi-workers-197895.aspx

Speech by Anne Tolley MP

It is a great pleasure to be with you here today as we celebrate an important milestone in progressing the Government’s Children’s Action plan with the launch of two new guidelines for people working with children.

Safer Recruitment, Safer Children will help organisations choose safe people to work with children, and Safer Organisations, Safer Children will help organisations develop child protection policies.

Every child has the right to be free from abuse and neglect. The sad truth is some children don’t feel safe and are subject to abuse and/or neglect, sometimes by the very people are employed and trusted to keep them safe.

These guidelines will help the children’s workforce to keep vulnerable children safe and support all New Zealand children to thrive, achieve and belong.

One of this Government’s top priorities is to reduce child abuse through:

• better screening of children for vulnerability
  
• full assessments of the needs of vulnerable children,
  
• more support for frontline workers and communities
  
• better results for our vulnerable children and their families.
  

New Zealand charity, Daya Trust, brought together more than seventy Wellington business women and men last week to celebrate International Women’s Day, with support from ANZ Bank and Grant Thornton New Zealand.

Daya Trust Founder, Rochelle Stewart-Allen, said “International Women’s Day is a prime opportunity to celebrate how far women have come in New Zealand and overseas, but also to recognise how far women still have to go to overcome the inequalities they continue to face.”

Daya Trust believes that education is an empowerment tool for women and girls because it enables them to make choices and become changemakers in their lives. An education gives girls’ opportunities to improve their job prospects and significantly increases their earnings when they leave school by up to 25%. Access to education for girls’ means economic growth. Investing in girls’ education benefits everyone: their families, their communities, governments, businesses, and entire nations.

Over the last six years Daya Trust has worked in India and New Zealand building young women leaders and supporting its Indian charity partner in empowering women and girls through a sustainable development model for Mumbai slum-communities.

Across the world, International Women’s Day was celebrated at scale. Increasingly at International Women’s Day events, we hear stories of women who are making real changes to their communities at a grass roots level.

These women are true role models that women in Aotearoa can relate to. Real women making a real difference make a more powerful impact, and one such woman is social entrepreneur Ranjna Patel. Ranjna is Chair of the New Zealand Central Indian Association (NZCIA) Women’s Group, amongst many other professional and voluntary roles she holds.

At the Daya Trust event, she spoke about her own personal journey as a woman. She told the audience about the challenges she faced as a young third-generation Kiwi Indian woman who, as part of her culture, was married at eighteen. However Ranjna went on to build one of New Zealand’s largest primary health organisations, East Tamaki Healthcare – Nirvana Group in Auckland.

Ranjna shared statistics on women in leadership positions locally and globally and talked about the key barriers she believes women face worldwide: lack of access to education, violence, and stigmatised cultural norms.

Ranjna believes targeting perpetrators of violence against women plays a key role in solutions to end it. She is currently involved in launching New Zealand’s first early intervention accommodation for South Asian men who have been issued protection orders. This provides a place where professionals can work one-on-one with the men to tackle the core issues. The first house has been officially launched in March with its fundamental goal to prevent future offending and further violence against women.

Sourced directly from: http://dayatrust.com/new-zealand-charity-highlights-role-of-women-for-international-womens-day