One day Master Classes now launched in Melbourne and Sydney. Learn how to implement CRM successfully and avoid costly mistakes!  Courses are delivered by Hart Square, the only independent, sector-exclusive, CRM consulting company in Australia. Attend these valuable events to ensure that you learn from experts and are provided with the insights and secrets the others won’t tell you. 
Bonus offer - FREE Samsung tablet for every attendee for a limited time only!

In an Australian first, Hart Square are offering one-day intensive training courses that will provide not-for-profit organisations with the information and tools needed to select CRM for their organisation. Titled, ‘Insider’ this series of Masterclasses will provide valuable insight, practical advice, and information to assist organisations when considering their next technology purchase.

Through small classes, these courses will teach organisations the Hart Square methodology and include all the templates that we use with our clients and have done for many years. The focus is on quality, not quantity.

The master classes are delivered in two parts and part one starts in Melbourne and Sydney in May and will book out fast as places are very limited, the cost of the course includes a FREE Samsung Tablet for all new attendees and twelve months access to the Hart Square members portal, which is a mine of templates, eGuides, podcasts and other exclusive information only available to Master class attendees.

Want to learn more, please click here.

For the event specific details, please click here.

By Olivia Rog on the Workplace Leadership Blog

Work life balance is often understood as either an elusive ideal or a complete myth. Often associated with overworked individuals in workplaces that don’t have a culture of flexibility, work-life balance has become a modern dilemma with improved technology and the ability to remain connected 24/7. Poor work-life balance has a direct consequence on organisational performance in that it decreases employee motivation and job satisfaction, and increases their intention to leave the organisation.

I recently attended a symposium where Professor Michelle Ryan spoke about how identity can predict perceptions of work-life balance. Ryan argues that work-life balance needs to be a key organisational focus, given the changing demographics in the workforce, technological advances, and its implications in diversity policy and practice.  Work-life balance, she argues, can impact an individual’s job satisfaction, performance, stress, commitment, and intentions to leave the organisation.

So how do people achieve a positive work-life balance? Is it even possible?

To understand the answers to these questions, we need to go beyond an analysis of the total hours spent at work. In her presentation Ryan outlines how having control of time, flexible work practices, and organisational demands and culture impact an individual’s perception of balance.

One of the main influences on the perception of work-life balance is the degree to which individuals perceive they ‘fit’ in an organisation.

‘Fit’ is an interesting concept in the workplace, as it varies according to organisational culture, individual values, their alignment with the organisation’s mission, and the impact of co-workers and peers. A study by Morse and Lorsch highlights how organization-task fit is simultaneously linked to and interdependent from both individual motivation and effective unit performance. According to Ryan, if an individual perceives they fit in an organisation, they are more likely to perceive themselves as having a positive work-life balance. Perception of ‘fit’ in an organisation also correlates with the presence of others similar to them who are higher up the organisational ladder. A perception of similarity between an individual and their organisational leader creates a sense of belonging in employees, enabling them to feel comfortable being themselves in the workplace. An increased perception of fit may also mean sacrificing time spent outside of work is worthwhile.

Work-life balance is therefore a subjective concept largely dependent on an individual’s perception of fit in an organisation, their values and how willing they are to sacrifice non-work time for work-related activities.

The Australian government should outsource social services to the private sector by providing tax breaks to corporations behind business ideas that help the vulnerable, leading US business scholar Mark Kramer has said. 

The co-founder and managing director of US-based social impact advisory firm FSG said the government played a key role in galvanising companies to come up with services that would be both lucrative for the provider, and beneficial to the disadvantaged and neglected sectors of society – a concept he labelled "shared value".

"There is a tremendous opportunity for government to play a role in several ways. First, to the extent that business can come in and address problems and meet social needs in ways that would otherwise cost the government money, there is a strong case to be made for a subsidy or tax holiday, to encourage businesses to move in this direction," Mr Kramer said during his visit to Australia for the Shared Value Forum on Tuesday, hosted by the National Australia Bank.

"Second, government itself is a huge purchaser of services, and by building a shared value component into their requirements, they can encourage companies to move in this way.

"It's all about measure. Business is very used to measuring financial results, and not at all used to measuring social impacts of what they do. But by beginning to require measurement about social outcomes and social impacts, you begin to change the practice of business."

Australian state governments are starting to lean on the corporate sector for social services, with the NSW state government introducing social benefit bond trials – a new breed of financial instrument used to help fill the funding shortfall needed to provide social services. The NSW government has promised investors a return for innovative funding schemes for welfare programs aiming to reduce the number of children needing foster care and affordable housing. 

Speaking on a panel with other business leaders, Mr Kramer said business leaders failing to see the competitive advantage in investing in projects with social value would lag. 

"Business can't succeed in a failing society. There are immense opportunities to make money by meeting social needs that have been overlooked before or addressed only by government and non-profits. I think companies that are not exploring shared value opportunities are losing out to competitors that do ... it is raising the bar on competition."

Fellow panellist and chief executive of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Mike Hirst – who has said publicly that banks should take seriously the concept of corporate social responsibility – said tax holidays were helpful, but the less government involvement in the private sector the better. 

"What we've seen over time, especially in my industry since the GFC, is that the amount of regulation that has come in ... really does hold business and my industry [back] from being able to achieve the things they need to achieve. There needs to be a mature discussion around how we can better operate around things like social value," he said.

"When you see an issue that needs a resolution the way you can go about that is through commercially driven opportunities that provide outcomes. Shared value, if we were to talk about it, is a commercially oriented, co-operatively spirited approach to doing business."

In an incendiary 2011 Harvard Business Review article, Mr Kramer coined the term "shared value". The article, co-authored by Harvard Business School's Professor Michael Porter, led to the establishment of the Shared Value Initiative, an international hub for business leaders and stakeholders investing in economically valuable projects with social benefit. The Australian branch, called Shared Value Project, was launched at the beginning of 2014, with the National Australia Bank, Nestle Australia and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank among its partners. 

Mr Kramer singled out the banking and insurance sectors in Australia as industries taking on projects of shared value. He said areas in Australia crying out for innovative business solutions were affordable housing and employment.

Other figures on the panel included vice president of Business in the Community Dame Julia Cleverdon and Save the Children Australia's chief executive Paul Ronalds.

Written by Timna Jacks, originally sourced from SMH.com.au. Please find the original article here.

The Australian Institute of Company Directors has set a target for 30 per cent of board seats to be filled by women by the end of 2018 and wants ASX 200 companies to voluntarily meet it, rather than face government mandates.

The new target comes as business leaders urge te Abbott government to look at new policies such as tax deductible child care to encourage more women back to work, and deal with the issue of there not being a sufficient pipeline of women to head company boards and CEO roles.

Nicola Wakefield Evans, member of Chief Executive Women and a non-executive director of Toll Holdings, Lend Lease, BUPA Australia and Macquarie said it was about time that company boards were no longer seen as a "boys club" and that the government introduced policies to increase workforce participation of women. "We need a serious discussion about available, flexible child care for women," she said. "[There's] women who work in the middle of the night who don't do traditional hours. We need to fix that problem...to help more women get back in the workforce."

AICD chief executive John Brogden agreed that tax deductible child care was needed. In terms of diversity targets, he said the next step would be to set targets for women at the executive and middle management levels, and for more multicultural diversity in the workplace. "The next place for diversity targets is down the chain, but also for multiculturalism; our boards are quite unrepresentative of Australia as a multicultural nation," he said.

The 30 per cent target will also apply to private companies, whose directors are part of the AICD's 35,000-strong membership, which extends beyond the top listed companies to small ASX entities, private business and not-for-profit organisations. Mr Brogden said the four-year time frame to achieve the target for ASX 200 boards may not be appropriate for smaller listed and non-listed companies, so AICD have not set a specific target date for these organisations to meet it, but that over time, they would have to. "It's companies that fly under the targets radar that haven't been as successful," he said. "I would hazard a guess, the smaller the company and the smaller the board is, the less likely they are to have diversity." "There's no doubt that the heavy lifting has to be done by companies below the [ASX] Top 50."

Mr Brogden said the new targets were an extension of the AICD's previous diversity initiatives – including helping in the development of ASX reporting guidelines on diversity – and would help companies more quickly achieve boardroom diversity. He said there was a lot of research showing a positive link between the level of female representation on boards and improved corporate performance. "There is an undeniable case for gender diversity on boards," Mr Brogden said.

The number of female directors on ASX 200 boards has risen from 8.3 per cent in 2009 to 20 per cent today. While women represent 30 per cent of all new appointments to ASX 200 boards, there are many companies with no women on their boards. Workplace Gender Equality Agency data shows that last year only 18.8 per cent of the ASX 200 organisations that report to the agency had set a target for their board. 

"We believe more needs to be done to further increase that number and we are confident our new policy will help achieve that, at a faster pace," Mr Brogden said. "We believe that the director community setting its own 30 per cent target is a better approach than a mandated quota imposed by government." 

He said the AICD would ask all boards to adopt the target and regularly report on their progress. The AICD publishes monthly statistics on the number of women on ASX 200 boards.

This article written by Nassim Khadem originally appeared here.

Originally appeared on Collaboration for Impact blog on April 10, 2015 by Olivia Wright

Dr Andrew Young, CEO of The Centre for Social Impact shares some thoughts on collaborative approaches.

Two weeks ago we had the enormous privilege of announcing Burnie, Tasmania as Australia’s most promising early stage Collective Impact initiative.

The Search – an initiative offering up to $1 million in support to an Australian community working to address society’s biggest challenges – commenced in June last year. 49 communities applied and in November eleven were shortlisted. On March their Excellencies Peter and Lady Cosgrove generously hosted the announcement of Burnie’s success at Admiralty House in Sydney.

On behalf of CSI’s partners in The Search, I think I can say we are optimistic that all of these communities have the potential to fundamentally change how we address complex social issues in Australia.

Why are we optimistic? After all, the concept of collaborative approaches to difficult issues is hardly new. In Australia in the 1980s and 90s we called it community development. In the late nineties and early this century we called it place-based approaches. While many examples of these approaches may have made progress for a time, on the whole they failed to revolutionise how we do things.

Three reasons for optimism

I have at least three reasons to be optimistic.

My first was neatly expressed by a member of one of the communities I visited as a Search judge. I asked why they felt hopeful, given that this community has been involved in previous attempts to resolve the same issues they face today. This person was active in at least two of these previous efforts. She said: “because this time it’s different. There is more in it: More commitment. More resource. More structure. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’re in it for the long haul.”

I’ve since described this as “realistic optimism” – many of the leaders in these communities share this positivity, grounded in real understanding of the challenges.

Second, we’re seeing governments are starting to do some unusual things.

State Governments in all states are grappling with at least one “Collective Impact” community approach. I am hearing some really constructive questions from bureaucrats including “I am convinced that approaches like this are fundamentally important to our future. However, I can also see these approaches challenging how we think about funding, accountability and control. How can we work with five or ten approaches like this, let alone hundreds?” More importantly, I am starting to sense real commitment to working out the answers.

And the funding tide is turning: a year ago if you’d asked me how funding for Collective Impact approaches might work, I’d have said that funding for the “backbone” of the effort would likely come from philanthropy. I would have said that if communities could even start to influence Government funding for service delivery over the mid-term (several years) that’d be amazing progress.

I was wrong. The key funders for backbone resourcing in several communities will be Governments; for example, GoGoldfields in Victoria has received a commitment of $2.5 million from the Victorian Government. This is huge.

The Commonwealth Government is in some different examples also exploring locally-led collaborative approaches. The Empowered Communities: Empowered Peoples report was recently launched, and while the Government has yet to respond in detail the Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion expressed his support for the new approach, recognising this kind of thinking is required to close the gap in Indigenous disadvantage.

My third reason for optimism may sound like a negative: we’ve run out of money. I’ve spoken previously about the implications of our ageing population and slowing growth. For the first time in decades we have no choice but to seriously consider new approaches that might – in time – deliver more social outcomes and potentially at less cost. I think Commonwealth and State Governments are recognising collaborative, community-based approaches as one idea worth genuinely testing.

Learning opportunities

The final eleven communities in The Search were very diverse; it’s hard to imagine a community in Australia that can’t learn from the successes and challenges of one or more of these. The shortlisted communities included large urban areas (like Logan, Qld), large regional cities (like Geelong, Vic), small cities (like Burnie) and remote communities (like Bourke in NSW and Halls Creek in WA). You can read more about the communities here.

The eleven communities will also form a learning community; they will support and challenge each other. One of CSI’s overall goals is that learnings from these communities will support the collaborative efforts of many others.

The broader learning has well-and-truly started. All the tools you need to begin are right here. We hope the Collaboration for Impact community of practice flourishes in years to come.

We also hope to conduct research alongside some of these communities to develop more nuanced understandings of the keys to success of collaborative approaches for complex social issues. With thanks to the Macquarie Group Foundation, we’re also working with The Hive at Mt Druitt in Western Sydney, another collective impact approach involving the ten20 Foundation, United Way and FACS NSW.

Challenges for funders

I touched earlier on the challenges for governments in thinking about empowering communities in collaborative approaches in the future. These are very difficult questions; whole new frameworks for thinking about outcomes, funding, “commissioning”, risk and accountability are needed.

There is also a significant opportunity for philanthropists, whether individuals, companies or foundations, and it’s an opportunity so far largely missed (notwithstanding the leadership of the ten20 Foundation and The Search partners including the Westpac Foundation).

In my view, to have real and lasting impact, philanthropy needs to be catalytic; it needs to invest in ideas that can be system-changing.

In short, I can’t think of a better opportunity than these collaborative approaches. Where else does an investment of around $2m over a few years have such potential: to not only leverage but completely transform existing annual program funding of $100m or more?

Game-changing philanthropists: please apply.

Tourism New Zealand’s Chief Executive Kevin Bowler says today’s announcement from Air New Zealand regarding the commencement of flights between Houston in the USA and Auckland, is a spectacular one for the industry. 

“Visitor arrivals from the USA have been a stand-out performer in recent years, driven in large part by Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand’s work to capitalise on the Americans’ love of The Hobbit Trilogy,” says Kevin.

“This new service will enable us to broaden New Zealand's reach into the USA and the states that already deliver our second, third and fourth largest arrival numbers namely Texas, New York and Florida. 

“Residents of southern states are known to travel during their summer to avoid the heat, which aligns perfectly to Tourism New Zealand’s strategy to encourage shoulder season travel.  

“By providing visitors with an alternative to LA or San Francisco gateways we know that this announcement will have a significantly positive impact on the industry.

“It provides a meaningful market change that will help us to sustain the double digit growth we've been achieving.”

USA holiday arrivals for the year-ending February 2015 are up 13.8 per cent while holiday spend was up 32 per cent for the year-ending December 2015. 

For the past two years, Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand have delivered joint marketing activity internationally under a MOU valued at $20 million each year. 

ENDS

Contact Emma Carter, Senior Communications Advisor, Tourism New Zealand

emma.carter@tnz.govt.nz; phone +64 21 243 0386

Should provisional tax estimations be scrapped in favour of working it out as you earn?  This is one of many ideas the Government is seeking your view on. At a time when you can use your cell phone to order a movie or buy a plane ticket the Government thinks that Inland Revenue can do much more to make your tax simpler. Over the next couple of years Ministers of Finance and Revenue will be looking at ways to reduce the cost of doing your tax, improve speed and make tax part of normal day to day business processes. They want your feedback on their ideas before they make changes.

What could this mean for you? 

One idea is that accounting software could exchange information directly with Inland Revenue, so that: 

• more accurate GST, PAYE and related information could be provided to Inland Revenue automatically – with less time needed to fill out forms
• provisional tax could be managed more like PAYE and calculated as you earn your income.

How would direct information exchange with Inland Revenue affect you?

Another idea is to help small businesses get their tax right from the start.

Join the discussion:

Right now the Government wants your views on these ideas, and how technology can be used to make things simpler. You’ll find more ideas on the consultation website or in the discussion documents.

Go to makingtaxsimpler.ird.govt.nz to see what others are saying and make your own views heard. 

• Discussion on Better Digital Services – closes 15 May
• Discussion on the plan for the Tax Administration – closes 29 May

On May 11, to kick off this year’s annual Fundraising Institute of New Zealand (FINZ) Conference, Hon. Bill English will address a CEO Forum to outline his social services plan.

The CEO Forum is part of the annual FINZ Conference. It will be held at the Icon Function Centre at Wellington’s Te Papa Museum.

In an environment of measured accountability, Mr English is expected to outline his plan for the next two years in social services, including outsourcing housing and other services. He will also explain the Government’s short and long-term expectations of the charity and not-for-profit sectors, including how they must work in partnership with the Government.

“Mr English is the Government’s intellectual powerhouse, so we’re thrilled that he’ll be speaking at the forum,” says FINZ CEO, James Austin.

Not-for-profits attending

Mr Austin says the CEO Forum is important because fundraisers need active support from their CEOs to be successful.

This year there is a large list of leading not-for-profits attending, including NZ Red Cross, Arthritis NZ, The Fred Hollows Foundation and Stroke Foundation.

Leading speakers

“The forum and conference will bring the best of the world to New Zealand,” says Mr Austin.

In addition to Mr English, there will be a host of world-class speakers. These include Suzanne Snively ONZM (Chair of Transparency International), David Crosbie (Communities Councils for Australia), Hon. Peter Dunne (Minister of Internal Affairs) and Nigel Harris (CEO Mater Foundation).

Changing funding landscape

The rapidly-changing funding landscape has added complexity to the governance, management, operation and reporting requirements of charities. These things often conflict with their natural desire to focus on the causes they were created to serve. So, the forum will address issues facing the charity and not-for-profit sectors, and enable CEOs to share their knowledge and concerns.

The nation's peak medical group has warned a massive shortfall in federal funding for hospitals will lead to even longer waiting times for elective surgery, prompting higher morbidity rates, with the smaller states and regional Australia worst hit.

In its annual report card on the hospital system, the Australian Medical Association has delivered a worrying prognosis, warning successive cuts had left the states and territories facing 'a huge black hole' in funding.

AMA president Brian Owler warns unless this is addressed, there will be greater inequality across the country as larger economies like NSW and Victoria find ways to make up the shortfall and others such as South Australia and Tasmania struggle to meet the gap.

'This is probably one of the biggest fears that I have,' associate professor Owler told reporters in Sydney on Thursday.

'We are going to see greater inequity and it will depend on which state and territory you live in.'

Under changes to be introduced by the Abbott government, more than $50 billion will be stripped from hospital funding from 2017, on top of billions of cuts in last year's budget.

The AMA has called for the issue to be dealt with as a priority in discussions between Prime Minister Tony Abbott and state and territory leaders in Canberra on Friday.

South Australian Labor Premier Jay Weatherill has labelled the cuts massively unfair.

But federal Health Minister Sussan Ley, who will meet with state and territory counterparts in Sydney on Friday, rejected the criticism, arguing the funding deal reached under the former Labor government was unsustainable.

'It was based on a different funding premise that in itself tended to inflate costs but on top of that, Labor simply said 'here are your funding guarantees states and you will get this money any way.''

The AMA report shows waiting times for elective procedures (surgery that can wait more than 24 hours) had not improved at all in the past four years, with patients waiting an average of 36 days.

Deeper analysis also shows emergency departments across the country are taking on a greater burden, with a 7.2 per cent jump in the number of people presenting.

Associate professor Owler says unless waiting times improve, procedures that would otherwise be deemed 'elective', would be more likely to be life threatening, affecting people waiting for a heart by-pass or a child needing an operation for a congenital heart defect.

'All this adds to the rate of poorer outcomes. It adds to the rate of other morbidities and other co-morbidities that people experience,' he said.

There was improvement in some states in terms of emergency department waiting times, but no state or territory met the target of seeing 80 per cent of patients within clinically recommended triage times.

The report also points out that bed capacity numbers are not keeping pace with population growth.

Associate professor Owler said the government had retreated from its funding responsibilities despite public hospital funding looming as the biggest single challenge facing state and territory finances for the foreseeable future.

AAP

- See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/04/16/ama-warns-funding-gap--to-cause-inequality-.html#sthash.YQn1c2Pt.dpuf

This article originally appeared in the Company Director Magazine. 

Craig Richardson is chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director of Wynyard Group, a market leader in advanced crime-fighting software used by government agencies and financial organisations. He was born and raised in Australia, and his software grew out of working with the Australian Federal Police. But, 18 months ago, he launched Wynyard Group with a listing on the New Zealand Stock Exchange.

“New Zealand is a relatively small country, which means most of what you need to start and grow a hi-tech company is easily accessible,” he says. 

“There’s a concentration of talent here, particularly in the technology area. And New Zealand has a culture of building things for export because the local market is just not big enough to support substantial growth. I think that’s a different mindset from Australia, where you can make your first $10 or 20 million just in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. We always had the view that we needed to make our first 20 million in the UK or the US,” he says.

New Zealand also has a flexible and generally light-handed approach to regulating the labour market. “There’s still debate as to whether deregulating and removing all of our protections in the eighties and nineties was the right thing to do, but it has left New Zealand with a very open and competitive environment,” says Chris Money, director at PwC New Zealand. “Labour is cheap and plentiful.”

“Because it’s so cheap and easy to start a business, there’s a culture of ‘having a go’,” adds Robbie Gimblett, leader of the private business market sector of PwC New Zealand. “Kiwis are known for their adaptability and ingenuity – there’s a saying here that all they need to make or fix something is a piece of Number 8 wire – and, generally, they aren’t afraid of failure. They’ll take a product to market quickly and do the fine-tuning as they go.”

New Zealand has an aggressive regulatory regime for listed companies but the capital market, stock exchange and regulator are all very supportive of small company listings.

“There’s a growing acceptance that the technology sector in particular is expanding very rapidly with high-quality companies,” says Richardson. “The downside is that the market is very small with a limited number of offshore investors, so growing companies can reach the ceiling very quickly.

“It’s becoming reasonably common for companies to access capital at an early stage through an initial public offering (IPO) in New Zealand because you can have cut-through here and get close enough to institutional investors for them to understand your business. Then, as you scale up and look to access more capital and a more liquid market, you can move across to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).  

“Xero and Orion Health are good examples, they’re two of the most successful tech companies to have come out of New Zealand in last five years and both are dual listed,” he adds.

Challenges for the board

A fast-growing company with an offshore market demands a range of boardroom skills. Richardson is confident that New Zealand has a critical mass of directors and management teams with the experience to do the job. 

“We have maintained our industry advisory council of former intelligence agency and law enforcement executives who continue to assist with strategy and market expansion,” he says. “We have also attracted a strong, independent board of local and internationally-based directors. Our chairman is a former CEO of ANZ Banking Group in New Zealand and his former legal counsel is one of our directors so we have the “big company” experience. We also have two entrepreneurs who have successfully grown technology companies and other directors with US and UK industry expertise. When I think of the boards I’ve dealt with in Australia, the directors have been very high quality but they haven’t come from a start-up, high-growth technology company background.”

Governance in private companies is more of a concern. “With the farming sector, private companies drive the New Zealand economy but there’s still nowhere near enough independent directors on the boards of private businesses,” says Gimblett. “We are seeing one positive trend, however, which is a move toward advisory boards. These can work well for start-ups and fast-growing companies because they’re more informal and so more flexible.”

An economic turnaround

When Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 New Zealand was already in recession. By the middle of 2009 the economy had shrunk by a further 3.6 per cent. 

“That was quite a painful time, but a lot of Kiwis were spending more than they were earning and that can’t go on forever,” says Gimblett. “They had no choice but to clean up their balance sheets and cut down on expenditure. You could say we hit a speed bump, sorted things out and now seem to be on a more sustainable path.”

By the end of 2009, demand from the country’s two biggest trading partners, Australia and China, triggered historically-high prices for dairy. The subsequent economic turnaround was so impressive that HSBC economist Paul Bloxham was moved to describe New Zealand as the “rock star economy of 2014”. Growth for the year was 3.2 per cent compared with Australia’s 2.7 per cent, and New Zealand also finished the year with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

“Growth is being driven largely by construction associated with the Christchurch rebuild,” says Money. “Obviously a lot of money is going into the city to fund major capital projects and also to rehouse people who lost their homes in the earthquake. We’ve also got strong net migration into New Zealand and a significant undersupply of housing in Auckland, so construction, infrastructure and housing are being driven out of Auckland as well. Meat and log prices are pretty good and stable, and tourism is also performing strongly, so we’re expecting to maintain an average of about 3 per cent growth over the next few years.”

An attractive destination

Tourism is one of the brightest stars in New Zealand’s economic firmament, currently generating $9 billion a year and with strong growth predicted to at least 2020.

“The government has invested $600 million in tourism and tourism promotion since 2008 and that really seems to be paying off,” says Franck Hesse, area director of sales and marketing at IHG New Zealand, the parent company of Crowne Plaza, InterContinental and Holiday Inn hotels. “Close to three million people visited New Zealand during the last year and they spent over $7 billion.”

The film director Peter Jackson has also done much for the New Zealand economy by filming both the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies in his native land.

“The 100 per cent Pure New Zealand advertising campaign had already created a strong brand when it was relaunched in 2012 as ‘100 per cent Middle-earth, 100 per cent Pure New Zealand’,” says Bjoern Spreitzer, international business events manager at Tourism New Zealand. “A lot of people are now motivated to come here because they feel as though they’re actually visiting Middle-earth.”

A significant income-earner in its own right, the business events sector also drives the broader tourism industry. “We know that many delegates bring their partners or families and stay on after their conference or event,” says Sue Sullivan, CEO of Conventions & Incentives New Zealand. “They spend significantly more than leisure visitors, go home as ambassadors for New Zealand and very often come back for a holiday.”

Four new conference venues should be operating by 2018, including one in Auckland that will accommodate up to 3,000 visitors. “This will open new markets by enabling us to host much larger conferences,” Sullivan continues.

New Zealand is an attractive option for conference organisers as well as the delegates themselves.

“We’re remote enough to be one of the safest countries in the world, which is increasingly important, yet we’re an easy 10-12 hour flight from the west coast of the US as well as much of Asia,” says Spreitzer. 

“The city centres are relatively small so the hotels are usually within walking distance of each other, and it’s very easy to travel out of the cities to see dramatically different scenery and many other attractions.”

New Zealand has non-visa arrangements for business visitors from 50 countries and, recently, the government made favourable changes to the rules around the Goods & Services Tax (GST).

“A new refund scheme means that non-resident businesses can save 15 per cent on the cost of events held in New Zealand,” says Hesse.

Emirates and most Asian carriers fly into New Zealand and the national airline, Air New Zealand, has significantly increased capacity on most of its routes. “Air New Zealand is another of the country’s major success stories, posting record profits this year as Qantas and Virgin were reporting losses,” says Spreitzer.

Fluctuating dairy prices

The biggest cloud on New Zealand’s economic horizon is the plummeting price of dairy products, the country’s biggest export commodity. In December 2014, prices fell in auction to the lowest level in more than five years, and agribusiness banking specialist Rabobank is predicting that dairy farmers will continue to face acute challenges in the next 18 months. 

“Over the past seven years, dairy prices have shown enormous volatility, with extreme highs, followed by sharp retractions in pricing,” says Ben Russell, CEO of Rabobank New Zealand. “Clearly the rollercoaster ride continues.”

The medium to longer-term outlook remains sound but persistently low prices will inevitably have an impact on the economy as a whole. 

“Like Australia, New Zealand is vulnerable to a fall in commodity prices, though New Zealand’s economy has traditionally been more patchy,” says Gimblett. “Fluctuations in commodity prices have been the reality for New Zealand for the last 25 years,” adds Money. “I think that, as a result of that, our firms have learned to be a bit more agile and resilient, as well as a bit more conservative than their Australian counterparts.”

New Zealand is also very committed to finding new ways of creating export income.

“There’s a sense of urgency in their diversification into more modern industries,” says Richardson. “For example, the universities, governments, industry and even the retail investor market are all lined up behind high technology so it’s almost starting to feed itself. I haven’t seen quite the same sense of urgency in Australia. I get the feeling that many people are still thinking ‘after the resource sector what do we do next?’”

Money would like to see more Australian companies forging links with New Zealand. “My question for any company in Australia that’s looking to expand is why not consider New Zealand?” he says.  

“I’m sure many Australian organisations could benefit from our good, competitive and reasonably non-regulated market and lower labour costs,” he says.