Managing the Risk of Hiring Staff in Retail

A few months ago I was asked to join the team of judges for this year’s Unison Fibre Hastings City Business Excellence Awards and interview sixteen large national chain Hastings retailers on their current and planned approaches to marketing, customer service, staff development and retention, and how they expected to perform in the next twelve months in far from ideal …

The Health & Safety Indicator (HSI) for assessing safe workplaces

With ACC levies being calculated against organisations compliance and focus on safe workplaces, an even greater number of organisations are aiming to reduce the incidence of health and safety incidents and workplace accidents.  Strange how the threat of financial reward or penalty adds impetus to doing the right thing for your staff! While the environment and safety culture of an …

HRINZ Leadership Pathways Event – 6th September, Hastings

INVITATION HRINZ Members and Guests Leadership Pathways Presented by Sandra Lyall Head of HR, ANZ HRINZ Hawke’s Bay is pleased to announce its next event on 6 September, with Sandra Lyall – Leadership Pathways. Senior HR Manager at ANZ National, Sandra is part of a strategy to engage and inspire their people to execute the business strategy and deliver sustained …

New Zealand’s Most Popular Ability Test Battery Available Unsupervised & Online

The General Reasoning Test (GRT2) battery of Numerical, Verbal and Abstract reasoning is one of the most widely used ability test batteries, with over 40,000 administered in New Zealand. This is the test chosen by New Zealand Police to sharpen up police recruitment practices after criticisms in 2006/7.  The test is particularly useful for identifying staff who are likely to …

Introduction to Adaptive Testing

Adaptive testing has been around for a few years now, but many HR professionals and business owners remain unaware of their existence or application, so here is a quick introduction to the concept and its application in your business: Adaptive tests are the next level in the evolution of testing people’s abilities and skills, and became reality once computer based …

100% Subsidised Support for Redundancies in Hawke’s Bay

As most of our clients know, we run highly effective outplacement/redundancy support programs in the Hawke’s Bay region, with an 80% success rate of getting displaced staff into similar jobs within 2 months of them completing the program, which is an impressive track record in current economic conditions. Up until now, whilst almost every employer we talk to would like …

What is holding New Zealand back in Identifying Talent in Staff & Candidates?

Whilst this countries large, and often international, corporate organisations seem to have grasped the value of using multiple-exercise assessment or development centres in the selection of new staff and identifying talent for succession among their existing workforce, the take up rate of this approach in the country as a whole remains painfully slow. The same can be said for or …

Managing Out-of-Region Candidate’s & Off-Site Staff

As the volume of psychometric testing and assessment we deliver for clients across the country continues to climb, it seems a timely moment to remind readers of the options they have available to them when their preferred job candidate is currently living at the opposite end of the country, or even off-shore.

What is your career & business worth to you?

Whether you own a business or work for one, 2011 looks to be shaping up to be a much better year than 2010. The downturn did however remind people that one of their most valuable assets is their career. A recovering market brings opportunities to secure new business and reap the rewards of maintaining strong relationships with existing clients. To …