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Why resilience and mental wellbeing have never been more important

Most employees won’t put on a public display of their grievances for fear of being labelled difficult or missing out on future opportunities, they simply take their frustrations home instead. And it’s a slippery slope into low job satisfaction and poor overall health.

Are wellbeing and employee productivity mutually exclusive?

A healthy workplace is incredibly good for business as it creates a positive culture where things get done. Targets are achieved, new strategies are planned and brilliant ideas come to fruition - helping your employees be their best has never been more important.

Leveraging technology to enhance a human workforce

Most of us can feel certain that the robots aren’t coming for our jobs just yet. Yet, the same technology is also opening exciting opportunities for us to focus on leveraging the strengths that set humans apart.

Success through meaningful involvement

There is a growing realisation at the most senior level of New Zealand business and public sector leadership that we could operate better by becoming more diverse and more inclusive. Not because diversity is a compliance thing, because being a diverse organisation means being a smarter organisation.  

We’re doing diversity and inclusion wrong

It’s the greatest untapped source of increased productivity for Kiwi organisations, yet very few have managed to successfully harness the benefits of diversity and inclusion. Why aren’t we doing better? 

Four tips to secure top survey uptake

Whether you're launching your first or fiftieth survey, giving your people the freedom to speak up in confidence without fear of judgement is key. Here's our Client Services Specialist, Kelly's, four tips how to drive top survey uptake time after time.

The Three Cs for creating a culture of involvement in your workplace

We have a very clear, one word understanding of what makes a great workplace culture. Involvement. When everyone in an organisation feels involved in running the business, then you have a great workplace culture.

Are the robots really coming?

There’s no doubt the future of HR will be tech-enabled. Every HR professional is either using a tech feedback tool or looking around for one to implement. Chris O'Reilly explains.

2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends - Report Summary

Here's our summary of the 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report: Leading the social enterprise. Reinventing with a human focus comes with a bold call to action: now is not the time to tinker at the edges of your organisation— it’s time to reinvent it. 

Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men

There are many areas where women are making waves in the business world. But there are still pockets which are affected by unconscious bias and areas where there is a knowledge deficit. 

Keeping the Human in HR

While modern software and new apps aim to automate processes, make recommendations for leadership training and predict staff turn-over, there is a danger of focusing too much on the technology to do the work.  

The Impact of “Big Data” on HR

Big data is not a new paradigm. It encompasses many interrelated disciplines fuelling a demand for people with entirely new skillsets. Dave Robertson explains.

3 Tips to overcome survey fatigue

Survey fatigue can occur, when people are required to participate in traditional surveys, but never get to see any action as a result of their endeavours. Here's how you can prevent it from happening in your organisation.

Goodbye old school hierarchies, hello team mates

Finding balance and stability in our changing world is a massive challenge for business leaders. We must harness the power of teamwork for modern agile organisations to thrive and prosper. 

All hands on deck

We might not be running nuclear attack submarines, but we can all learn from Captain David Marquet and the USS Santa Fe. The best way to run a ship or an organisation is to make sure your team feels involved, invested and empowered to trust their own decisions.   

Designing a better employee experience

Organisations should move beyond thinking about experience at work in terms of perks, rewards, or support, and focus on job fit, job design, and meaning—for all individuals across the whole organisation. Andre Clarke explains.    

Three golden rules for successful change management

A common belief is that communications is at the core of successful change management. And indeed it is critical, but it’s only one part of the machine. Jen provides her three golden rules to successful change management.  

Pulled apart – how HR actually deals with sexual harassment

In a time when attitudes towards workplace sexual harassment are shifting dramatically, we’ve heard from victims and learned about perpetrators. Here are the complicated experiences of HR professionals who have stood between them.

Workplace culture starts with involvement

Productivity grows out of involvement. If you want to build a more productive workplace culture, involve your people more meaningfully in your business. 

How do we get balance in all respects?

How to get more women into senior roles? How to better celebrate the achievements of women? How to balance the demands of family and career? Jen McKay discusses how do we get a better balance in all respects.

Gender Balance in Business

Gender balance – how long will it be in New Zealand until we can honestly say ‘we’ve got this’? It’s a timely question as global celebrations for International Women’s Day happen this Friday. This year’s theme is #BalanceforBetter. What a great call to action!

Collaborative Teams

Collaborative teams are units that bring together individuals with unique, disparate skill sets for a defined goal. Jude Manuel discusses how best to facilitate collaboration in an agile world.

How #MeToo has changed HR forever

The impact of the #MeToo movement has been far-reaching. What started as a campaign to build a conversation around sexual violence has gone on to permeate many aspects of our culture.

Beating the bullies

New Zealand has a shameful history of workplace bullying but there’s a growing movement among workplace culture experts to stamp it out. AskYourTeam CEO Chris O’Reilly investigates. 

Beyond engagement

Today’s businesses are moving on from engagement, focusing instead on their employees’ experience of work and tapping into what they think, says Jude Manuel.

Checking the pulse

A new breed of digital HR tools in creating a people-led business revolution and providing a content read on the HR health of an organisation.

What is this thing called workplace empowerment?

When a person is genuinely empowered in their job and involved in their organisation, they will become highly engaged, productive, loyal and keen to share their ideas and talk about what they do with colleagues by default. 

Attraction and retention of millennials through learning and CSR

Business success depends on having an effective career development strategy in place, but what role does workplace learning,and CSR play in the attraction and retention of millennial?

Creating a culture that inspires employee loyalty

Helping senior leaders to understand that they are an integral part in inspiring employee loyalty enables them to acknowledge the value of other people’s ideas and input.

From talent to team: HR’s generational change

Talent is no longer regarded as a raw material in the economic equation to be retained for the productive working life of a human, but something to tap into according to the changing needs of the organisation at any moment.

Are you implementing a culture of empowerment in your organisation?

Genuine cultures of empowerment can only come about when leaders realise that empowerment isn't an act of benevolence toward those lower down the pecking order than them.

How to make Continuous Performance Management work?

Performance appraisals are widely unpopular with both staff and managers. People are now querying whether annual performance reviews and ratings are best serving the needs of organisations and individuals.

A time to reflect, redefine and upskill

In an age of disruption and transformation, career transitions are the norm. Equipping people with the skills to move on will differentiate an organisation in the eyes of those who remain.

The dictator is dead. Killed by technology.

The industrial age command and control leadership is dead. It was killed by digital technology that allows people throughout an organisation to have their say in how it should be run.

Anonymity key to overcoming unconscious bias

Unconscious bias is the great unsolved problem of modern HR and one of the intractable barriers to building a truly diverse organisation. Almost all people hold subtle biases based on gender, ethnic and other differences and we are surprisingly powerless to do much about it.

Digital tools create a people-led business revolution

In the past decade, the operations side of business has been revolutionised by digital connectivity. Now the smart businesses in every industry are looking for the next advantage by redesigning their organisations using a new class of digital tools and analytics driven data. 

Wisdom from Women -New Zealand women leaders on leadership

What makes a great leader? Watch four inspirational New Zealand female leaders sharing their views and thoughts on the topic this International Women’s Day.

Building workplace cultures where unsafe behaviour is not tolerated

The consequences of allowing bullying to survive in a workplace culture can be profound. From mental health issues to lost productivity and talent retention problems, bullying has the potential to undermine an organisation and cause serious harm to its members

Why the future belongs to HR

There has been a seismic shift from management by engagement to leadership by involvement that is changing the way we think about everything from the war for talent to how we build organisational culture. 

Strengths and Weaknesses of New Zealand Leaders

Powerful new benchmarking insights have been made available for the first time from leadership survey AskYourTeam into the strengths and weaknesses of Kiwi leadership. 

5 Tips for Transitioning from an Engagement Survey to AskYourTeam

After years of using a traditional engagement survey, Smith&Smith made the transition to AskYourTeam.  Pati Bloor, Smith&Smith's People and Leadership Director, shares her top five tips for a successful transition. 

AskYourTeam: A System Your Leaders Will Love

Throughout my years as an organisational development specialist, I've noticed leaders are sometimes less-than-enthusiastic about 'HR' initiatives such as engagement surveys. I think that's understandable.

Engagement: Does it Matter Any More?

In the early days of ‘staff surveys’ we measured staff satisfaction. We then deepened our questioning to understand what made our employees feel committed to go that extra mile or ‘stay, say and strive’. It worked well for some organisations, but many have plateaued.

Are You Measuring What Matters?

As leaders, it’s easy to measure what we're comfortable with, instead of what will actually have the greatest impact on the success of our business. But without a systematic approach to measuring what really matters, your business is unlikely to reach its true potential.

You Don't Have All the Answers (and that's OK)

Leadership is no longer about the visionary guru leading the charge. That idea belongs to a time when businesses operated in a slower world. Command-and-control leadership was the norm. Times have changed.

Why Smart Businesses are Focussing on Performance Before Engagement

The traditional way of thinking about engagement is linear - employee engagement leads to improved business performance. But recent research is pointing to a much more circular model.