How to find and keep great people

Visual: The video begins with an aerial view of Whairepo Lagoon on the edge of the Wellington waterfront.

Audio: Flexibility, employees want it. It can enhance their experience, and your competitive advantage, but how do you maintain motivation, performance and culture?

Visual: 

• A person wheels a bag through Wellington Airport, next to a sign that reads ‘Welcome to Wellington’ 
• A person sitting in the back of a car, driving around Wellington waterfront.
• Person standing in a highrise building, looking out a window texting on a mobile phone. 

Audio: We’re covering it all, how to make flexible working work.

Visual: Three people sitting on office chairs next to each other. The person on the left is introduced on screen as ‘Kalyn Ponti Chief Executive Humankind’. Kalyn narrates this video.

Audio (Kalyn): To do that I’m joined by Eva and Ian from ZX security. ZX has a leading employee experience and flexibility is a big part of that.

Visual: Throughout the next few minutes, Kalyn interviews Eva and Ian.

Audio:

• Kalyn: How does flexible working work at ZX security?
• Eva: We allow everyone to work at the hours that suit them the most, to work out their life balance themselves, and the way we make it work is just keeping the comms channels open.
• Ian: As long as the expectations are set, everyone’s an adult and everyone has their own individual lives to live. Businesses shouldn’t be there to create a set structure for one person to do, that should be for everyone.
• Kalyn: Why is it so important to you to offer your team flexibility?
• Ian:  Yeah, it’s a great question. Eva and I were chatting about it this morning and the question I would ask is, why shouldn’t you? The other way around, I don’t understand in this day and age. Where people work in different lifestyles, have different fashions, and have families as single parents, and you’re trying to get more people into the industry. You should be open to everyone, so I think it’s more of a question of why shouldn’t you do it?
• Eva: It’s almost like a no-brainer, it hasn’t been something that we’ve intentionally put in, it’s just been something that’s always been there.
• Kalyn: What about performance, how do you maintain performance when people are working from home more often?
• Eva: This is again something that we leave with the staff to set up themselves with their directors and their team leaders. It’s something that we’ve set up with the team themselves. If that needs to be adjusted as we go, if we learn some lessons that we would rather not learn, then we adjust that with the other team members. Effectively we start with a very high level of trust with the employees.
• Ian: When you start at ZX security, you start 100% trust, you don’t gain it over time. I think that breeds a really good culture. The other thing is, if you look at any good sports team or any good leader, most of those people lead by example, so it’s up to the leaders within the business to lead by example, and then people follow in tow. If they don’t, it’s a very easy conversation to say. I’m doing it why aren’t you doing it? Everyone’s an adult at the end of the day.
• Kalyn: Lastly culture, how do you maintain your strong culture when the office is half full and half the people are working from home?
• Eva: There are definitely several initiatives that we have across the whole team, so I think eating is a big part of how we get together, keep the relationships going, and therefore maintain the culture through there. Weekly Friday breakfasts, or lunches for whenever we have someone new joining, or when we’re celebrating success, or if there is something that we need to discuss as a team it quite often is at lunch or breakfast and, you know, to chat through that together.
• Ian: We’re always very aware the culture always grows. Even this week we have an inclusiveness session to make sure that we’re always on top of that. We’re not always being reactive, we’re trying to be proactive so I think having a very open kind of relationship with the leadership as well too sets a really good cultural kind of vibe and tone.
• Eva: We’re trying to bring everyone in the team along on the ride so we always welcome input feedback, in any initiative that comes from the team, because at the end of the day, it’s for them to take on.
• Ian: To that point as well, even this week, I’m going to be sending out our full strategy of the company to the whole team to retain transparency, so they can see everything that the management and the team are doing, how it’s been delegated, and they all have an input to that as well too, even though the key people are delivering. The transparency around culture is something that we really care about and we want to just show we want to walk that mile as well so it’s one example.

Visual: An out of focus drone shot of Wellington. White text appears with the bullet points below.

Audio (Kalyn): Things to think about:

• Clearly communicate your post-pandemic approach, including expectations of being in the office, hours, how you’ll collaborate, and how you’ll connect in a hybrid environment. This clarifies expectations, reduces anxiety, and allows people to focus on doing great work. 
• Think about connection to leadership, purpose, and strategy. Consider collaboration, corridor conversations, team connection and relationships, and performance. 
• Create opportunities for co-creation, innovation, and spontaneity, with ideas factories, skill-sharing sessions, and highly collaborative brainstorming sessions.
• One-on-one between leaders and team members are also a great way to spend in-person time. 
• Anchor days allow people the flexibility and often focus, of working from home, while also maintaining the culture, connection and motivation we all crave.

Visual: The video begins with an aerial view of Whairepo Lagoon on the edge of the Wellington waterfront.

Audio (voiceover): You’ve gone to great lengths to hire people in this very challenging labour market. Onboarding, how do you set them up for success and help them to hit the ground running right from day one?

Visual:

• Two people are sitting on large chairs in a comfortably decorated room. Each person is introduced with text on screen: ‘Kalyn Ponti, Chief executive Humankind’ and ‘Biddy Harford, Chief Executive Te Omanga Hospice’. 
• The video cuts back to the aerial view of the city centre with the text ‘Onboarding new recruits for success’.
• For the next part of the interview, the camera goes back and forth between Kalyn and Biddy as they discuss Kalyn’s questions.

Audio: 
Kalyn: I’m joined by Biddy Harford, chief executive of Te Omanga Hospice. Biddy is exemplifying people-centred leadership, and Te Omanga does great work on their onboarding program. Tell us about the purpose of Te Omanga and what really drives you and your team around the purpose.

Biddy: When we bring somebody on board to the hospice, we’re very clear about what it is that we do. We’re patient-centered in our care, but we also of course involve the family. They’re an integral part of all the care that we provide. Very quickly I think our staff understand being patient-centred. We have to mould our service around what the needs of that patient and family will be, we can’t be one-size fits all, we have to meet the needs of each individual patient.

Kalyn: Now you invest really heavily in your onboarding experience, why is that so important to you?

Biddy: We want them to understand the vision that we have, how we work with our values, it’s so important for us that everybody’s onboard with that. We know where we’re heading; that the reason they’re here is important to the delivery of care that we provide to our patients. That might be right down to the truck driver who picks up the goods that people are donating for us to sell in our shops.

Kalyn: What about relationships, how do you set up new employees to start building relationships right from the beginning?

Biddy: First off when they arrive, they meet myself, finance, and our payroll folks. But they also meet our fundraising and retail people so that they understand the whole picture. Everything that we do is built on relationships.

Kalyn: And enabling experiences at Te Omanga, how do you set up your team with the right information, tools, and equipment to be able to carry out their roles?

Biddy: A really important part of onboarding for us is that welcome pack. We send out a pack that includes things like our code of conduct and welcome to the team, and how much we’re looking forward to having them on board, it’s really important that when our new members come on board they understand some of the policies and procedures right up front that we need them to be working within. So that welcome pack is really important for us.

Kalyn: In performance experiences, what do you do to set really clear expectations around what great performance looks like for new starters?

Biddy: Our nurses work within a competency framework, so a manager would be sharing with them what his or her expectations would be in that first year, what might we expect so that we’re both working on the same page. We’re very clear. Then at the end of the first year, the team leader manager would be able to go back and ask them how they felt they had met those competencies. So we’re all working to the same expectations we’re very clear with each other.

Kalyn: Lastly, what do you do that new starters say absolutely wows them during their onboarding experience?

Biddy: What I hear is they love the fact that we care so much about them. Going back to the relationship experience, it’s also about their experience with our relationship with them. We do a lot of celebrating here. Working in a hospice, people often say that must be so depressing, actually, we really care about each other and care for each other. We do a lot of celebrating here and we have a lot of food, we always warn our staff that they probably will put on some weight once they start here, but there’s a lot that happens around food. What I’m hearing from people when they come back to me a few weeks or months after they’ve started is, “I just feel so pleased to be here and you really do care about us” which really warms my heart.

Visual: An out of focus drone shot of the city centre plays on screen, while a text overlay ‘Key takeaways’ appears on screen. This is followed by the key message bullet points listed below. 

Kalyn (Voiceover): A few key messages on onboarding:

• First impressions are lasting ones, so focusing on onboarding is an important first step in retaining new hires and setting them up to hit the ground running. You can do this by making sure employees feel planned for, and also adding a personal element to their onboarding.
• Connect people to purpose right from the start. Not only share your purpose but ask new starters to reflect on how their role contributes to it. A couple of other ways is to have teammates share how their roles connect to purpose.
• Be deliberate about building meaningful connections. Trust is one of the top contributors to team effectiveness. The relationship with leaders is critical, so schedule multiple checkpoints throughout the first weeks, not only for work questions but to grab lunch together to get to know each other as people as well.

Onboarding is a critical step for people’s experience, retention, and performance. A few simple steps can make it a great success.

Visual:

• The screen fades to blue with the text ‘How to find and keep great people with Humankind and Kin, find out more at WellingtonNZ.com’. 
• The video then fades to black.

Visual: The video begins with an aerial view of Whairepo Lagoon on the edge of the Wellington waterfront.

Audio (voiceover): As an employer, you would have noticed the job market has changed dramatically. There were a thousand more roles posted to seek for jobs in Wellington last month than this time last year so it’s getting harder to attract and retain talent more so than ever before.

Visual: The camera cuts to a person sitting on a couch in a colourful room. The text introduces this person on the bottom of the screen as ‘Jo Macdonald, Kin Recruitment’.

[Music]

Visual:

• The video briefly cuts back to an aerial view of the city centre, and then back to Jo, speaking with another person at a table. 
• The other person is introduced with text on the screen again as ‘Jamie MacDonald, CEO Storypark’.
• Throughout the rest of the interview, the camera swaps between the two as they discuss.

Audio:
Jo: I’m talking with Jamie MacDonald CEO of Storypark. Storypark is one of New Zealand’s SAS success stories and have built up a reputation for being an incredible place to work. Tell us a bit more about what Storypark is all about.

Jamie: Storypark is software for early childhood teachers. It all started with my mum asking me to create a website for her to share the learning that happens every day at the centre, with the whānau that come to her centre and wider community. I built that 10 years ago and it worked really well, and since then we’ve scaled it from that one centre at the bottom of the south island to about 10,000 centres all over the world. Teachers are using Storypark every day to communicate what goes on in the lives of the children.

Jo: It’s no secret it’s a really tough market out there, there’s some fierce competition for talent and it’s really challenging business owners across all sectors. So Jamie, what are some of the key factors you consider when attracting people into your business that are so critical to the growth of your organisation?

Jamie: The most important thing for us at Storypark is that purpose. It’s why we’re all here, to help every child fulfil their unique potential. So when we go to market, we’re looking for people who get excited to get out of bed every day and to make that purpose a reality. People who want to make a difference in children’s lives and support the educators and the families and all the community that surrounds that child. Now this strong sense of purpose is the thing that attracts people to us and also creates a foundation for a strong sense of belonging because we all share common values. 

Jo: Candidates are looking for so much more than just a place of work, they’re looking for a place to grow, they’re looking for a place to feel safe, a place to thrive. Something we do at Kin is we help a lot of our clients uncover what their employment value proposition looks like, what is their employer brand telling to the world and we help them uncover that and tell that story to prospective candidates. Can you tell us a bit more about your EVP and what you do as an organisation to differentiate yourself from other places? 

Jamie: It’s really important for us at Storypark that we create a strong sense of belonging. So we want to create a culture that has high trust and we’re building meaningful relationships with each other, so that when people are welcomed into Storypark they feel like they’re included and they feel like they can bring their honest true selves to work, and that when they go through hard times we’re there to support them, and then we’re there right beside them to celebrate their successes as well.

Jo: Jamie, you have an awesome team here at Storypark. How do you include them in showcasing just what Storypark has to offer?

Jamie: It’s really powerful when our team are advocates for our culture. To go out, to engage and to build peer relationships with other companies, because getting them to share why we’re here and what we’re doing at Storypark and to be able to contribute to the sector and the community is really important to attracting people to us, but also sharpen the sector and to share knowledge and share what we do.

Visual: The city centre is shown out of focus while the text ‘Key Takeaways’ is in the foreground on the screen, followed by the bullet points from below.

Audio (Jo voiceover): 

• Get your team involved in your recruitment process. Your people form your culture, they’re an amazing representation of who you are.
• Ensure you’ve looked at your EVP and that it’s really clear. Talk to your people, ask them what they love about working with you what they need, and what they want, and then use those tools to attract new people like them into your business.

Visual:

• The screen fades to blue, and the text ‘How to find and keep great people with Humankind and Kin, find out more at WellingtonNZ.com’ overlays in white text. 
• The video fades to black.

Visual:

• The video begins with an aerial view of Whairepo Lagoon on the edge of the Wellington waterfront.
• The scene then cuts to person wearing a white blouse and a long necklace, inside a corporate looking office.
• Text on screen introduces: ‘Wendy Alexander, Managing Director, Kin Recruitment’.

Audio

Wendy: You know as a business leader you’ll understand how important it is to run a really good interview process, and this market is more competitive than it’s ever been before. If you’re interviewing a star candidate, chances are somebody else is too. So how do you differentiate yourself in this market, and how do you run a really good process? Kia ora I’m Wendy Alexander, Managing Director of Kin Recruitment.

Visual: 

Cuts between several scenes:

• People networking at an event
• Wellington waterfront aerial view
• Text on screen: Guiding your preferred candidate through a successful interview
• Two people looking at a computer screen
• A person leaning against a window in a highrise office building being interviewed.

Text on screen introduces: Bronson Pereira, Head of Operations, Modica Group

Throughout the interview, the camera cuts between Bronson and Wendy.

Audio (Wendy): When you’re reviewing applications, what are some of the things that you look for?

Audio (Bronson): Yeah, so to be totally honest we don’t put a lot of emphasis into CVs, we don’t build a lot of emphasis on educational background. For us primarily it’s around kind of work experience and where people have been. And then a lot of our weight goes into personality, so who they are as a person and obviously we don’t get that from CVs. So for the most part we trust our recruitment partners to have those initial discussions, get to know the person, and then obviously having worked with us for so long, understand whether that culture is going to be aligned. So whether that person is going to be right for us and we take it from there. So we’ve got a culture of hiring people based on their willingness to learn, their willingness to evolve. For us it’s personality, what you’ve learned in your time, what you’ve got from other companies. 

Visual: The camera cuts to staff at Modica working on their computers, and then back to Wendy and Bronson.

Audio (Wendy): We all understand the importance of values and culture fit, how do you and your team go about assessing this?

Audio (Bronson): For us, it started, number one defining our values, being clear on our values with the rest of the company, and then number two, building that into our interview process and dedicating the interview process to it. So, if our first interview was culturally based, we take all of our values, break them down, bust them out, and then we work to define questions that specifically target those values. It is a two-way street for us, we want to make sure that they choose to join us, that they’re going to come and love being here. So that final interview was really around that two-way thing, we’ll share everything about who we are and if that aligns it’s awesome, and if not then it’s shaking hands and going separate directions. If they’re going to show up and not be happy, we all lose out. It’s just negative for everybody so, so we are probably to the point of being too honest in our interview process, but we wanna make sure again, that they’re gonna fit in.

Audio (Wendy): Okay take this up to the start, you’re at short list stage, where do you go from there? What’s your process?

Audio (Bronson): Yeah at the very start when we work with our partners on building that shortlist, the first interview is culture values number one. If successful there then we have a more specific role-based interview. It’s, you know, just the basics and can you do the job for those we genuinely prefer them to be more conversational than technical, so rather, you know, trying to really understand how they think about problems and how they approach the role rather than the technical ability so to speak.

We’ve got a pretty strong belief here that we can train people to do something but we can’t train them, you know, to live our values, to live our culture. So we focus much more on personality and cognitive ability than anything else. So your technical abilities, technical tests and then following that, last kind of test with the leadership team. Again that’s that two-way, are we good for you? are you good for us? and then certainly we tend to offer pretty quickly after that. And this will get them started about two weeks/a week if all everything lines up, not usually longer than that.

Just because someone’s not right for us right now, it doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future. We want people to want to work for us, you know, want to work with us and be a part of this company. So someone coming to us with “look I’ve done research, I’ve talked to people, I know what you’re about, I know kind of the role, I know how I’d fit in” even reaching out on LinkedIn beforehand getting an understanding like that goes a long way. We want our people to be excited to show up, you know, how people are people like working here, so we’ve got to keep that going.

Visual: Cut to an out-of-focus aerial view of the city centre, while a text overlay reading ‘Key takeaways’ appears, followed by the key messages bullet points that are read out by Wendy.

Audio (Wendy): If there are two or three key things that I’d love employers to take away from this episode it would be:

• Be really clear about your values and your culture fit and the way that you go about assessing for this run a thorough process
• Condense the time frame as much as you can because you know in this market, candidates will usually have more than one role in play
• Adapt your interview process to allow for passive candidates who have come onto your shortlist via research process there’s much more selling of your opportunity to them first before you can really expect them to sell themselves back to you

Text on screen:

• Clearly define your values
• Condense the interview timeline
• Adapt your interview style

Audio (Wendy): Best of luck.

Visual:

• The screen fades to blue with the text ‘How to find and keep great people with Humankind and Kin, find out more at WellingtonNZ.com’.
• The video then fades to black.

Visual:

• The video begins with an aerial view of Whairepo Lagoon on the edge of the Wellington waterfront.
• It cuts to two people sitting on a yellow couch inside a corporate office space. One is wearing a white blouse and a long necklace, and the other a pink blouse and jeans.
• The camera cuts to the person in the white blouse.

Text on screen introduces: Wendy Alexander, Managing Director Kin Recruitment.

Audio (Wendy): You know, a few years ago it was really simple to pop up a job ad and reasonably expect a good number of responses. All you needed to be clear about was your role and who you were looking for, a star candidate. As we know, the market has changed. It is far more competitive out there. For you to really stand out from the competition, you need to write a well-crafted ad that’s going to be impactful and draw attention to you over everybody else. In this episode, we’ll break down the steps that we use to write a terrific job there that really packs a punch, and we’ll share with you tips and tricks that you can use next time you’re ready to hire.

Visual: An out-of-focus drone shot of Whairepo Lagoon plays.

Text on screen: Writing job ads to attract great people

• The camera cuts to the other person on the couch.
• Throughout the interview, the camera switches between the shots of the two woman

Text on screen (introducing the second person): Erina Jamieson, Kin Recruitment.

Audio (Wendy): Erina, where do we start when we want to write an ad with impact?

Audio (Erina): First of all, think about how people are reading the ads. So, as you say, quite often we’re on the phone scrolling through on the bus on their morning commute, so we need to think about how we lay out the ad, think about clearly signposting headings that people can easily read through and digest the information. Think about bullet points and your use of space, think about the keywords that you want to get across and talk in a nice clean sentences no jargon, no cliches. 

Wendy: So, we’ve had these bullet points that have made an impact and then we’ve had a short statement. Hopefully, that’s attracted their interest and they click through to the main body of the ad. So, this is your chance to really talk about your organisation. Why do you exist? What’s your purpose? What does it feel like to work there? So, steering away from bullet points in the section two or three sentences? no more in a paragraph? Well, the heading that says about us. Nice and simple.

Erina: So, the next section that we’ll be looking at is talking about the role. This is where you can talk again, have your heading nice clearly up and bold, have a nice couple of sentences to set the scene. Give us the content, and then we’re talking and bullet points. Again, these are nice clean, crisp bullet points in here. We want to keep it relevant and interesting enough that a job seeker will read through it. And be excited. They can see themselves on the road. They can see that they’ve got the experience here, here, here and here because we’re in for challenge and growth in there as well to keep it relevant, succinct, and move on. 

Wendy: The next part is about you. It’s about the candidate. What are you looking for? Who are you? Look. For what background skills and experience does this person need? So, this is your chance to kind of lead in with a sentence or two around what you’re looking for, and then follow up with those bullet points. Talk about years of experience, what background they might have come from, what industry they could have come from. If you don’t absolutely need a degree, steer away from it. You know, maybe is lived experience good enough rather than insisting they have a tertiary qualification. In this market, it’s about being as open-minded and flexible as you can be and then keeping your bullet points reasonably general to allow for emerging talent or somebody who has transferable skills to apply. And this of course leads into benefits, and this is the part we really want to lean on hard. So, think about what is it about your organisation? What do you have to offer that’s going to be attractive to a job seeker? So, it’s about employee value proposition EVP, it’s about what benefits do you have, do you have enhanced leave, maybe they get their birthday off. Do you offer a duvet day? Is there a training and development budget? You know, the younger job seekers are really interested in career development, that will be attractive. Flexible working, do you offer that, so any of these benefits that will have appeal, lean into those and list them all out.

Erina: So, we’ve got a candidate now. They’re excited about the role they’re interested in you as an organisation. What do you want them to do? This is where the call to arms comes in and label this part again, have a nice clear sign posted heading, what you want the candidate to do. What are you looking to see from there? Are you looking to see a cover letter? CV? what information are you looking to see from them at this point might be a video application. Be aware of that information and tell the candidate your expectations nice and clearly. Absolutely have some contact information in there. A person’s name, a phone number and e-mail address so people can reach out and say, hey, I’ve got some questions I want to explore. I want to know a little bit more and be available to talk through the role with people. Finally, if you do choose to have an application date in your ad, you are really mindful of not waiting until that date to review your CV’s and reach out to people that two week window. It’s just too long and this market will lose people. They will go to other offers. There’ll be other interview processes that are happening much more quickly. Instead, we like to say don’t wait to apply! we’re reviewing applications as they come through. Or you could have something like applications close once the candidate has been identified or applications close once the candidate has been found.Some nice clear expectations let the candidate know what you want them to do.

Wendy: And there you have it. We’ve shared an example of what a terrific ad looks like in the resource centre, along with the tips and tricks sheets covering everything that we’ve talked about today. 

Visual:

• An out-of-focus drone shot of the city centre plays on screen, while a text overlay ‘Key takeaways’ appears on screen. This is followed by the key message bullet points listed below. 

Text on screen: Use clear, conversational language

Text on screen: Use headings, bullet points, and short sentences

Text on screen: Share your company culture and values

Wendy: (Voiceover):  If there are three things I’d love you to take away from the session they are:

• Avoid jargon and cliches and instead use clear conversational language.
• Make your ad easy to read by signposting key information with headings, bullet points and short clean sentences
• Talk about your company culture and the values of your team. Share important information around things like flexibility, and benefits. And if it? Feels right, the salary.

Best of luck

Visual: The screen changes to the colour blue with the text ‘How to find and keep great people with Humankind and Kin, find out more at Wellingtonnz.com’. The video then fades to black.