What your employees really want for Christmas

by

If you’re an employer, take note: Summer is your resignation danger-zone.

It’s over the Christmas break that many people catch their breath and evaluate their lives. Some will be chuffed with where they’re at, but others might not be so sure. And then it’s December 31 and everyone’s making New Year’s resolutions and, next thing you know, you’re being handed a resignation letter. Or several.

This is known as New Year rot, and you won’t be facing it alone. This New Year’s Eve, many people will vow to swap jobs. Some will be seeking growth and new opportunities and you’ll likely be happy, and even proud, to see them leave for new pastures.

But there may be others who have simply stopped enjoying their jobs. Perhaps they could have given you many more years of great work if you’d only been able to make them feel valued.

How do you do that, exactly?

Most of us work really hard all year to make our employees’ job satisfaction a priority. But let’s be honest. Sometimes the workload gets away on us all and we don’t do enough to acknowledge the great teams we lead. We drift away from our staff in the busy-ness of our roles, and forget to reconnect.

Christmas can be just the moment to pause, reflect, reconnect and acknowledge. You just need to be genuine – and generous. And by generous, I don’t mean throwing money around.

What most employees really want for Christmas is recognition. No matter how large your organisation is, try to make the time to craft as many personalised messages for staff as you can. Consider their unique strengths, name projects they worked on. Show that you know them by mentioning their families or some other aspect of their lives. This is where the generosity comes in; a generosity of spirit to make this time and to be enthusiastic with your praise. Write a card or sit down face-to-face and outline the value that that person brings to your team.

What about the office shindig? A couple of years ago an outfit called Glassdoor did an enlightening survey which suggested very few people actually appreciate or enjoy the work Christmas party. In fact, around 95 percent of workers said they didn’t care for the Christmas do – and who can blame them? All that awkward, extended chit-chat with workmates while hovering around the booze table, snacking on flavourless potato chips and trying not to commit any dire indiscretion… “So, what suburb do you live in, Katrina? Oh yes, there’s a really good drycleaners near there.”

It’s hardly the stuff of great memories.

Instead, why not try a morning tea, which is much less costly and doesn’t eat into your employees’ own time. Or, if you’ve got a smaller team, consider a sit-down lunch, like R+A did this year (perfect for a Christmas do for two!). If you do forego a Christmas do, there may be an argument for a small cash bonus instead, which, let’s face it – goes down well at this time of year.

The more personalised the gestures you make this Christmas, the greater your employees’ sense of value will be. People who know they are valued won’t dwell on the negative, vowing to find a new job in the New Year.

Instead, they sink into a dreamy holiday diet based largely around pavlova, plaster themselves in sunscreen, binge-watch Netflix, get tan marks from their jandals and, on December 31, they vow to take up hot yoga, have five alcohol-free days a week and set their sights on a promotion with the great company they work for.

Nosy? Us?

by

recruitment company

When our Tauranga recruitment agency interviews candidates for jobs in regional New Zealand, they’re usually expecting to discuss their career wins, relevant experience and salary aspirations. But that’s not where we start.

Before anything else, we want to know what their situation is. Why are they looking at moving?  What sports, facilities or clubs are integral to their happiness, and are they available in the town or city where they’re thinking of living? Are they prepared to embrace the many bonuses of life in a smaller centre, and live without the aspects of big city life they’d be leaving behind?

Candidates can be surprised by our prying. It’s not that we’re nosy; it’s that the perfect job is only the perfect job if it also a good fit with other key parts of your life, namely family and lifestyle. These questions, and the details they extract, won’t have any bearing on whether a candidate will get a job – but they might help a candidate gain clarity on whether they actually want that job. It’s about figuring out what would need to happen for this move to be successful for you.

We have seen people make the big and exciting move to Tauranga, so they can put out a longline every morning before breakfast and their children can run along the beach after school. And then they’ve had to leave because their partner couldn’t get a job and they couldn’t make ends meet on one income.

That’s why we look at the infrastructure around each candidate and work to understand what a successful move will look like for them. Your future employer might not take the time to understand that you won’t be able to play competitive rugby league to the same level as you did in Auckland or that you’re going to be disappointed to the point of reconsidering your move if you can’t buy a home in a particular suburb. But we will – because we don’t want to be putting candidates forward for jobs if we suspect they might not last.

Our employment agency wants candidates who will thrive and grow in the Bay. That requires ensuring our candidates haven’t ignored some major piece of the puzzle as they’ve been planning a move to the Bay. You’d be surprised how often people say they accepted a role and just assumed their partner would also get a job easily. Or they underestimated how much their kids would miss the grandparents. Or they were out of practice with making friends and didn’t realise how lonely those first few months, or years, would be.

Most people move to somewhere like Tauranga for the lifestyle. Some take a sideways step, many take a step back, to get into a role with one of the city’s bigger employers – the Port of Tauranga, Zespri, Ballance, the councils and DHB, Comvita, Craigs Investment Partners, and the large contracting firms such as Downer.

Most candidates are comfortable adjusting their pay expectations and career status in order to access the Bay lifestyle. Naturally, they remain hopeful of getting a decent package and retaining the seniority they enjoyed in the big cities – and sometimes we are able to achieve that.

But some of the most successful candidates we’ve seen have been those who are able to be savvy in their approach to the local job market. If competition is high with the most obvious employers, maybe you should consider the Bay’s emerging start-ups and innovative SMEs. There are many local companies enjoying extraordinary growth and they might be looking for someone with your excellent experience to grow with them. You could be a big player in the growth of an exciting export success story.

Here at recruitment company Ryan + Alexander, we ask all the big picture and personal questions first, because we want to be able to guide you into a role which is a perfect fit for you and your lifestyle. Once we get a handle on what success will look like for you, we will definitely be excited to hear that you have won various industry awards, broken all sales records or risen through the ranks with a multi-national company.

But the very first questions we ask will always be about what kind of life you want in the Bay of Plenty.

If your employees are leaving for the lifestyle and relative affordability of the regions, maybe you should join them?

by

recruitment agencies

Moving your business to Tauranga is no small consideration. The upheaval, the cost, the hours spent establishing new relationships. And yet, more and more companies are doing just that.

The Bay of Plenty’s innovative Priority One economic development agency has followed its determined business attraction strategy since its inception in 2001, and in a targeted way since 2011. The agency works to make it easier for companies to relocate to the Bay of Plenty to realise the competitive advantages on offer, by smoothing the process and helping make important connections.

As at this week, Priority One is working with 18 firms actively considering the move to the Bay. It is estimated those companies have the potential to create 352 new local jobs and pump $16.4 million of capital expenditure into the region. Those who have already moved to the Bay include Jenkins Freshpac Systems and Brother International.

Others, such as South Africa’s Multifid Technology International, have chosen Tauranga as the site of their New Zealand offices.

While shifting your business to another location may seem a daunting prospect, especially when you consider the effort and logistics required, there is one consideration a new employer in the Bay of Plenty need not worry about: the highest calibre professional staff.

Every day our Tauranga employment agency takes enquiries from clever, talented, driven and successful people around the globe who desperately want to live in the Bay of Plenty. They hope to apply their big-city experience to fulfilling careers in a smaller city, where families enjoy sunshine, beaches and a laidback holiday-every- day vibe.

But at this stage there are nowhere near enough Bay-based jobs for all of these exceptional professional candidates.

We have talent on our books that would be snapped up in a nanosecond in a more fluid job market. These jobseekers have high-level experience, often in demanding offshore roles, and would be capable of using that experience to help their new employer achieve previously unattainable gains. These are the types of candidates who could offer your business an entirely fresh perspective – but they don’t want to live in Auckland.

Maybe they’re onto something.

We’ve already established you’d have the privilege of cherry-picking from exceptional international-standard talent for professional roles if you moved your business here. You’d find the Bay of Plenty is characterised by a talented and happy workforce where long-term loyalty is the norm. And you’d find, as my family and I did, that Tauranga offers a warm welcome, an incomparable lifestyle and huge opportunity.

If you set up in the new Tauriko Business Estate, you’d be based just 10km, on a 100km/h road, from the largest port in New Zealand. Kiwifruit and avocados are booming, the Port of Tauranga – which handles five times the export volume of Ports of Auckland – continues to outstrip all competitors, and tourism is a relentless earner for this region.

There is a healthy spread of jobs for wage earners here, but salaried positions are rare and heavily-contested. You could bring much-needed professional jobs to our vibrant local economy.

The Bay is a growing player in the New Zealand economy, but it still isn’t anywhere near as large and influential as it could be. Perhaps you should consider bringing your experience, and those exciting job vacancies, to Tauranga.

You’ll soon wonder what took you so long.

$10 Tauranga

by

R+A June Blogpost

Anyone who has ever contemplated a move to the Bay of Plenty will be aware of the term $10 Tauranga. It originated back when wages were much lower so the $10 figure is well out of date, but the implication is clear: you won’t earn much in Tauranga.

These days, the truth is quite different. Sure, we are placing candidates in jobs which pay less than the equivalent role in Auckland, but Tauranga pay rates have risen dramatically, and continue to inch upwards.

A qualified Auckland management accountant might earn a salary of between 95,000 and 130,000 ; a Tauranga accountant with an equivalent 5 to 8 years’ experience could earn 80,000 to 110,000. These figures are of course dependant on the size of business but offer some insight to the discrepancy.

At executive level, where there is strong competition for fewer openings, we advise anyone earning upwards of $150,000 to expect a pay cut of around $20,000-$40,000. While this not an insignificant amount, it still equates to a generous income in a region where – thanks to the dream combo of great weather and hardly any traffic – many fill their weekends with free and uncomplicated activities like meeting friends for a swim at Pilot Bay, riding the waterfront Daisy Hardwick trail or going for a picnic at McLaren Falls.

Compared with the City of Sails, this is a cheap place to live. While CoreLogic research shows Tauranga house prices have risen 23.1% in the last 12 months, your Auckland house sale will still put you in a strong position to buy well in the local property market.

During your hunt for a home, you can rent a 3-bedroom home, 2 streets back from Mount Maunganui beach, for $480/week. Parking in the Tauranga CBD is $2/hr; at the Mount, it’s free. Private childcare generally costs less, and naturally you’ll pay less than in Auckland if you engage a builder to renovate your home or an accountant to finalise your tax.

 

We moved here almost four years ago and noticed an immediate saving in fuel costs – not to mention being freed from the torture of the inner-city traffic crawl. We lived 3km from Queen St, where I worked. My daily commute took at least 40 minutes each way. I now live 4.7km from the CBD. Even though locals have seen a definite increase in traffic on the roads in recent months, it still only takes me 10 minutes to drive into the CBD at peak hour. We are also 10 minutes’ drive from the beach and I walk my children to our excellent neighbourhood school.

 

But when the lifestyle is that idyllic, it’s no wonder some aspects of the supply and demand that created $10 Tauranga remain.

Many Western Bay of Plenty employers are flourishing in the current economic climate and can now offer more competitive pay rates. The construction industry is screaming out for talent. In Auckland, qualified builders with 5-8 years’ experience earn around $60/hr, and the same person in the Bay could now demand $40/hr. There are record numbers of jobs advertised in the trades, manufacturing and transport – but not in professional service roles (the jobs we used to describe as “white-collar”).

So while a truck driver, kiwifruit picker or drainlayer can enjoy confidence in their chances at securing a job in the thriving Bay economy, it’s a different story if you’re a banker, website designer, or operations manager. In fact, in professional roles, the competition is more fierce than ever.

In salaried positions, the increase in Bay jobs is no match for the increase in people wanting to move here. In recent weeks, a number of highly-specialised roles – in areas such as IT and executive-management – have attracted upwards of 70 applicants.

This is why, in my experience, those eyeing professional services roles should definitely get a job before moving to the Bay.

If you’re looking for a senior or executive-level opportunity, you’ll be battling it out with applicants who live locally, elsewhere in New Zealand and offshore, and you’ll need to be primed for a determined campaign (be assured, though: it’ll be worth it!!).

I’ve lived all over the world and the Tauranga lifestyle is second to none. It’s not a backwater; it’s not a giant retirement village. It’s a vibrant city, offering excellent career prospects to those who can secure great jobs.

Please come and join the fun as this energetic region grows in scale and prosperity – but, given the competition you could face, don’t cash up and head south until you have a job to come to.