HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

ASSIGNMENT

NEWZEALAND - Land of the Long White Cloud

Submitted to: Submitted by:

Dr. Pooja Verma Ayushi Saklecha - 1871401100
Pratiksha Kandari - 1871401097
Kalpana Parihar - 1871401163
Anubha kashyab - 1871401120
Alexia Fendall - 1871401089
 NewZealand is located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, just south of Australia.
The country is not part of Australia and has never been (many people make that
error), but it has been its own country since the late 19 th century. Before then, the
country was actually considered to be part of the United Kingdom, and was under
the laws and jurisdiction of the crown. New Zealand is actually a number of smaller
islands, with two main islands (the North Island, also called Te Ika-a-Māui by the
natives, and the South Island, also called Te Waipounamu) that comprise most of
the land area of the country.
The country is separated into 16 regions. 11 of those regions are run by the top tier
of local government, called the regional council. 5 of them are run by territorial
authorities.

The 16 regions include the following:

 Northland
 Auckland
 Waikato
 Bay of Plenty
 Gisborne
 Hawke’s Bay
 Taranaki
 Manawatu-Wanganui
 Wellington
 Tasman
 Nelson
 Marlborough
 West Coast
 Canterbury
 Otago
 Southland

The people in these two levels of government have a number of basic

responsibilities, including the following.

 Planning ahead, for management of any natural and/or physical resources that the
government would have to take care of for the region.
 If there is something that the land is going to be changed or used, the regional
council will oversee and plan for those changes.
 Conservation planning, including soil, water, prevention of natural hazards, etc.
 Control and care of coastal marine areas.
 Water relocating and changing, including taking, using, and redirecting water
(including the development of dams). This can also include preventing flooding.
 Controlling contaminants and hazardous resources. Also includes pests.
 Civil defense and preservation.
 Planning and development of public transportation.
HR Policies in Manufacturing Sector

Human resources policies are not often a priority in the early stages of running a
small business. However, there are advantages to implementing these policies early,
particularly in a manufacturing business, to give emphasis and direction to how your
company attracts, trains and retains staff, while keeping everyone in your business
on the same page.

The employment Relations act

The legislation governing employment relationships is the Employment Relations

Act, 2000 or ERA. The object of this Act is to build productive employment
relationships through the promotion of mutual trust and confidence in all aspects of
the employment environment and of the employment relationship. The Act aims to
do this by recognising that employment relationships must be built on good faith
behaviour; and addressing an assumption of inequality between the parties to the
relationship in terms of bargaining power.

The Act promotes collective bargaining; and the protection of the integrity of
individual choice. It also sets out to promote mediation as the primary problem-
solving mechanism with the aim of reducing the need for judicial intervention. The
Act promotes the observance of the principles established by the International
Labour Organisation Convention 87 on Freedom of Association and Convention 98
on the Right to Organise and Bargain Collectively.

The ERA follows 10 years of an employment relations environment that promoted

individual employment contracts and a desire to provide more freedom for
employees to negotiate their own contract. This had led to a sharp decline in the
number and membership of Trade Union

General Training and Development

Training and development practices in New Zealand are consistent with those of
most other western business environments. Most large organisations have organic
training functions although there is a trend towards outsourcing these functions to
specialist consultancies. The major global training providers such as Forum, DDI,
Siebel, and Achieve Global are all represented along with a plethora of smaller local
training vendors who can provide a full and diverse range of learning solutions.

The emergence of web-based learning is also strongly apparent in New Zealand with
most major organisations establishing online learning capability via Intranet/Internet
portals
Recruiting and Hiring

While the manufacturing industry traditionally used unskilled, entry-level workers,

technology may require specific skills supporting your company's tasks. Your HR
policies may spell out these skills as minimum qualifications as a guideline for
screening and interviewing. If your business is subject to fluctuations in demand,
creating a policy covering the use of temporary staff to cover peak periods helps the
efficient use of workers for whom you likely pay an agency a higher hourly rate than
regular staff, without the experience or productivity.

Ethnic Diversity

With the exception of some early Chinese and Dalmatian immigration in the late 19th
Century, New Zealand’s ethnic mix remained largely British and Maori up to the
1940’s. The mass of displaced people following the Second World War saw an influx
of Europeans particularly from Greece, Italy and the Netherlands. A further wave of
British immigrants and a rapid rise of both Indian immigration and Polynesian
migration from Samoa, the Cook Islands and Tonga lead to a rich cultural mix by the
1960’s.

Gender Balance

In September 1999, women made up 45.2 percent of the labour force. This
compares 42.6 percent in 1989. Male participation in the labour force is higher than
female participation at all age groups with the main gap occurring in the 25 and 34
year age group. For the year ended September 1999, participation rate for males
was 73.4 percent compared with 57.4 percent for females across the entire labour
force.

General Performance Management

Performance Management processes vary across the NZ HR community. There is

an emerging trend away from form based appraisal systems to processes that focus
on regular dialogue and employee participation through such means as employee
initiated quarterly updates and online systems that enable visibility of progress
against objectives and reporting using self service Intranet sites

The management discipline of setting SMART goals and objectives and providing
effective coaching and feedback remains a challenge and HR professionals continue
to ‘try and build a better mouse trap’ when it comes to systems that drive effective
management behaviour in this domain. Like most approaches all over the world,
effective performance management processes work best when they are explicitly
aligned and engaged with the business planning process and cascade out of the key
strategies and core systems of the organisation. The McKinsey 7S[6] approach is a
model being used by some of the top performing organisations and provides a
framework for looking at performance management as part of a systems perspective.
This is a shift away from the dysfunctional ‘annual ambush’ exercise policed by an
HR function distant from the reality of the lines of business.

HR Policy In Education Sector

The education system in New Zealand is a three-tier model which includes primary
and intermediate schools, followed by secondary schools (high schools) and tertiary
education at universities and polytechnics. The academic year in New Zealand
varies between institutions, but generally runs from early February until mid-
December for primary schools, late January to late November or early December for
secondary schools, and polytechnics, and from late February until mid-November for
universities.
In 2009, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), published by
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ranked New
Zealand 7th best at science and reading in the world, and 13th in maths.
The Education Index, published as part of the UN's Human Development
Index consistently ranks New Zealand among the highest in the world.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, Māori ran schools to pass on tradition knowledge
including songs, chants, tribal history, spiritual understanding and knowledge of
medicinal plants. These awnings were usually run by elders called tohunga,
respected for their tribal knowledge and teaching was confined to
the rangatira (chiefly) class. Reading and writing were unknown, but wood carving
was well developed.
Formal European-style schooling was first introduced in 1815 and was well
established in 1832 by the London Missionary Society missionaries, who learnt
Māori and built the first schools in the Bay of Islands. Both children and adults were
taught. The main resources were the Christian New Testament and slates, and
teaching was in Māori. For many years the bible was the only literature used in
teaching, and this became a major factor in how Māori viewed the European world.
In the 1850s a Māori trade school was established at Te Awamutu by John Gorst to
teach Māori practical skills associated with European-style farming, but in 1863 was
burnt down by Rewi Maniapoto in the early stages of New Zealand Wars.
In 1853 missionaries Mr and Mrs Ashwell had been running a school for 50 Māori
girls for 3 years at Taupiri in the Waikato, teaching arithmetic and reading.
Teaching by missionaries and in Native schools was in Māori between 1815 and
1900. The Young Māori Party MPs, especially Sir Maui Pomare and Ngata,
advocated the teaching of Māori children using English, as well as teaching hygiene
to lower the Māori sickness and death rates. Pomare was knighted after WW1 for his
work in improving Māori learning and integration into New Zealand society.
New Zealand did not establish a state education system until 1877. The absence of
a national education system meant that the first sizable secondary education
providers were Grammar Schools and other private institutions. The first Grammar
School in New Zealand, Auckland Grammar School, was established in 1850 and
formally recognised as an educational establishment in 1868 through the Auckland
Grammar School Appropriation Act.

Early childhood education

Many children attend some form of early childhood education before they begin
school such as:

 Playcentre (1 to school age)

 Kindergarten (ages 3–5)
 Kohanga Reo
 Licensed Early Childhood Centres (ages 0–5) (usually privately owned)
 Chartered Early Childhood Centres (ages 0–5) (state funded)

Primary and secondary education

All New Zealand citizens, and those entitled to live in New Zealand indefinitely, are
entitled to free primary and secondary schooling from their 5th birthday until the end
of the calendar year following their 19th birthday. Education is compulsory between a
student's 6th and 16th birthdays; however most students start primary school on (or
shortly after) their 5th birthday, and the vast majority (around 84%) stay in school
until at least their 17th birthday. In some special cases, 15-year-olds can apply for an
early leaving exemption from the Ministry of Education (MOE). Families wishing to
home-school their children can apply for exemption. To get an exemption from
enrolment at a registered school, they must satisfy the Secretary of Education that
their child will be taught "as regularly and as well as in a registered school". A 2008
proposal by the New Zealand Government, called Schools Plus, would see students
required to remain in some form of education until age 18. Disabled students with
special educational needs can stay until the end of the calendar year they turn 21.
There are three main types of schools in New Zealand: state (public) schools, state-
integrated schools, and private (independent) schools. State schools educate
approximately 84.9% of students, state-integrated schools educate 11.3%, and
private schools educate 3.6%. There are two additional types of schools: Vote
Education schools funded directly out of the education budget, and charter
schools (or partnership schools) which are state funded but privately run. These
schools however educate only 0.1% of all students.
Years of schooling
New Zealand schools designate school class levels based on the years of schooling
of the student cohort, using 13 academic year levels, numbered 1 through to 13.
Before 1995, a system of Forms, Standards and Juniors/Primers was used. Students
turning five enter at Year 1 if they begin school at the beginning of the school year or
before the cut-off date (31 March in legislation, later for most schools). Students who
turn five late in the year may start in Year 0 or stay in Year 1 for the next school year,
depending on their academic progress. The Ministry of Education draws a distinction
between academic and funding year levels, the latter being based on when a student
first starts school—students first starting school after July, who therefore do not
appear on the July roll returns, are classified as being in Funding Year 0 that year,
and are recorded as being in Year 1 on the next year's roll returns.
Primary education lasts eight years (Years 1–8). Depending on the area, the last two
years of primary education may be taken at a primary school, at a secondary school,
or at a separate intermediate school.

Types of schools by funding

State schools
State schools are government funded and operated, and are free to New Zealand
citizens and permanent residents. Students and parents however are expected to
pay for stationery, uniforms, textbooks and school trips. Schools may ask for
donations to supplement their government operational funding. While it is completely
voluntary to pay the donation, some schools have been reported coercing parents
into paying the donation by withholding school reports and not allowing students on
trips for non-payment; Some schools, especially those in affluent areas, request
donations in excess of $1000 per year. Each state school is governed by an elected
Board of Trustees, consisting of the school principal, a number of trustees (usually 5)
elected by the parents of the students, one staff trustee elected by the school staff,
and in secondary schools, one student trustee elected by the students. State schools
follow the national curriculum, and are required to remain secular.

State-integrated schools

State-integrated schools are former private schools which have chosen to integrate
into the state education system, becoming state schools but retaining their special
character. They were established in 1975 after the near-collapse of the then-
private Catholic school system, which had run into financial difficulties and
threatened to overwhelm the state school system were they to close.The majority of
state-integrated schools are Catholic, but other Christian denominations, religions
and educational philosophies are also represented. The private school owners stay
on as proprietors, and sit on the school's board of trustees to ensure the special
character is maintained. State-integrated schools charge "attendance dues" to
parents to cover the costs of the still privately owned land and buildings, and to pay
off any debts accrued by the school prior to integration. Typical attendance dues
range between $240 and $740 per year for Catholic schools, and between $1,150
and $2,300 per year for non-Catholic state-integrated schools.
Private schools

Private schools receive a small amount of government funding, but nearly all of them
rely on tuition fees paid by students' parents to operate.
Charter schools are state funded schools which operate outside of the normal state
system. They began in 2014 with 5 small schools. Charter schools do not have to
operate with any registered or trained teachers. Teachers do not have to have
current practicing certificates. They do not have to have a principal. They are allowed
to benefit from profit making. They do not have to follow the national curriculum.
They receive approximately 3 times the level of funding per student than normal
state schools. If the charter school roll drops during the year, the school keeps the
extra funding, unlike normal state schools, where funding is matched to students
actually attending. If a charter school fails the management/owners are allowed to
keep the land and buildings and other capital assets. Charter schools have less
compliance with regulations than State schools although teachers must undergo
police vetting.
Parents may home-school their own children, if they can prove that their child will be
"taught at least as regularly and as well as in a registered school", [22] and receive an
annual grant[22] to help with costs, including services from The Correspondence
School. The percentage of children home-schooled is well under 2% even in
the Nelson region, the area where the concept is most popular,[23] but there are
many local and national support-groups.

Education in New Zealand

In NZ education system reflects their unique and diverse society, which welcomes
different abilities, religious beliefs, ethnic groups, income levels and ideas about
teaching and learning.

About their education system

Education in New Zealand is a student-centred pathway providing continuous

learning progression and choice so that:

 students progress every year, and

 their learning at one level sets the foundation for the next steps along a
chosen pathway.

New Zealand's education system has 3 levels:

 early childhood education — from birth to school entry age

 primary and secondary education — from 5 to 19 years of age
 further education— higher and vocational education.
Early Childhood Education (ECE) isn't compulsory but around 96.8% of children
attend ECE.

The government subsidises all children who attend ECE for up to 6 hours a day (a
total of 30 hours per week).

The 20 Hours ECE is a higher funding subsidy available for all children aged 3-5
years who attend ECE.

Primary and secondary schools

Primary and secondary schools are the second level of education.

Your child's education is free between the ages of 5 and 19 at state schools (schools
that are government owned and funded) if they're a New Zealand citizen or a
permanent resident.

Schooling is compulsory from age 6-16. In the majority of schools, your child can
start school on the day they turn 5 years old (they don't have to wait until the start of
a new school year). However some schools have a policy of starting children at
school together as a group at the start of each term (cohort entry). Most children stay
at school until they're around 17 years old.

The education system for schools is made up of 13 Year levels. Your child's primary
education starts at Year 1 and goes to Year 8 (around 5-12 years of age). Your
child's secondary education goes from Year 9 to Year 13 (around 13-17 years of
age).

Local schools

Many children go to a school close to where they live. Many schools have an
enrolment scheme called zoning.

If you live in an area close to a school (the school's zone), your child is guaranteed to
get a place at that school. If you want your child to go to a school outside the area
where you live, you may have to apply, and a place isn't guaranteed.

Depending on the schools in your area, you may have the choice to send your child
to a single-sex or co-educational school.

State, state integrated and private schools

Most schools in New Zealand are owned and funded by the state (state schools).
They teach the national curriculum and are secular (non-religious).

State integrated schools are schools with a special character. They are funded by
the government and teach the national curriculum. They'll have their own sets of
aims and objectives to reflect their own particular values, and are set within a
specific philosophy or religion. You'll pay compulsory attendance dues.
Private schools get some government funding but are mostly funded through
charging parents school fees. They develop their own learning programmes and

language for up to 50% of the time (Māori Language Immersion levels 3-5).

Hr Policy In Banking Sector

We often hear that the most important asset in any organization is its people. This is
no less the case with banks. To be effective, banks must have a high degree of
credibility. This in turn requires a bank to have the capacity to keep track of and
carefully analyse the many factors that impinge on its core business – maintaining
price stability and financial stability. And it requires a bank to be able to respond with
sound and well thought through policies as and when the need arises. This requires
considerable skill, expertise, experience and judgment on the part of a bank’s staff.
Hence, human resources is a vital area of any bank, and this certainly holds true for
the Reserve Bank. The risks include the consequences of recruiting the “wrong”
people, inadequately training and developing them, losing them prematurely,
developing ineffective or misguided motivation structures, and failing to consider
future human resource capability needs. Hence, the Bank, like most organizations
with a key dependency on the skills, experience and judgment of its staff, needs to
maintain structures and policies to identify and manage these risks.

Bank’s structure and culture

Like the rest of the New Zealand public sector in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the
Reserve Bank has undertaken substantial internal reform in a wide range of areas.
Some of these reforms resulted from changes to the Bank’s functions, some from the
Bank becoming operationally independent in the area of monetary policy, and some
of the reforms were driven by a desire to strengthen our overall efficiency and
effectiveness. Most of the reforms had implications for human resources one way or
another.

Human resources at the Bank include all aspects of:

• Recruitment and selection;

• Job design and job evaluation;

• Training and development;

• Motivating and rewarding; and

• Succession planning.
Recruitment and selection

Getting the best people for the job is a vital element of any human resources
strategy. The Bank has therefore placed a great deal of emphasis on the process of
staff recruitment, including marketing the Bank to potential employees, advertising
specific job positions when they become available, identifying potential candidates
before vacancies occur, and maintaining robust procedures for screening
candidates. An important element of the recruitment stage in the policy departments
of the Bank is taking the initiative to make contact with university graduates well in
advance of the actual selection of candidates for graduate positions. For many
years, Bank staff have visited most of the universities to market the Bank as a
potential employer, including explaining our policy functions, structure, culture, staff
policies and what we are looking for in an employee. We also run a summer program
where potential employees are able to work in the Bank between semesters. These
initiatives provide an opportunity for interested graduates (mainly in the economics
and finance areas) to assess whether the Bank might be a place they would like to
work and to ask questions of Bank staff. We have recently introduced scholarships
for graduates. We provide two to three a year on the basis that the person will work
at the Bank. At the stage of recruiting for particular positions, the human resources
team provides a consultancy service for the recruiting departments and a
representative from human resources usually sits on interview panels to assist in
consistency of approach and to provide specialist recruitment advice. In the
recruitment process we adopt a careful process in an attempt to ensure that we
appoint the best person for the position. We are now using a wider range of
recruitment selection tools than was previously the case, such as structured
interviews, role plays, tests of analytical ability and written communication skills, and
psychometric testing. These procedures, while by no means perfect, assist us to
assess whether candidates have the right blend of skills, knowledge, experience and
personal qualities for the position in question. The recruitment process also helps to
provide targeted information on candidates’ future development needs.

Job evaluation
Another important human resources activity in the Bank (and in any organization for
that matter) is the process of assessing the “size” of jobs (ie the level of responsibility
and the required skills associated with a particular job). Job evaluation is the
process of determining the relevant criteria that the Bank wishes to use to assess
positions to assist management decision-making and planning. This is an area to
which the Bank has devoted considerable resources in the last year or so. Our work
in this key area is part of the move the Bank has made from a formerly rigid
remuneration and job evaluation structure, where staff was allocated into one of a
large number of graded positions, and where remuneration was paid according to
the job grade, to a situation today where there is much greater flexibility. The move
to a more flexible job evaluation framework was partly a result of becoming a smaller
organization with a flatter management structure. It was also motivated by a desire
to provide a more transparent, internally consistent and simpler framework for
assessing types of jobs within the Bank. We also wanted to develop a framework
that would give staff a better sense of the types of skills, knowledge and level of
responsibility they need to develop in order to progress to more senior levels in the
Bank. Our goal was to develop a relatively simple job evaluation system relevant to
the nature of the Bank’s functions and needs, and to link it to career path
information, remuneration, performance appraisal, recruitment selection criteria, and
training and development. We also wished to use the job evaluation framework to
inform human resources capability discussions, particularly in succession planning.
The job evaluation framework needed to support:

• Flexible human resource structures that can adjust easily to ongoing change in the
Bank; and

• The remuneration review process, through linkages to accurate remuneration

information for comparable jobs in relevant parts of the private and public sectors.
We wanted the framework to increase job evaluation and remuneration transparency
by providing staff with a better understanding of the factors that the Bank has regard
to when deciding remuneration packages, and the factors that influence promotions.
With these objectives in mind, the Bank adopted a broad banded job evaluation
system. . These categories are:

• “Making Decisions” (comprising criteria that relate to the nature and level of
decision-making required in a job).

• “Capacity to Influence/Client Liaison” (i.e. the extent to which the job requires the
ability to influence internal or external parties, to deal with clients and to bind or
represent the Bank externally).

• “Leadership/Teamwork/People” (ie the extent to which a job involves

responsibilities to lead or manage people or to provide intellectual leadership).

• “Work Complexity/Solving Problems” (i.e. the level of complexity and problem

solving requirements of a job).

• “Knowledge and Experience” (including the technical knowledge, and the nature,
depth and breadth of experience, required for the job).

These are the major factors that we think are important to the Bank in terms of
human resource capability and they provide a meaningful basis for classifying job
positions. Although the job evaluation system provides a useful framework for
assessing the “size” of positions within the Bank, we would not pretend that it is a
fully objective and scientific structure. .
Training and development
The nature of central banking requires staff to have wide and deep knowledge of the
economy and financial system, to be well informed of relevant international
developments and to have a high level of competence in economic and financial
analysis. It also requires strong support systems. This requires ongoing development
of skills and knowledge in our staff. We therefore consider it vital to keep staff fully
abreast of relevant technical developments and to maintain an environment that
fosters the development of the required skills, knowledge and judgment in staff. We
have made an explicit commitment to training. We aim to provide an average of 20
hours training and development per employee per annum. Training and
development take many forms, depending on the needs and circumstances of the
staff in question. Training on technical skills is provided to individual staff where this
is considered beneficial to their career path in the Bank, the needs of the job at hand
and the Bank’s priorities. Similarly, staff development programs are made available
to staff, individually and in groups, on a range of matters, including oral and written
communication, working in teams, receiving and giving feedback, time management,
and in other areas relevant to the Bank’s and staff’s needs. As discussed later in the
context of succession planning, we also view secondments as an important element
in staff development, not only in providing staff with the opportunities to develop new
skills and knowledge, but also to benefit from exposure to different work
environments. Our performance review system is partly used to determine
development needs and we have promoted a culture where staff view their
development needs as a positive aspect of their career, rather than a negative
commentary on their performance. We have used assessment centers for senior
managers to target development needs and 360 degree feedback processes for
leaders in the Bank to help us to target development needs as part of the Leadership
Project. This is discussed in more detail later in the article. All staff has a
development plan as part of the performance review system and we have particularly
targeted managers and leaders in their own development. An example of targeted
development is our use of secondments to develop skills to give exposure to
different working cultures and to give exposure to the private sector.

Motivating and rewarding staff

Another important aspect of human resources policy is motivating and rewarding

staff. This is an important aspect of policy, given that the Bank is more likely to
achieve its objectives when its staff are well motivated than if they are not.
Therefore, the Bank has given careful consideration to the theory and practice of
rewarding and motivating staff, as part of the Bank’s overall effort to improve its
performance. Literature and research have suggested to us that individual
employees value different aspects of the employment relationship. For example,
some people place more emphasis on salary, while others place more emphasis on
the nature of the work, the sense of involvement in the organizations activities,
development opportunities or lifestyle. Research also shows that the things valued
are not necessarily related to demographic characteristics such as gender,
experience, qualifications and profession. It was considered that increasing
managers’ understanding of the individual career values of each of their staff, and
then tailoring a management approach based on those values, was likely to improve
both motivation and retention. From a Bank-wide perspective, understanding the key
values of its employees would allow the design of employment packages and staff
development programs that better target the varying needs of a diverse staff. We
used a career values survey to identify the relative importance of different career
drivers for Bank staff. The survey was also designed to provide managers with data
that would allow them to discuss some of the issues that drive motivation and
retention with individual staff. It has been a valuable tool to help managers provide
more targeted career support for their staff. It is also being used in conjunction with
the latest staff “climate” survey. This is a survey of our staff that we usually conduct
on a two yearly basis to get feedback on morale and other matters in order to
provide us with information about the areas on which we need to concentrate to
further strengthen staff motivation. Through the use of these surveys, and through
experience over the years, we have found that an important aspect of staff
motivation in the Bank is the staff’s sense of involvement in their work and their
capacity to contribute to the Bank’s outputs. It has also been found that factors such
as the nature and variety of work, the scope for development, the scope to progress
in the organization, and the work environment are all important ingredients in the
motivation of staff. Of course remuneration is also an important factor in staff
motivation. In particular, we have found that a fairer and more transparent process
for setting staff remuneration has been an important element in enhancing staff
motivation.

Succession planning

In any organization it is important to identify future requirements for knowledge and

skills and to try to ensure that suitable people will be available to meet these
requirements. Succession planning is designed to do this. To the extent practicable,
the aim of our succession planning is to have people with the right skills, knowledge
and experience available at the right time and in the right place to enable the Bank to
perform its functions effectively. Some of this is met by recruiting to fill gaps as and
when they arise (or in anticipation of positions becoming vacant in the future). That
can be a satisfactory way of meeting a number of the skills/knowledge needs of the
Bank. But in some areas it makes more sense to grow the required skills/knowledge
organically through internal staff development. Succession planning is easier said
than done in any organization, but it is especially problematic in a relatively small
organization such as the Reserve Bank. We have a small pool of staff from which to
develop future skills and knowledge needs, and it only takes a small increase in staff
turnover potentially to expose significant human resources gaps. This requires the
Bank to be particularly attentive to the risks of skills/knowledge gaps emerging in
core function areas and to maintain strategies for managing these risks as best we
can. An important element of this is through staff development – i.e. identifying the
people with the potential to grow into more senior roles and to cultivate their
development. We regularly review our succession planning to ensure that we are
managing our risks and building our capability. In addition we have developed a
number of strategies to assist us in retention and recruitment for succession planning
purposes. We have instigated the “Governor’s Network” which is similar to an alumni
for staff who may be able to (directly or indirectly) provide the skills that we need. We
keep in touch with these people via email and keep them informed of vacancies in
the Bank. As an aid to succession planning and broader staff development, we have
taken a proactive approach in arranging occasional secondments for staff, mainly to
foreign central banks and the international financial institutions, but also to
commercial banks. Secondment arrangements allow staff to develop greater
expertise and skills and provide opportunities for exposure to different work cultures.
The secondments have proved to be useful in many ways, not least as a means of
broadening and deepening the Bank’s pool of skills and as a mechanism for
motivating staff.

The leadership project

The project was instigated as one of the ways to follow up on staff feedback in 1999
about how the Bank could improve its culture. As a result of the views expressed in
that survey, senior management in the Bank made a number of commitments to staff
about leadership. They included:

• A commitment to a greater use of 360 degree feedback (i.e. a system whereby

managers and selected staff are periodically subject to appraisal by their manager,
peers, staff and other colleagues);

• A commitment to a greater use of feedback by the Governor, Deputy Governor and

managers for their own direct reports; and

• A commitment by senior management to ensure that their own attitudes, behavior

and decisions are

Consistent with the stated policies of the Bank .The leadership project took these
themes and built on the Bank’s existing leadership skills by planning to provide
managers with feedback on their skills and strategies to identify and meet
development needs. We reviewed the leadership competencies that were originally
developed in 1997 to ensure that they continued to reflect the skills we are seeking
from our staff. In September 2000 the Bank offered the opportunity for Bank staff in
leadership roles (both intellectual and people leadership) to participate in 360 degree
feedback. This process was aimed at enabling the individuals to receive feedback on
how their manager, peers, and direct reports perceived their skills across a range of
management and leadership skills. Senior managers were offered the opportunity of
both assessment centers and 360 degree feedback. Assessment centers provide an
in-depth analysis of individual motivation and work styles, and have been
successfully used within the Bank for senior appointments. The 360 degree feedback
survey information, assessment centre information, and existing performance
reviews have been used to formulate individual staff development plans. This will
help to target staff development and build the Bank’s human resources capability.

HR Policy In Service Sector

General Recruitment practices

Recruiting practices in New Zealand have taken the same path as most other
western countries. Over the last fifty years we have seen the emergence of the
recruitment industry as a service offering in its own right and in the last ten years we
have seen rapid change as service providers merge, divest and re-invent
themselves.

The 1990’s marked the onset of a trend towards acquisition of home grown agencies
by large global operations. While some agencies have maintained their brand
identity they are commonly part of a wider global network. This trend will continue in
the future and we will see the gradual disappearance of mid range recruiting
organisations as the market becomes based on local presence of large global
players and small niche players with tightly focused specialist markets.

THE ONLINE WORLD – The impact of the Web on Recruitment

First we saw the job boards, and then came the interactive job boards and now we
have the next generation of applications that have workflow and auto notification
email and online assessment. The growth of web enabled processes and the
emergence of eRecruitment is having a major impact not only on the process of
recruitment and selection, it is also transforming the nature of relationships between
recruitment service providers and their customers.

The internet has disintermediated the recruitment industry, enabling a recruiting

manager to have a relationship directly with potential candidates. For many years the
power and value of a recruitment agency lay in their relational database of people
and they added the value to a customer by advertising, screening, assessing and
short listing. Who you knew, having a relationship with them, and being able to
introduce them to a customer provided a revenue stream to a recruitment provider. It
matters less who you know now because the internet can do all these things at a
fraction of the cost. The value chain for recruitment services is changing from a
candidate placement model to one of providing unbundled services.

Most major companies in New Zealand have job pages on their websites and some
have highly interactive recruitment software with associated workflow enabling fast
and personal interaction with candidates.

HRINZ has its own HR Job Board which advertises current HR vacancies throughout
New Zealand.

Listed on the HRINZ Resources there are a number of recruitment agents that
specialise in HR recruitment.

General Training and Development practices

Training and development practices in New Zealand are consistent with those of
most other western business environments. Most large organisations have organic
training functions although there is a trend towards outsourcing these functions to
specialist consultancies. The major global training providers such as Forum, DDI,
Seibel, and Achieve Global are all represented along with a plethora of smaller local
training vendors who can provide a full and diverse range of learning solutions.

The emergence of web-based learning is also strongly apparent in New Zealand with
most major organisations establishing online learning capability via intranet/internet
portals.

General Performances Management practices

Performances Management processes vary across the NZ HR community. There is

an emerging trend away from form based appraisal systems to processes that focus
on regular dialogue and employee participation through such means as employee
initiated quarterly updates and online systems that enable visibility of progress
against objectives and reporting using self service intranet services.

The management discipline of setting SMART goals and objectives and providing
effective coaching and feedback remains a challenge and HR professionals continue
to ‘try and build a better mouse trap’ when it comes to systems that drive effective
management behaviour in this domain. Like most approaches all over the world,
effective performance management processes work best when they are explicitly
aligned and engaged with the business planning process and cascade out of the key
strategies and core system of the organisation. The McKinsey 7S approach is a
model being used by some of the top performing organisations and provides a
framework for looking at performance management as part of a systems perspective.
This is a shift away from the dysfunctional ‘annual ambush’ exercise policed by an
HR function distant from the reality of the lines of business.