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Author Archives: Lisa Mackay

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Getting to the Root of Workplace Issues

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When problems show up at work—missed deadlines, tension in teams, communication breakdowns—they’re usually symptoms, not the real issue. These will often come to a head through staff complaints, and quick fixes might smooth things over, but they don’t solve what’s actually driving the problem.

Why Root Cause Analysis Matters

Getting to the real cause helps you:

  • Prevent repeat issues
  • Build trust and transparency
  • Strengthen culture
  • Make decisions based on evidence, not assumptions

How to Investigate Effectively

  • Stay curious instead of jumping to conclusions
  • Gather multiple perspectives to see the full picture
  • Ask “why” until you hit the root cause
  • Validate your findings with those involved

A Final Thought

Though you may be investigating in response to a specific incident or complaint, most workplace issues show early warning signs. Paying attention to them, and digging deeper when something feels off, creates a healthier, more resilient organisation.

To hear more practical advice on how to investigate issues and get to the root cause problem, click here to watch the video recording

Attracting Awesome Candidates

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Even though it is definitely an employer’s market out there at the moment, there is still a lot of recruitment activity, and candidates, particularly the really great ones, have choices.  So, how do you stand out from the crowd?

The biggest error

The biggest error is writing a job description, rather than an Advertisement.  Would you buy Coca Cola if the adverts were a list of the ingredients?  (You probably wouldn’t ever drink it again if they did!).  Recruitment advertising is the same; you need to sell things like why the role matters, what makes your workplace appealing, and how the candidate can grow with you.  Rather than listing the duties (yawn).

How do you get in front of the “best” candidates?

This will definitely depend on your role and situation, but some generic things to consider are:

  • If you want someone who is driven and ambitious, they are most likely successful in a role they are currently in, but fairly passively looking for their next opportunity – i.e. they are not necessarily looking on Job sites every day, so you will need to think about other ways for them to see your advert
  • Are you in a very niche market?  How are you going to get your advert in front of those candidates?
  • Is the role suitable for “mummy hours” ?  E.g. will accommodate flexibility and school hours of work.  This may be someone who is returning to the workforce after a period of absence, so how do you get in front of them?

Don’t make the application process to complex

In today’s fast-moving, and phone based scrolling environment, those passively looking candidates will often have their interest piqued and click the “apply now” button. If they only have to attach a CV to the application, they will do it then and there.  If they have to write a cover letter, they may put it on the back burner, and then not get round to applying.

Won’t this mean I get lots of applications to scroll through?

Spreading the net wide will definitely give you a better chance of finding the right candidate, but yes, it can mean you get lots of applications.  The good news is that job sites such as Seek do a lot of the hard work for you with AI screening and categorising of candidates.

Where to Advertise

Seek for white-collar roles, and Trade Me for trades roles are still by far the most effective platforms in my opinion.  However, in addition to that, I strongly recommend using social media, employee referrals, and your own website to push people towards the main Seek/Trade Me advert.

To find out more about how to attract awesome candidates when recruiting, how and where to advertise, click her to watch the webinar

And the follow-on webinar – Interview strategy and best practice, can be viewed here

The impact of the Employment Leave Act for employment agreement choices

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The new Employment Leave Act may not come into force until August 2028; however, there are some significant changes that may well impact which contract you use, in order to future-proof yourself for that change.

Key definitions
The act introduces a number of new definitions, which I will lay out as that helps to understand the rest of the article:

  • Standard hour – any hours the Employment Agreement specifies they are required to work and be paid for
  • Additional hours – for employees who have standard hours, the additional hours are those that the employer is not required to provide, and the employee doesn’t have to work, i.e. Overtime, or in the case of Lower Guaranteed hours agreements, the hours that are not guaranteed
  • Casual hours – for employees who the employer does not have to provide any hours and the employee does not have to accept any hours
  • Leave compensation payment – an allowance of 12.5% paid over and above the hourly rate for any additional hours or Casual hours, to compensate for the fact that additional hours and Casual hours don’t attract holiday pay and sick pay
  • Fixed allowance – this is an allowance that is payable irrespective of whether the employee is on leave or not
  • Non-fixed allowance – an allowance which is only payable in certain circumstances e.g. if you work a night shift you will get paid $XX allowance.

So, what are the key changes in summary?

  1. Entitlement to Sick leave, bereavement leave, and family violence leave will be from day 1 (no 6 months stand down)
  2. Sick leave will now accrue at the rate of 0.0386 for each standard hour.  I.e. sick leave will be pro-rata rather than a fixed 10 days irrespective of the number of days you work, but still accrues up to a maximum of 160 hours.  However, it someone is working part-time, it will take them much longer to accrue the 160 hours of sick leave than someone working full-time
  3. Annual leave accrues at a rate of 0.0769 per standard hour
  4. Commission and non-fixed allowances do NOT attract either leave accruals or leave compensation payments

Low Guaranteed hours contracts.

They legally need to:

  1. Include an availability provision, i.e. when you need them to be available to you.
  2. Have genuine business reasons for including that availability provision.
  3. Give the ability for the employee to refuse work – i.e. you can’t require the employee to be available 24/7 in case you have a shift for them, so, in return they must have the right to refuse offered work without penalty.
  4. Include details about the compensation for that availability, i.e. how much they will be paid for cancelled shifts, how much notice you will give of cancelled shifts etc.

Provided you have genuine business reasons (seasonal variations, weather impact etc) and you give reasonable notice of cancellation of shifts or pay them a minimum level if you don’t meet those notice requirements, then you can set the guaranteed number of hours as low as you need. 

Under the new Employment Leave Act (which doesn’t come into force until Aug 2028) annual leave and sick leave will only be paid for the standard (Guaranteed) hours, but the Leave Compensation Payment will be paid at a rate of 12.5% on any additional hours over and above the standard hours.

Independent Contractors
In February 2026 the Employment Relations Amendment Act introduced a new gateway test, which means that Contractor agreements:

  • Must be in writing,
  • Workers cannot be restricted from working for others.
  • They are not required to be available for specific times or days unless agreed and may subcontract work.
  • Employers cannot terminate contracts for not accepting additional tasks.

However, if the above roles are not met, then the courts revert back to the old tests of justification. 

Leave payment for Casuals

The current Holidays Act (which remains in force until 6th August 2028) states that, if an employee “works for the employer on a basis that is so intermittent or irregular that it is impracticable for the employer to provide the employee with 4 weeks’ annual holidays” then you can pay them the 8% uplift with their pay.  However, it then goes on to state that “If an employer has incorrectly paid annual holiday pay with an employee’s pay in circumstances where subsection (1) does not apply and the employee’s employment has continued for 12 months or more, then, despite those payments, the employee becomes entitled to annual holidays in accordance with section 16 and paid in accordance with this subpart”. 

I.e. they can double dip and get 4 weeks paid annual leave irrespective of what you have already paid them.

The new Employment Leave Act introduces a new entitlement of Leave Compensation payment of 12.5% for casual workers (i.e. up from the current 8%).

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