Credit: Siarhei Dzmitryienka
Major distributor Westcon-Comstor and SAP and AWS partner Zag have been named winners in the annual HRD employer of choice awards.
The awards ask for details about a wide range of initiatives and achievements across key areas, such as remuneration, communication, reward and recognition, training and professional development, career progression, recruitment and on-boarding, diversity and inclusion, access to technology, leadership, work-life balance and employee health and wellbeing.
This year 30 New Zealand companies were named Employer of Choice across a wide range of industries.
The judges focused on Westcon-Comstor NZ's annual talent review process, whereby all managers use the nine-box grid to review the talent within their teams, looking at potential versus performance.
"This supports the career progression process; annually, the leadership team review this and discuss development opportunities in the pipeline to support the company’s top talent," the Human Resource Director (HRD) website reported.
As a global organisation, Westcon-Comstor NZ had led the APAC region with its talent review processes, and was considered at the forefront for identifying and supporting staff with high potential for growth and development.
At Zag, understanding individual contributions to company success was critical to the sense of team.
"Annually, the company holds a conference where everyone is introduced to their strategic themes and company goals," HRD reported.
These goals were then "cascaded" through all of the company’s staff and interpreted in a way that made sense to their role.
"This is so everyone can see a direct line from their goals to the company goals. From here, there are development discussions to help develop people to meet both the company’s and their personal goals."
All staff have a development plan, no matter how grand or minute, because everyone’s needs were different.
“At a time when there’s a lot of uncertainty within businesses, it’s great to be acknowledged as a top employer for initiatives and achievements that have had a direct positive impact on our people.," said Laura Lesley-Pryor, HR business partner at Westcon-Comstor.
"Westcon-Comstor has a great team culture and we have rolled out some fantastic initiatives over the last 12 months, so to be recognised for these along with the other 29 organisations, it gives us motivation to keep going and pushing through these tough times together as a team.”
Other New Zealand tech companies making the list included Xero, for wellbeing initiatives including the development of a respect and responsibility policy, along with associated classroom and online learning.
Psychological safety sessions, a rainbow workshop aimed at educating employees around the LGBTQI+ community, Te Reo Maori and He Papa Tikanga classes and a mindfulness strategy have also been introduced.
Xero has also trialled mental health first aid courses for leaders and was assessing the best ways to roll them out.
Chorus also collected a winner's gong after it invested in leadership development, focusing not only on people in leadership positions, but also providing the opportunity for the development of personal leadership skills through a programme developed to help everyone "realise their own genius".
Chorus also established "belonging strategy" to help build an inclusive culture, aimed at strengthening the company’s collective capability through identifying, attracting, retaining and leveraging diverse talent.
A highlight of 2020 had also been the introduction of a new parental leave policy in addition to the existing government entitlement.
