WHAT SPINS MY WHEELS: Business Advisory Council - keen to support SME productivity & growth - Nov 2018

1.   Future of Work – Business Advisory Council

In November 2018 the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council was formed and identified four key areas for attention:

1. Building tomorrows skills. 

   1. How can business practically demonstrate their commitment to ensuring workers in NZ are supported to gain new skills and transition into new jobs as the nature of work changes?

   2. How can business support operationalising micro-crediting and fees-free learning policy?

   3. How can our tertiary institutions support this in a practical way, learning from best practice models overseas?

2. Accelerating our regions

3. Attracting high quality investment

4. Unleashing our SMEs

The Business Advisory Council report (May 2019) analysed the impact of new technology on New Zealand productivity and makes 12 specific recommendations with the intent of providing a tangible call to action for every business and the public sector on how NZ can work together and ensure that every New Zealander shares in the growth and opportunity automation can bring.

 Skills, Retraining and Education

Challenge

Recommendation

Significant numbers of Kiwis need to be retrained and reskilled every year to close the anticipated skills gap and mitigate the risks posed by automation.

New Zealand private and public sector employers need to be at the forefront of this transformation, adopting impactful and best-practice retraining strategies.

1. Kiwi employers should pledge to double their investment in annual employee training, re-training and upskilling and publicly report on this investment as a credible signal of leadership in ensuring Kiwis are well prepared for the Future of Work.

2. Board directors should ask the following of their organisations:

   • What is the organisation’s strategy to at least double the rate of real productivity growth using automation technologies?

   • What is the organisation’s human capital strategy to train, retrain, upskill and empower its people to thrive in the Future of Work?

   • How will the organisation change or enhance its culture, behaviours and operating models to ensure it delivers the benefits of automation?

The Future of Work quickly becomes the Future of Education, and New Zealand needs to deliver scalable and effective ways to teach the key competencies demanded by future labour markets; cognitive skills, social and emotional skills and most significantly, technological skills.

The education system, including content and delivery methods, needs recreating to prioritise training in Future of Work skills, specifically technology skills.

1. A national digital and technology curriculum should be developed and made compulsory, at appropriate levels in the education system.

2. A “National Digital Certificate” should be created as a scalable way for businesses to retrain employees in the technology skills needed for most future roles.

A scalable mechanism is needed to encourage and require Kiwis to take personal responsibility to reskill throughout their lives. This will become just as important as saving for retirement.

5. A “KiwiSaver for Skills” should be established by creating citizen directed Lifetime Learning Accounts for individuals to tap into throughout their careers to acquire new skills or pursue higher education.

 Targeted SME and Sector “Surge Support”

Challenge

Recommendations

SMEs and sectors that provide New Zealand with a comparative advantage hold the key to harnessing the benefits of automation by solving a large part of our productivity problem.

Despite SMEs making up 97% of Kiwi businesses, there is no Provincial Growth Fund equivalent for SMEs and many struggle to scale and adopt the technology needed to supercharge their businesses.

There is a strong correlation between SMEs that use three or more Apps to run their businesses and 30% more profitability.

11. High-performing, or high-potential sectors (which have self-selected) should be surged with support and targeted investment and incentives to achieve scale through automation (for example, accelerated depreciation on innovative technology assets, R&D tax credits).

12. A “SME in a Box” scheme should be created, which outlines clear, user friendly steps towards greater productivity in SMEs, including:

–  Encouraging and specifically recommending App and technology use through loans, grants or investment to enable adoption and associated training.

–  Partnering with book-keepers, banks and other service providers to SMEs as a vehicle to roll-out this scheme.

Recent candidate feedback

“I appreciate your straight-forward, honest, “no surprises” approach. ”

— Stuart Kagan - General Manager

“Finding a new job can be a stressful experience. However, Anna helped me get a job within 2 weeks of our first consultation. Anna genuinely concerned about understanding my personality, background, experiences, specific circumstances and needs, in which these information allow her to match me with the ideal roles and organizations quickly. Throughout the recruitment process, Anna was being so supportive and I was always well informed regarding the recruitment situation. Her after hire support and follow ups certainly differentiates her service and making her unique from other recruiters. I would recommend Anna to anyone in need of a new career movement. Thanks Anna!”

— Christy Yau - Sales & Marketing Support

“Anna is an exceptional recruiter with an innovative approach, a refreshing change from the traditional recruitment style. She spend great time getting to know not only my career objectives, values, goals and working style, but myself personally to ensure the company and I were the best fit on all levels. Greatly appreciated, thank you Anna”

— Jessica Bell - Key Account Manager

“I would like to also provide you with positive feedback. From my experience over the previous couple of months, I have found that it is rare within the recruitment industry to engage with a recruitment agent who will actually take their time to understand the candidate. I thank you for taking the opportunity to listen and understand my requirements in depth. There are only a select few who demonstrate these qualities - a great way to retain client’s long term, by recommending the right candidates who are the right fit and not just an easy sale.”

— Stuart Hall - candidate of SME Recruit

Recent client testimonial:

“Like many family SME’s our business doesn’t operate an HR department or even and full time HR resource, however we still face the same challenges of managing our resources, and in our situation planning for family succession.
Anna was highly recommended to us as a expert who could assist us in developing our strategy. Anna very quickly understood our business, what we were trying to achieve and identified some of the challenges we faced. Through Anna’s knowledge and guidance we have been able to develop a future succession plan while ensuring the business is not distracted from it’s core day to day operations. As GM of the business it has been great to draw on Anna’s significant external expertise to help me develop a clear strategy ensuring the right approach to succession has been developed for our business.
I found Anna very approachable , professional and very easy to deal with . Anna will continue to be part of our succession journey as I will be regularly drawing on her expertise and guidance.
”

— Simon Toneycliffe General Manager Whitehaven Wine Co

“Anna takes a unique approach to the recruitment process. SME Recruit felt like an extension of our business as Anna takes the time to really understand your business, the role and the type of candidates that would genuinely fit the business and the culture. We recently placed a senior role through SME Recruit and were hugely impressed by the level of professionalism and her communication. It was an important role to our future growth so we took our time. Anna was hugely patient and positively challenged our thinking throughout the process and presented a fantastic range of candidates. I would definitely recommend Anna and SME Recruit.”

— Mike Button - Sales & Marketing Manager - RLB Packaging & Strapping

“After a series of amazing recruitment fails of my own – Anna Freeman @ SME recruit was recommended to me.
We had a tight time frame, and a very specialized candidate we were seeking. Anna gave me lots of options around the process and this worked well for our business.
Anna made things happen quickly and we have secured a great employee. I was so happy that I used her service again straight away.
In the future, if we have any other openings we would use Anna as of right. I was particularly pleased with her professionalism and level of communication.

”

— Jeremy Scott CPS and Ashley & Co

“Anna has a carved out a niche service for SMEs looking for a more personalised approach to recruitment. She takes the time to get to understand your business, culture and resourcing needs whilst unafraid to challenge your current thinking and processes. I would strongly recommend her to any small business looking for a fresh and more economical approach to recruitment.”

— Matt Vyle - Director & General Manager - Unison

“As the owner of an SME and ‘not knowing what you don’t know’ I can’t speak highly enough of Anna’s ability to fully understand our business and establish exactly what General Manager would be the right fit for us. I always felt Anna had our best interests at the heart of the recruitment process and I would highly recommend SME Recruit to anyone who is really serious about making the BEST recruit for their business – A+++!”

— Richard Crum - Owner Founder - Chilltech

“The recruitment process with SME Recruit was seamless end to end. Anna really gets the challenges faced by smaller businesses and is able to apply her years of experience in the industry to get the right result every time. Her pragmatic approach to problem solving was refreshing and the expert advice made the recruitment process easy and enjoyable.”

— Gray Borrell - General Manager at Novii

“I worked with Anna and SME Recruit for the hiring of an Australasian Sales Manager. Anna’s campaign with us was an absolute success, and we are extremely happy with the team member we have coming on board.
The position is one that will be hugely influential to our business growth over the next 5 years, and being a young SME with a young team, it’s never easy to attract top people from the industry. Anna not only took the time to ensure that she fully understood the type of candidate we were looking for, but also ensured we were portraying our business in an honest, but appealing way to the candidates.
I enjoyed the process every step of the way.
I will definitely be using Anna and SME Recruit again, and recommend anyone else to do so.”

— Ryan Kamins - Director and CEO - CleanPaleo