NEWS ROUNDUP
Vector Limited wins top diversity award Vector Limited has won New Zealand’s top workplace diversity award, demonstrating excellence in more than one diversity category and a commitment to integrating an inclusive culture across its business. The energy and communications services provider took out the Supreme Award at the 2019 Diversity Awards NZ™ following wins in the Empowerment and Diversability categories, which recognise innovative responses to gender equity and positive employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Acknowledging it operates in a maledominated industry, where gender diversity has been an issue for many years, Vector committed to increasing the number of women employed from 30 per cent to 50.8 per cent to be representative of New Zealand’s working-age population. It also
developed a Women in Leadership programme, to identify and grow female leadership at all levels of the organisation, and undertook a pay equity audit.
It's fantastic to see a large organisation making a genuine commitment to improving gender equity.
“It’s fantastic to see a large organisation in a male-dominated industry making a genuine commitment to improving gender equity and showing the way for other large organisations to stop seeing employment of people with disabilities as a burden,” said Judging Convenor Neil Porteous. For all the award results, visit www.diversityworksnz.org.nz
Energy and communications services provider Vector Ltd wins New Zealand's top workplace diversity award following its innovative responses to gender equity.
Working life survey A Statistics NZ survey has recently been published providing a picture of what working life is like for the employed people of New Zealand. The study reveals interesting data into how flexible our workplaces are, how much control employees felt they had over how they do their tasks, and how much work-related training was happening. The Survey of Working Life 2018, carried out between October and December 2018 and involving over 9,000 employees, reveals that those with flexible hours had higher levels of satisfaction (79 per cent)
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HUMAN RESOURCES
SPRING 2019
than those who didn't (71 per cent). And only 3 per cent of those who had flexible hours reported being dissatisfied with their primary job compared with 6.1 per cent of those with no flexi-arrangements.
Employees who don’t have flexibility feel less satisfied with their work– life balance than those who do. "Having the ability to start and finish your job at different times is an important aspect of balancing work
with life outside it, so, unsurprisingly, employees who don't have that flexibility fell less satisfied with their work-life balance than those who do," says labour market statistics manager, Scott Ussher. This raises important questions for HR professionals and managers to seek to understand how they can provide a flexible working culture to engage, empower and motivate staff, while at the same time maintaining the business case and day-to-day operations.
