HR Chats with Te Radar - must watch podcasts

Brought to you by HRNZ, these podcasts profile some of New Zealand’s leading HR professionals, speaking on a range of trends and ideas from the world of human resources. Over a dozen topics relating specifically to HR best practice within New Zealand are currently available via the HRNZ website. Kathy Catton reviewed three podcasts focusing on the areas of diversity and inclusion.

Elizabeth Berryman: Bullying and harassment and the importance of monitoring mental health in the workplace – watch now!

According to recent research, New Zealand is one of the worst places in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for people to experience bullying and harassment in the workplace. Why is this the case?

Elizabeth Berryman wants to find the answers. After starting her career as a registered nurse, she went on to study medicine at the University of Otago and is now a qualified psychiatrist and active researcher and expert in e-mental health and psychological risks in the workplace. After a personal experience of being bullied as a doctor, Elizabeth started to ask more and more questions about why this bullying exists and what we can do about it.

Elizabeth’s answers led her to realise that many people feel disempowered to make any change when they see or experience bullying within an organisation. Often, very little training and support are given to managers on how to deal with bullying.

Her quest for answers also led Elizabeth to survey all medical students in New Zealand in 2018. Results of this survey showed that 54 per cent of students experienced incidents of bullying, sexual harassment or discrimination within the past year. Seeing these statistics had a significant impact on Liz.

So, she set up Chnnl: a digital platform providing insights, information and data on employee mental health and wellbeing. Employees answer simple questions daily about how they are feeling. This data is then anonymised, and employers and managers can accurately assess the wellbeing of their workforce as a whole – seeing which areas of the workplace need attention as well as quickly being alerted to incidents of bullying or sexual harassment. Potential problems, adverse trends, bullying and even a crisis, can be identified early, while positive trends can be capitalised on and celebrated.

“It’s the subtle incivility (sarcastic behaviour, ‘I’m just joking’, eyerolling, exclusion, not saying good morning, etc) happening in organisations, that can have impacts on our mental health,” says Elizabeth. “This app also allows employees to speak up and log issues that can be kept anonymous or shared to lodge as a formal complaint if required.”

It is always hard to measure productivity and performance, but asking people how productive they feel is often as accurate as measuring the data. This makes the app very attractive for chief executive officers to be able to track and measure the wellbeing of their entire team. The business case is robust: organisations that implement wellbeing initiatives typically see a 3:1 return, that is, for every one dollar spent on wellbeing they get a three dollar return.

This podcast is well worth a listen if you need to support your employees’ mental health. And, as Elizabeth says, “take this time to support your own mental health. You can’t help other people unless you take care of yourself.”

Amy Clarke: Diversity and inclusion and the role HR plays in supporting it – watch now!

Amy Clarke has a passion for creating safe spaces. She works as a business partner within the People and Culture team at Stats NZ. She has particular interests in intersectionality (the interconnected nature of social categorisations, which may create discrimination), allyship (the practice of emphasising social inclusion to advance the interests of a minor group) and the importance of using privilege to create safe spaces for those who need them, both inside and outside the workplace.

From a practical point of view, for HR professionals, this translates to looking at what we can do to use our influence and reach across an organisation as a force for good. HR can give a minority group a voice and then step back and allow the minority voices to be heard.

“You let the group you are trying to support give you input on how they would like your support to be utilised,” says Amy. “It’s about allowing people to speak for themselves.”

Amy’s advice when it comes to listening to our people is to leave all our assumptions at the door. “To be a good ally and support, the act of listening is so important,” says Amy. “Check your assumptions and let them tell you who they are and how they want to operate in a space. You quickly find more meaningful ways to support groups this way.”

When we look at what privilege entails, we need to start noticing our own privileges, due to our gender, sexuality, ethnicity, education, location and background. It’s about acknowledging and being open to learning and noticing how our privilege affects other people, positively and negatively.

The role of HR when working to move the culture of an organisation to a better place, Amy says, is to acknowledge that HR can’t do everything. Change can start with small baby steps. “Focus on what will have an impact, eg, write pronouns in our email signatures, so it’s not a burden on those minority groups to have to self-identify.” HR has to recognise that people are experts in their own rights, but we can't expect them to always have the energy or space to lead on these issues. Amy identifies that there is no silver bullet when it comes to diversity and inclusion training. It's well worth looking within the organisation to see which employees are able to help in a work context. Employees understand the unique challenges of the culture and where initiatives do and don’t support diversity. “Go for the low-hanging fruit first,” says Amy. “Things like acknowledging people’s cultural holidays or providing safe spaces or safety signals that you can stand by are all moves in the right direction.”

Karli Te Aotonga:How HR practice is vital to the wellbeing of our Māori workforce – watch now!

Karli is passionate about the wellbeing and development of all people in the workforce, particularly the wellbeing and development of tāngata whenua working across diverse workplaces in Aotearoa. She is a proud mama to two boys, president of the Nelson HRNZ branch and whānau development programme manager for Wakatū Incorporation. Wakatū is a hapū and whānau-owned organisation, based in Te Tauihu (Nelson).

Karli provides practical examples of what we as HR professionals need to be aware of at every stage of the employee lifecycle when working with our Māori workforce.

Many of these practical examples are grounded in the model Te Whare Tapa Whā (the four cornerstones of health), by Mason Durie. With its strong foundations and four equal sides, the symbol of the wharenui shows the four dimensions of Māori wellbeing – taha tinana, taha wairua, taha whānau and taha hinengaro. Should one of the four dimensions be missing or in some way damaged, a person, or a collective, may become ‘unbalanced’ and subsequently unwell. Karli points listeners to www.mentalhealth.org.nz, where factsheets are available for employees and employers on Te Whare Tapa Whā.

Karli summarises the following examples.

Talent, attraction, recruitment:

Check the content of your advertisements. Make sure, if you are using te reo, it is used correctly. Karli recommends you engage with Māori HR consultants and your local marae or other Māori organisations if you need guidance. If you are asking internally, consider asking those with strong cultural competency and make sure the person wants to be involved in that way. They may prefer to refer you somewhere else. “Think about where you advertise. Could you share job adverts with your local marae and Māori agencies? To avoid Māori selecting themselves out, are you actively seeking recommendations? Do you ask if there are any special requirements throughout the recruitment process?” asks Karli.

Onboarding:

Recognise our unique Aotearoa culture, the awareness of the lifeforce of the organisation and how HR can practice family-centric values, embrace the wholeness of the person, and speak to their wider environment and relationships. “A pōwhiri may be appropriate on day one, so that children and whānau are welcome in the workplace,” says Karli. “This forges the relationship between employer and employee. And always ask for support if you need it.”

Establish employee working groups to ensure what you do is positive and appropriate for the people within the organisation. Move away from the box-ticking exercises! HR needs to provide best practice advice to managers.

Performance development:

In the words of Mason Durie, “Diverse realities require diverse solutions.” Those in the Māori workforce may not be comfortable speaking of their own successes when it comes to a performance review. “Instead of asking, ‘What’s gone well?’ change the language, and ask instead ‘What project have you enjoyed working on? What goals did you achieve and what learnings did you gain from this?”

Learning and development:

Sharing and growing and developing in areas together is a great way to engage everyone. Encourage employees to think diversely. And don’t assume every Māori employee wants the same thing. Make sure your line managers are equipped to deal with issues to support everyone, and if an issue occurs between two individuals, ensure it advances the mana of both parties.

Remuneration or reward:

Some people may not want to produce a portfolio of evidence when seeking a pay rise or promotion, because this can be confronting. Consider all the alternatives and show empathy when talking with all people.

Karli’s overriding message is these suggestions apply to all people, not just the Māori workforce. As HR professionals, we have a duty of care to develop our own competencies in this area. “Consider signing up to a tikanga Māori course or broaden and deepen your HR practice by becoming informed about our country’s past,” she says. “Read Professor Chellie Spiller’s Fasttracking Māori management: A short report on Human Resource practice.”1 Listening to this podcast is also a great place to start.

Thank you to all the speakers who have been interviewed by Te Radar. HRNZ is always keen to hear from members with topic ideas and speaker suggestions for future HR Chats with Te Radar. Please email membership@hrnz.org.nz with your suggestions.

1 Spiller, M; Craze, G; Dell, K; Mudford, M (2017) Kōkiri Whakamua: Fast-tracking Māori Management: A short report on Human Resource Practice. Auckland: University of Auckland

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