Top of Mind

Nick McKissack is Chief Executive of HRNZ. Nick is passionate about people development and sharing the success of members and organisations leading the HR profession in New Zealand.

While working at Te Tumu Paeroa – The Māori Trustee for eight years, it became evident to me that some standard HR practices don’t work particularly well within a predominantly Māori workforce. We had a pretty standard set of HR policies and processes, but, in reality, things just worked a bit differently. HR practitioners are often quite process-oriented, and I witnessed frustrations with how Māori leaders and managers handled things like recruitment processes and annual pay reviews. The reality for me was that I needed to work in the environment of a Māori organisation to gain a proper understanding of principles such as manaakitanga and whanaungatanga, what they mean, why they are important and how these values play out in the workplace. In the end, I had to look at things through a whole new values set.

The experience led me to realise that in New Zealand we need our own frame for thinking about human resource management. We’re a unique country with unique cultural influences. If we don’t reflect this in our HR practice, we risk creating systemic bias that disadvantages particular groups in the workplace. If we’re honest, that’s the situation we’re currently faced with. Māori aren’t succeeding as well in New Zealand workplaces as they should be.

For this reason, I’m excited about a new programme that HRNZ is working on this year called “Transforming HRM in Aotearoa”. We’re planning to run a pilot programme in June that aims to provide HR practitioners with an opportunity to develop their HR practice to directly and intentionally benefit Māori employees, recognising Māori as Tāngata Whenua o Aotearoa and Treaty of Waitangi partners. Through the programme and follow-up projects, we want to facilitate the development of culturally responsive and equitable HRM practice that aspires to improve the employee experience for Māori in the workplace.

The main aims for this programme will be:

• creating a critical mass movement of HR practitioners who commit to bicultural HR professional development

• providing HR practitioners with a safe forum to share and discuss cultural competency within HRM

• identifying HRM solutions that may improve the workplace for Māori

• developing the cultural competency of HR practitioners through the cultural context of Te Ao Māori and Mātauranga Māori.

We’ve been lucky to have the support of Te Puni Kōkiri in helping to get the programme off the ground and ensure we can offer cadetships to Māori HR practitioners.

HRNZ has been fortunate to have chartered HRNZ member and Nelson Branch President Karli Te Aotonga to co-lead this programme of work. Karli is a Māori HR practitioner and kaupapa Māori researcher. Karli has sought the support of Bentham Ohia to co-lead this project, a leader within her community with extensive experience in tertiary education and research throughout Māori and indigenous networks. We’ve also had Denise Hartley- Wilkins, our National President and facilitator of HR Foundations, helping with development.

For me, this programme is about much more than just developing cultural competence. This is about fundamental change to HR practices and producing qualitatively different outcomes for Māori in our workplaces. We’ll also want to attract more Māori into the HR profession to support the work. It’s a big aspiration, which is why it’s great to be getting the journey started now.

Nick McKissack Chief Executive HRNZ Nick.McKissack@hrnz.org.nz