Employee engagement and experience

Tackling our wicked problems

What role can HR professionals play in holding their organisations to account for contributing to wider social benefit? How do we detect and prevent modern slavery and worker exploitation in Aotearoa New Zealand? Sarah Baddeley, Executive Director at MartinJenkins, finds answers to some of these complex problems facing our society today.

The high-profile Joseph Matamata case would have been chillingly real for those who have experienced modern slavery in New Zealand. Matamata was convicted of 23 separate charges for his treatment of 13 victims, aged between 12 and 53.

Over 20 years, his victims were brought to New Zealand from Samoa and made to work in the Hawke’s Bay horticultural sector in slavelike conditions. They worked long hours, six or seven days a week, for horticultural owners or contractors who paid their wages directly to Matamata. Some victims were given small amounts of money, such as $10 or $20 a week, but they were effectively slaves – unpaid and completely under his control.

Matamata took their passports on arrival and never returned them. The victims lived on his property, which consisted of two houses and two garages surrounded by a high wire fence, with a front gate secured by a padlock. When not working, they had to be on the property. They did daily chores and couldn’t leave the property without permission.

My own firm’s recent focus has been on helping clients with the challenging work of detecting and preventing worker exploitation. The Matamata modern slavery case is a real-life New Zealand example of a social problem that is complex, dynamic and seemingly intractable.

It is also one where HR professionals will be asked to provide help and advice, especially as the government contemplates strengthening the law around the treatment of workers.

What do we know about modern slavery in Aotearoa?

The latest Global Estimates indicate that 50 million people were living in modern slavery in 2021. Of these, 28 million were in forced labour and 22 million were trapped in forced marriage.

In New Zealand, the data is poor and the type of exploitation varies. So it is difficult to quantify how many people are affected, but modern slavery is an insidious problem and it is definitely happening here. Earlier estimates from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment were that about 3,000 people within New Zealand may be experiencing modern slavery. A recent survey by Kantar indicated that 30 per cent of the migrant workers surveyed had experienced exploitative treatment – albeit at the less severe end of exploitation.

No HR professional wants to find themselves involved in any way in the exploitative treatment of workers or end up on the wrong side of the regulators or courts overseeing the array of legislation it can involve. In my work, I see a spectrum of exploitative behaviour under a range of different situations. Any HR professional working in almost any type of sector or organisation in any part of the country needs to be vigilant.

So what makes complex problems like these so hard?

Many organisations have now signed up to support the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. But to bring that support to life, your organisation needs to be able to carve its way through complex problems.

My firm’s work on modern slavery and other complex social or ethical issues reveals a set of four common denominators that makes tackling them hard.

1. Information is incomplete or contradictory, so your ability to make informed decisions is hampered by a lack of accurate information.

2. The topic is emotionally charged and evokes strong personal reactions, or is morally challenging. Morally or ethically challenging issues need to be made within a consistent values framework.

3. Commercial risk and cost haven’t been anticipated by the organisation’s strategy and properly factored in. This makes it hard for HR professionals to support doing the right thing.

4. There are problems within bigger problems – the problem exists within another system or is the by-product of another problem, and so your organisation may seek to blame others or shift accountability.

Breaking down modern slavery and climate change

Modern slavery and climate change are two of the clearest examples of these kinds of challenges facing organisations and their HR leaders in New Zealand. The table above breaks down those two problems by the four common denominators I’ve just listed.

HR professionals can bring the people skills that are at the heart of sustainable practice

These are big, hairy problems and may feel beyond the remit of HR professionals working in individual organisations. However, my firm believes that HR staff offer a distinct set of qualities that makes them uniquely placed to address some of the underlying issues.

These complex problems require a powerful combination of peoplecentred change methods with a good understanding of metrics, targets and indicators. This combination of head and heart means that HR professionals are best placed to overcome information disadvantage by bringing together the information that exists with the lived experience of people.

For me, HR leaders offer great value for organisations’ efforts to tackle these challenging issues for two main reasons.

People leaders support the ethical lens of organisations

HR professionals support and balance the ethical judgements that leaders exercise by supporting the engagement and culture around organisational values (including recruitment and retention) and supporting the judgement when action is contrary to those values (including exiting an organisation).

HR professionals can role-model a partnershipbased approach

If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that a successful business strategy requires analysing peoplebased risks in partnership with supply chains. Complex problems require a partnership mindset, and HR professionals excel at collaborating within organisations. Taking those same collaboration skills into a partnership mindset with customers and suppliers with whom you share values is a natural extension of that.

In the case of modern slavery and worker exploitation, HR professionals also have some practical skills that they can bring to bear to tackle those four common denominators underlying complex problems that I discussed above.

A handy conceptual framework has recently been developed

One of my favourite frameworks for thinking about these kinds of issues comes from the Office of the Auditor-General. This very useful framework puts integrity at the core of how organisations operate.

The approach can be used effectively in different contexts and is evidence based.

Drawing on our HR leaders and their strong people skills

Leaders with strong people skills need to be at the heart of working collaboratively to solve these complex, people-based social problems.

If we want to avoid repeating scenarios like the wretched conditions experienced by the victims of Joseph Matamata, we need to look beyond the short term and the needs of our individual organisations, and start using our skillsets to influence the surrounding ecosystem.

Sarah Baddeley is Executive Director at management consultancy MartinJenkins. Sarah has a Bachelor of Social Science in Economics and Political Waikato. She has an Australian Company Director’s Diploma, is a member of the New Zealand Institute of Directors and has completed the General Manager Programme at the University of New South Wales Business School. In her role at MartinJenkins, she advises boards and executive teams on some of the complex problems facing our society today. Sarah was one of the speakers at the recent HRNZ Summit: Taking the bold path.