HRNZ Member profile: Wiremu Tamaki

Human Resources magazine caught up with Wiremu Tamaki, Acting HR Manager for Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, the mandated iwi authority for Ngāti Toa Rangatira and the administrative body of iwi estates and assets. We asked him about his career and his thoughts on the role of HR in Aotearoa today.

What are the highlights of your career to date?

My career at the moment is all about enhancing the mana, wellbeing and prosperity of Ngāti Toa Rangatira and its 8,430 registered iwi members. We aim to give our best services to the communities we serve, so I guess everything has been a highlight for me! It’s very enriching to work in this space and for an organisation that is focused in this way. It’s heart-warming knowing you’re making an impact on someone’s life. I have also worked in HR for Stats NZ and, more recently, at Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (Māori Language Commission). I’ve been doing HR roles for over 25 years, and I see the role of HR being all about serving the people who serve the people. Supporting and unlocking the potential of our kaimahi (staff) to be at their best to support and serve others.

What inspires and motivates you in your career and why?

Making an impact in someone’s life to realise their potential. Sounds cliché, but, in the spaces I move in, it’s a reality and that inspires and motivates me in my career. Here at the Rūnanga our kaimahi serve our communities to enhance the mana, wellbeing and prosperity of our people. The organisation provides a wide range of services from education, employment, housing, social and health services to support these. I get the opportunity to wrap around my team to unleash their potential and others’ so that they can unleash the potential in the community. That inspires me every day.

What do you see as the challenges facing the industry right now?

When you mention HR, you get that, “ahh, you’re in HR” and you might get that awkward look! Then you get that, okay, HR! You’re not sure if the other fella is with you or not! Anyhow, historically, HR has been viewed as being about compliance. However, we’re much more than that. I think the challenge will be to ensure that, as an HR practitioner, we not only understand our business but the wider environment we operate in. Here at the Rūnanga, many of the people we work with are also our whānau, hapū and iwi. So, our relationship extends beyond clocking out at the end of the day from our mahi. Our relationship extends to our homes, our marae, our pā. And, as such, it has to be tight. This isn’t a 24/7 operation. It’s everyday life linked by whakapapa and ancestral history. So, again, the challenge is to understand our wider environment and ensure that whatever we do, we don’t whakaiti the mana of those in our spaces or bring disrespect or hurt into these spaces. We use our shared understanding of our tikanga to ensure we’re pono and tika to one another and keep our relationships tight. If the relationships are not going so well, we refer to our tikanga and work it through.

How has HRNZ membership helped you fast-track your career?

I’ve only recently joined me and my whole team up to HRNZ. Three of my team have already attended the HR Foundations course, and they absolutely loved it. It was great for them to get a solid overview of the many parts of human resources and to be able to bring that back to our whare.

Anything else you think our readers would find interesting?

I’ve learned all that I know from our ancestors and, in my HR career, from some very wise people with great wisdom. When I was at the Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (Māori Language Commission), we had the goal of wanting 1 million people speaking te reo Māori by 2040, and the uptake of the language has been huge. It is great to see this groundswell of change happening in Aotearoa. I’m hopeful we can see a similar transformation in the integration of Māori values into other workplaces in the coming years. The possibilities are endless.