PONSONBY PROFESSIONALS

Logan Granger

LOGAN GRANGER: WORKPLACE WELLBEING

Our mental wellbeing has never been more in front of mind than it is today.

The effects of the pandemic are being felt by all sections of our community, not only our work environment. Large organisations generally have more access to, and budgets for, resources to help their teams cope both in their work environment and at a more personal level but how can SMEs (small and medium enterprises) manage this on little or no budget? How might you begin to talk about mental health with your team and feel confident in your ability to support your staff and yourselves.

The following steps may help: The most important first step is to openly acknowledge that mental health is important to you and your entity, that you care about your team’s wellbeing. This can help in supporting conversations around mental health at work. A less formal way is to gather your team - in a group discussion or if you feel this might not promote open discussion, then try oneto-one or small groups - and ask them how they are feeling. Perhaps using a scale of 1-10: how are you now?; where do you want to be?; how can we help/support you to get there?

You will need to be prepared to listen and support them when/if they share their mental health challenges and then follow up and monitor their progress. It’s also important to consider accessing professional help if the situation is outside your expertise.

There’s little point in communicating that wellbeing is important if you don’t demonstrate this. Perhaps share your own story or struggles with the pressure of running a business and how you are trying to help yourself. Model good practices like taking time to exercise, be it going for a walk or to the gym/yoga or allowing time off to watch children’s sporting or school events. If you’re in a situation where your team works at screens all day consider providing vouchers for a neck and shoulders massage. Mental health and physical health work hand-inhand. It’s not a choice of one or the other.

As a small business you may have a better opportunity to assess how well the implementation of new initiatives are working. Some may work well for some employees and not others. Check in with them and listen and then adapt if necessary.

Most SMEs and sole practioners are motivated by the desire to work for and help their clients, but this maybe at the expense of their own mental health. It’s important to include care (of your team and your clients) in your business model.

Learn from others. Facebook community and business networking groups can provide opportunities to ask what they have tried and what has worked for them. You don’t need to be limited to your own particular industry - workplaces across industries are more similar than you might think. Ask, share, and learn wherever you can so that you feel more confident supporting each other in the workplace. (LOGAN GRANGER)  PN

Disclaimer – While all care has been taken, Johnston Associates Chartered Accountants Ltd and its staff accept no liability for the content of this article; always see your professional advisor before taking any action that you are unsure about.

JOHNSTON ASSOCIATES, 14 St Marys Bay Road, T: 09 361 6701, www.jacal.co.nz

14 St Marys Bay Road, St Marys Bay

GAEL BALDOCK: DRAWN & QUARTERED - CENTRE CITY MASTER PLAN

Most people have absolutely no idea what the ‘Centre City Master Plan’ entails.

It is a plan concocted in 2016 by Ludo Campbell Reid as city designer. He’s the guy responsible for taking away ‘free left turns’ and parking, narrowing arterial roads to single lanes and giving cyclists domination of our city and effectively turning the ‘City of Sails’ into the ‘City of Road Cones’. His ludicrous plan is to divide the city into quarters by making Queen Street a mall, and Victoria Street a ‘linear park’.

Drawing, I got a big cross through the centre that is fairly impossible to cross; it divides the city into quarters - 1. Parnell to the East and South / 2. Mt Eden / 3. Ponsonby to the West / 4. Viaduct to North Shore. Maybe this was inspiration for the design concept “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet" Rudyard Kipling.

Now you know I’m a tree lover, and generally, the more parks the better, but we’re selling off actual reserves with mature trees to finance this preposterous idea. Not everyone lives close to their workplace. Commuters need to get around or through the city. Blocking it with a park and a mall stops that flow.

Commuters that used to come from Parnell and go over Victoria Street to Hobson for the Western motorway or continue to Victoria Park to the Harbour Bridge have been redirected by the construction of the CRL. The alternative is to go around the outside along Quay Street that has also been absurdly narrowed this arterial road to single lane.

The current ’no-go zone’ on Queen, between Wellesley Street and Mayoral Drive, forces vehicles left up Wellesley, either left again into Kitchener Street or straight up, (as only buses turn right into Mayoral) then it’s left again to Princes to go around the block to Symonds Street or straight ahead to the motorway.

Why are vehicles being forced to Symonds Street when it’s the centre of the Auckland University campus? Have you gotten confused by this forced circular pattern that the linear park would block? Is your head in a spin? Mine is - from trying to explain this idiotic concept or compulsory left turns that Ludo vowed to remove, as it affectively keeps people out of the other quarters.

Furthermore, the only right turn into Mayoral Drive which allows traffic to get to K Rd or Ponsonby, occurs from Wakefield but that involves going through the ’no-go zone’. The other choice would be up Symonds Street to the only street to get you back to K Road is the narrow lane of City Road, which is only suitable for mountain goats!

There was a ‘consultation’ in 2020 of the ‘Centre City Master Plan’. I wrote an extensive submission, as did many others. The result - NOT ONE WORD CHANGED.

I don’t want to be stopped from going from Parnell to Ponsonby or from the Viaduct to Mt Eden that this criss-cross will cause. It’s ridiculous, farcical, laughable, senseless, foolish, nonsensical, and mostly ludicrous, just like the designer Ludo who was run out of town.

Architecturally, I totally reject the ‘Centre City Master Plan’, and I’m sure you will too, now you know what it entails. (GAEL BALDOCK, community advocate)  PN