Traditionally a job description is drafted by conducting a full analysis of the role and breaking down each task into levels of priority. A job description is the first taste of what an employee is to expect from the role and therefore writing one should be a priority to any organization.

1. Where to start?

It may sound patronizing, but the best way to analyze a position is to have it described by the current employee, first-hand. Take some time out of your day to sit down with your employee(s) and discuss what they do, how they feel about each task, what they find challenging and what they find rewarding. Knowing about the extra bits of their role holds more value than you may think! Getting first-hand information like this is not only beneficial in writing job descriptions, but also as a resource in the case of sudden spikes in employee turnover.

2. How to be accurate?

As mentioned, job descriptions rarely meet the actual job’s demands and instead reflect a basic outline of what the employee should be doing. Most employee’s work longer hours and transfer their skills across more divisions than what was initially described. New Zealand especially, with a market dominated by small businesses, requires employees to be ‘jacks of all trades’.

Despite the need for transferable skills, stating the basics is a crucial part of the job description. Will the employee be answering phones? Compiling reports? Cleaning the kitchen? Completing end of month sale budgets? Analyising stats? The best way to be accurate is to be honest. There is no reward in omitting the ‘less favourable’ tasks in order to bolster the position. False advertising eventually leads to employee dissatisfaction, and reflects poorly on the organisations’ ethics.

3. What is included in a job description?

Arguably, the most important aspect of a job description is whom the employee will report to. Make this clear in your job description; even if it means including a graphic to illustrate how the company operates. The more senior the position, the more important it is to have this understood by the applicant – if an employee is unsure about whom they report into, they will be unsure of their standings within the management umbrella. Other important areas to include are:

• tasks / everyday functions
• key clients / employees / suppliers
• percentage of time dedicated to each main function
• the goals or mission statement of the company
• key skills required
• milestones (if relevant)
• KPI’s / sale targets (if relevant)

4. Is a job description really that important to a business?

In short – yes. Of course, for every one HR Advisor or Recruiter that agrees to this, they will be inevitably challenged by the majority of other departments. Put simply – job descriptions are a lot of time and effort with absolutely no monetary gain. However, dynamic managers and successful organizations will agree that a business is built ‘from the ground up’. Therefore, the effort and time that goes into foundations is invaluable.

As an employer, it’s important to have current documents, so if it’s been more than six months, go through the job descriptions on file and consider whether they are still relevant. You’ll be surprised about how quickly a position can change, and at what extra duties your employees have picked up!

Questions? Suggestions? If you’d like to know more about job descriptions please email our HR Advisor- michelle.reasbeck@crackerjacks.co.nz!

There are tasks that we love and naturally, ones that we loathe. The trick to productivity is not to let the loathsome tasks affect the rest of your day. We’ve got a few tips to help boost your workplace productivity and clear your to-do list before the Christmas break.

• Use a diary to keep track of your progress. We tend to pay more attention to something when we record it. Get yourself a work diary and make notes on your accomplishments or cross items off that ‘to-do’ list.

• Get ready for tomorrow. Take a few minutes to set yourself for the following day. Leave a task midway through (provided that you know it is something you can pick up tomorrow) so that the next day you can get right into work and start the day with an achievement.

• Make a list. Tasks that you need to complete before the end of the day? Before the end of the week? Jot them down and work your way through the list. When you find yourself off track, take five minutes to refocus and check your list to see where you’re at.

• Escape from phone calls and emails for an hour. Use this time to work undistracted on a big project or deadline piece. Take your notes and go somewhere quiet to work, you’ll be surprised at how much you can achieve in an hour without the distraction of a computer.

• Take five. If you find yourself hunched over a computer or gritting your teeth after a phone call, get away from your desk for five minutes. Take a walk, de-stress and re-energize for the rest of the day.

How do you get an unproductive day back on track? Would you like to share your tips with us? Drop us a line below or email to info@crackerjacks.co.nz

If the holiday season has employees dreaming of summer at the beach rather than that presentation due Monday, or your if workplace just needs a little lift, take a look at our motivational techniques!

• Dish out a little praise. Everyone likes to receive praise for their work; it can be as easy as a quick email, a passing comment, or by presenting an award at a staff meeting.

• Run a project without managers, even just as a trial. Some CEOs love this idea; others label it chaotic. Every workplace is different and in some cases employee dynamics function better without titles and hierarchy.

• Give constructive criticism and disguise it as a suggestion. No one likes receiving criticism. It can ruin the day and bring productivity to a grinding halt. Suggest ideas to employees in a way that they can take the idea and make it their own.

• Pitch in. Ask around, see if you can help anyone and spend half a day working with your employees rather than above them. This also gives you a chance to see where they’re at and pass on any skills or advice you have.

• Offer flexible working conditions. Not all employees need them but having the option is an easy way to boost employee satisfaction.

• Celebrate birthdays. Pass a card around the office or head to the local café for a birthday coffee.

• Share company success. When the company is doing well ensure that your employees know. The same goes for low points- involving your employees so that they share the successes and failures gives a sense of belonging.

What motivates you? How do you get through a long and tough week? We love to hear from you so share your thoughts by dropping us a line below.

Often these two terms can be confused with each other; however it is important to know that trial periods and probationary periods are very different from each other. Businesses must be careful not to interchange the terminology as each has their own legal meaning.

Here at Crackerjacks, we thought it would be useful to provide our clients with some information on the topic to clear things up.

When can a probationary or trial period used?

Before employment commences, all parties involved may agree on a trial or probationary period to be used. The Employment Relations Act 2000 permits the use of such periods but only on the basis that it is recorded in writing in an employment contract and agreed to by both employer and employee.

What is a probationary period?

A common misconception is that probationary periods enable employers to fire staff after the term is over. No probationary period may be used to justify the termination of an employee at the conclusion of its term – even in the case of poor performance. Employers still have to follow procedural fairness requirements when dismissing the employee during or at the end of the probationary period. The employer must still give proper warning and provide training and opportunities to improve the employee’s performance, just like any other employee. To put it simple, probationary periods give the opportunity to provide training to a new employee, regular feedback about their performance and support. It is a period when expectations should be reinforced and skills should be demonstrated.

What is a trial period?

Trial periods increase the rights for employers to terminate an employee without the ability of the employee to raise a personal grievance for unjustified dismissal. Trial periods cannot be longer than 90 days; if the period surpasses 90 days then you will not be protected from an unjustified dismissal claim. Trial periods must commence from the first day of employment. If the employment agreement is signed after they start work, the trial period is invalid.

A grievance-free trial period can only be agreed to with an employee who has not been employed by the employer previously.

What does ‘grievance-free’ mean?

An employee dismissed under a trial period arrangement cannot claim unjustified dismissal. However they do have grounds to claim for other personal grievances such as,

-          Discrimination

-          Sexual harassment

-          Pressure relating to membership or non-membership of a union

-          Non-compliance with legislative entitlements such as Holidays Act, health and safety, minimum wage etc

-          Breach of Human Rights Act

It is possible for an employer to use both a trial period and a probationary period. But if applied at the same time, it may cause confusion as to whether an employee can claim personal grievance within the 90 days through the probationary period. To avoid this, it is recommended to have the probationary period start directly after the trial finishes.

Source: EMA Advice

If you have any questions or require some assistance, you can call one of EMA’s Advisors on 0800 800 362 or shoot them an email at adviceline@ema.co.nz. Otherwise, feel free to ask us here at Crackerjacks by dropping a comment below.

The report, The State of the Global Workplace 2011, questions how engaged workers are from 120 countries. The report by Gallup Consulting identifies that while only 11% of workers are engaged, 62% are disengaged and 27% are actively disengaged.

Why is the engagement rate so low? In a section looking at implications for leaders, the study identified twelve factors that are consistently ranked the lowest worldwide. The two lowest rated factors were, “In the past six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.” and “In the past seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work”.

Possible reasons for this occurring? Gallup researchers identified three possible causes,

- In many workplaces, managers are responsible for large numbers of employees making it more difficult to give individual attention to workers.

- Feedback and recognition may be overlooked in jobs that require repetitive tasks where managers do not differentiate individual contributions. For example assembly line workers or bus drivers.

- It is just human nature – many of the deepest human emotions are essentially selfish. Therefore we are better wired to receive praise than to give it.

Nonetheless, research shows that recognition and feedback are important to productivity across all job types. The best managers are those who find ways to measure and commend excellence no matter what the role. Leaders who give consistent feedback and recognition to staff may see dramatic per-person productivity improvements in the long term.

What engages you in your workplace? Or if you’re a manager, how do you encourage staff engagement and productivity? Let us know your thoughts by dropping a comment below.

Click here to read the full report.

The dismissal of Ian Penny and Gary Hooper’s appeal last week by the Supreme Court has thrown many taxpayers into panic. The pair used company structures and family trusts to lower their salaries and by doing so, avoided paying the top personal income tax rate.

The decision will cause concern for both taxpayers and their advisers as the IRD is reluctant to explain how widely that decision will be applied. Professionals operating businesses through companies and trusts (taxed at 33 per cent) rather than taxed to them personally (at 39 per cent) is common practise and was widely viewed as legitimate tax planning.

An important point to note however is that the Supreme Court did not overturn the taxpayers’ right to trade through a company or trust structure. The court found these structures to be lawful and that “adoption of such a familiar trading structure cannot per se be said to involve tax avoidance”. However, it was the way Penny & Hooper in particular used the structure that constituted tax avoidance.

For other taxpayers who make use of similar structures, the court accepted there are some instances where non-market salaries can be paid by family companies or trusts,

- Where the business is starting up

- Where a market salary cannot be paid due to insufficient profits.

- Where profits were needed for the purchase of capital assets

If one of these circumstances genuinely existed, then the payment of a low salary would not be considered tax avoidance. Because none of these situations applied to Penny & Hooper, the court found it to be the taxpayer’s choice to pay themselves low salaries primarily to dodge paying higher tax.

Peter Dunne, Minister of Revenue, has said that small business owner’s shouldn’t fear a witch-hunt. However business owners will need to consider how they deal with salaries in the future as well as look at how they dealt with salaries in the past.

The IRD has repeatedly refused to indicate what levels of salary are acceptable. This can leave taxpayers employing similar structures uncertain of whether they have crossed the invisible line between legitimate tax planning and tax avoidance.

If you have concerns about the possible implications of this decision on your business, be sure to seek appropriate and professional advice.

What are your views on the matter? Drop us a comment below, we’d love to hear from you.

NZ Herald

Overqualified workers. Those words strike at the heart of employers and candidates.

As companies are slowly beginning to hire again, managers face a new problem. Do they take on someone whose experience and qualifications are better suited to a more senior role?

Employers may get more bang for their buck from job candidates in a recession but they fear overqualified workers they employ now will up and move as soon as the economy improves.

A candidate who has already worked in a role during their career is going to add value to an organisation, says Tony Wai, managing director of contracting recruitment specialists Crackerjacks.

Click here to read full article

Management Magazine

Click here to read full article

A tightening labour market will bring New Zealand’s skills shortages into sharp focus once again. Executive Update canvassed the views of a number of recruitment heads about what companies – and the country – should consider doing to address this issue.

Jane Frog, director, Frog Recruitment:
Skill shortages are a very real challenge for New Zealand. Unless business invests in training, they will not go away. This is where medium and long-term business planning needs to kick in over short-term thinking. There needs to be a focus on skill optimisation and reducing skill gaps.

Current skill shortages are reported to be high in ICT, health, engineering, customer services and trades. As a result these industries all report they are experiencing a loss of business, increased workloads which brings with it morale and staff turnover issues, a decrease in the quality of work and increased operational costs. So the question for management is: “If you are not addressing skill shortages right now, how do you plan to grow your business and deliver to your customers?”

Marc Burrage, executive general manager, Hudson NZ:
We only have two choices – attract new talent or grow our own. We need to do both as New Zealand has limited and finite human capital resources available and we continue to lose people offshore. New Zealand needs to be marketed as a place where, because our market and companies are relatively small, we can offer breadth of experience and unique access to markets, opportunities and exposure that would not be possible as quickly, or at all, in larger countries.

We are ideally suited to hungry up and comers wanting this broad experience even if some may perceive New Zealand as a stepping stone. We need to be realistic about how long we can keep individual talent in New Zealand and accept that they have a valuable contribution to make but may well move on at some point. There will always be those who come for lifestyle and they are likely to stay. However, we need to give more thought to those who are career minded. We have a real opportunity to position NZ as a place where you come to forge your reputation. We are a highly networked country with real opportunity for overseas executives to carve out a niche. Executives can move through organisations quicker and enhance their reputation.

Tony Wai, managing director, Crackerjacks:
Skills shortages are an issue in New Zealand but it’s more of a ‘talent-shortage’ that the everyday manager battles. While it may not be too difficult to find people whose CVs tick the boxes, finding stars is difficult.

Having a strong online presence is important to attract talented professionals. A careers landing page on your website is a must – along with a clear description of the culture of your working environment and the types of professionals you hire. Finding the people who will fit into your culture is just as important (if not more) as finding people with the right industry experience/skill set.

Christien Winter, director, Sheffield:
There are and will continue to be serious skills shortages. As business continues to change in light of global changes, the leadership skills required are also changing. Increasingly, New Zealand leaders need to have experience of and skills in a global market; innovation and change leadership are also now critical for organisational impact and success. Given New Zealand’s small size and scale, we also simply have less opportunities in our small market for top talent.

Significant change projects, like the creation of the Auckland Council, and growth-oriented businesses in health, bioscience and agritech, will continue to have some appeal in terms of career development opportunities. At a societal level, we need to ensure that New Zealand continues to be seen as a great place to live, but we also need to continue to build leadership and profile internationally in economic sectors to attract talent to New Zealand.

You may have already read the article, The silver bullet to getting that job interview, aimed at helping contractors land those all important interviews. Now we want to help businesses optimise their interviewing techniques by suggesting alternative questioning.

Recruitment professionals believe the best way to find out about a candidate’s potential future performance is to see how competently they performed in the past.

Competency based questions require candidates to provide real life examples as the basis of their interview answers. They should explain why they made certain decisions, how they implemented those decisions and what the outcome was.

For example, a job in a busy office may require someone who has good organisation skills and who works well under pressure. The interviewer can select questions under relevant key competencies such as ‘organisation’ and ‘priority setting’ to see if a candidate has coped well in pressurised situations before.

Competency questions are a useful business tool during the interview process as they help reveal if a candidate has the right qualities and culture-fit for a job

To learn more about competency questions and to see examples, you can look at our Guide to competency behavioural questions.

If you’re unsure of how to structure an interview that uses competency questions, take a look at our Interview Template as a guide.

We encourage feedback and would love to hear your thoughts, so please don’t hestitate to contact us on (09) 914 8540 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (09) 914 8540 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or business@crackerjacks.co.nz

Contract talent refers to independent contractors who are not part of an organisations permanent workforce. This includes; contractors, freelancers, temporary help, consultants and subcontractors that are sometimes referred to as the ‘contingent workforce’. Organisations require contract talent when an immediate solution is needed to perform a service or skill that is not available in-house.

Although contract talent makes up a huge part of the workforce, 54% of respondents in this US based research reported that their organisation did not include contract talent in strategic talent management efforts.

All talent, whether they are full-time workers, part-time workers or contractors, need to be aligned with the direction of the organisation otherwise their true value wont be realised. By engaging contractors as well as the regular workforce, organisations will yield better workforce productivity as a result.

Because contract talent often perform critical work for an organisation, it is equally important to hire the right contractor for the job. The capability to attract the right talent is a major competitive advantage and is not less so because the talent is short term. 50% of respondents reported that their organisations did not have a formal system to measure the quality of contract selection and hiring.

According to recent research we undertook at Crackerjacks, looking at the New Zealand market, the Line Manager is most commonly the person responsible for contractor recruitment (2010). This can lead to many HR issues, such as; no central visibility on the costs incurred by recruitment and no parity in contractor on-boarding policies. This equates to a fragmented talent strategy; which can hold a business back from achieving better business results.

As contracting specialists at Crackerjacks we can help businesses to directly recruit appropriate talent. According to the HCI study, only 23% of executives feel confident that they are able to attract the top talent they need. This is why we entered the market – to provide businesses with an affordable solution to directly engage the best contract talent. Contractors on Crackerjacks are pre-qualified with a full reference check so businesses can have confidence in sourcing qualified talent.

Organisations must also keep in mind that the contingent workforce continues to grow due to a variety of reasons such as unemployment rates, lifestyle preferences and globalisation.

Though it is difficult to get a completely accurate number of contract workers in the workforce, it’s estimated to be 30-50% of the total workforce in the USA.

If we are following the same trends in New Zealand, and history says we are, then it is vital for businesses to have established plans to not only hire the right people but also to engage and manage contractors.

The full HCI study can be found here, HCI 2010 Contract Talent Study