New blog: 5 Things Every Council Should Know About Their Community

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Learn more about key topics concerning productivity and wellbeing. Gain insights direct from our team and our partner experts.

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Community resilience can strengthen when councils invest early

Community resilience can strengthen when councils invest early

Community resilience is a long game and the best councils play it early When people hear ‘resilience’, they often think of floods, fires, or pandemics. But true community resilience isn’t just about...

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The trust deficit: Why councils should treat trust like a resource

The trust deficit: Why councils should treat trust like a resource

The reality councils live with everyday For most residents, their opinion of local government isn’t glowing. They notice the bin missed at collection, the pothole unfilled, or the consultation that...

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It's not the coffee, it's the queue: Why perception matters

It's not the coffee, it's the queue: Why perception matters

The coffee sale tells you something. But not everything. Picture this: You stop at the same café you’ve loved for years. The flat white still tastes great, but lately the line snakes out the door and...

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Understanding your community: 5 things every council should know

Understanding your community: 5 things every council should know

Understanding your community is more than just good governance - it’s the foundation of trust, inclusion and effective service delivery. And yet, many councils rely heavily on KPIs, submissions, and...

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A smarter approach to digital transformation in councils

A smarter approach to digital transformation in councils

Let’s be real - working in local government isn’t easy. You’re constantly juggling competing priorities, from compliance and governance obligations to delivering essential services for your...

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How to build a case for change in local government

How to build a case for change in local government

If you’ve ever tried to introduce a new technology solution in local government, you know the challenge: securing executive-level buy-in. While you and your team recognise the potential of new...

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Growing community trust through continuous feedback cycles

Growing community trust through continuous feedback cycles

If you’re in local government, you already know that the trust of your community is everything. It’s the foundation for building positive relationships. But when trust is eroded, it can feel like...

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Simplifying the journey to actionable insights

Simplifying the journey to actionable insights

Are you tired of spending countless hours making sense of survey data? You’re not alone. Organisations across New Zealand work hard to seek and gather feedback from their employees and stakeholders,...

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Laying strong foundations for council success

Laying strong foundations for council success

Getting a clear picture of where your council is at is essential. Only with this baseline can you prioritise effectively, knowing exactly where to focus your efforts to guide the development of your...

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The art of bringing your people on the journey

The art of bringing your people on the journey

How engaged are your people in your journey of continuous improvement? The irony is that all too often employees disengage from the engagement process. They suffer from ‘survey fatigue’ when insights...

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Unblocking bottlenecks by helping turn insights into action

Unblocking bottlenecks by helping turn insights into action

As an HR, P&C, or OD leader in Council, you’re tasked with the critical role of creating a culture that views the big rock challenges as opportunities. A culture that enables Council to find a way to...

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Closing the insights gap for council's outdoor workers

Closing the insights gap for council's outdoor workers

Your employee engagement survey results are in! But the participation rate of your outdoor workforce is in stark contrast to office-based teams. So you’re left with no choice but to make decisions...

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Unlocking Key Trends: What Councils are saying and why it matters

Unlocking Key Trends: What Councils are saying and why it matters

Local government is complex and constantly evolving. When you’re busy navigating tight resources, changing community needs, and workforce challenges day in day out, it can be hard finding time to...

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Open your eyes to the blind spots

Open your eyes to the blind spots

As a leader you know your council inside out, right? You're connected to your people, and confident you know where the biggest opportunities, risks and challenges lie. You know exactly what your...

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Unlocking the art of doing more with less: A guide for Councils

Unlocking the art of doing more with less: A guide for Councils

Anyone working in local government will be familiar with this conundrum: service delivery expectations from the community and legislative and reporting requirements are both on the rise. But funding...

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Dealing with Community Incivility: A Growing Concern for Councils

Dealing with Community Incivility: A Growing Concern for Councils

Absolutely no one should have to deal with death threats, physical abuse or verbal harassment when they come to work. And yet increasingly this sort of behaviour is becoming ‘part of the job’ for...

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Unleashing the power of AI for faster survey results and actions

Unleashing the power of AI for faster survey results and actions

After 12 months of rigorous research and testing, AskYourTeam is pleased to announce a significant product enhancement. It allows customers to generate top line user friendly analysis of their survey...

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Targeted support for kaimahi’s Māori cultural competency journeys

Targeted support for kaimahi’s Māori cultural competency journeys

Across Aotearoa, New Zealand, many organisations are celebrating Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week), kia kaha te reo Māori. There’s a huge resurgence and interest in te reo Māori and...

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Solve your retention issues early

Solve your retention issues early

Labour market woes are set to plague New Zealand employers for the foreseeable future. Unemployment is expected to remain close to record lows, an EMA survey says that 90% of businesses are...

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Next Step in Your Māori Cultural Competency Journey

Next Step in Your Māori Cultural Competency Journey

If Mahuru Māori (Māori language month) has your team fired up to venture further on the journey to Māori cultural competency, and you’re not sure how to take a meaningful next step, then help could...

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Rewards and recognition

Rewards and recognition

Revolving Doors - our latest insights paper - offers guidance for leaders looking to slow down rates of employee churn and increase retention in this tight labour market. For the first time we’ve...

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Enhancing Workplace Mental Health Post-COVID: A Guide for Employers

Enhancing Workplace Mental Health Post-COVID: A Guide for Employers

As New Zealand emerges from the global pandemic, it’s time to reflect on the immense impact that COVID-19 has had on our collective mental health and wellbeing. Workers are more stressed now than...

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Take your step towards Māori Cultural Competency

Take your step towards Māori Cultural Competency

Kia ora, this week, whānau, school students, community groups, and organisations across the motu are celebrating Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, Aotearoa New Zealand’s annual celebration of te reo Māori....

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Labour Mobility and Ethical Practices: A Guide to Due Diligence

Labour Mobility and Ethical Practices: A Guide to Due Diligence

In this first in a series of blogs on how transparency is the greatest shield in being an ethical employer, our Head of Product Craig Whitcombe talks about some of the challenges the country is...

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Mānawatia a Matariki | Celebrating Matariki 24 June 2022

Mānawatia a Matariki | Celebrating Matariki 24 June 2022

Koinei te tau e tohu ana i a Matariki hei hararei tūmatawhānui mō Aotearoa. This year marks the launch of Matariki as a rā whakatā ā-ture (public holiday) for Aotearoa, New Zealand. Matariki, or the...

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Local Government emerging leaders celebrated

Local Government emerging leaders celebrated

Late last month Taituarā celebrated achievement with its annual Excellence Awards, recognising the mahi, innovation, and dedication of Aotearoa’s local government professionals. AskYourTeam is proud...

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Is your business suffering from high employee churn?

Is your business suffering from high employee churn?

Job ad data hot off the press from Seek paints a sorry picture for New Zealand Inc. Vacancies were up 3 per cent in April compared to March, up a sizeable 15 per cent compared to 12 months ago, and...

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Standing together on Pink Shirt Day - building respectful workplaces

Standing together on Pink Shirt Day - building respectful workplaces

Today as Pink Shirt Day is celebrated for the 15th year, it would be nice to believe its future is finite. Unfortunately though its cause is as important as ever as the issue of bullying remains...

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Breaking the bias - Celebrating International Women's Day

Breaking the bias - Celebrating International Women's Day

Today as we celebrate International Women’s Day, it could be easy to question the need for a day to promote diversity, inclusion and breaking biases. After all, its 2022 and some significant inroads...

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Pre-pandemic leadership won’t cut it in a post-pandemic world

Pre-pandemic leadership won’t cut it in a post-pandemic world

The professional development needs of managers and leaders are forever changed by the global pandemic. Over the past two years the way we work, market, communicate, and collaborate has changed,...

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When cultures are more like cults - and how to avoid it!

When cultures are more like cults - and how to avoid it!

Healthy organisational cultures are often characterised by a common sense of purpose and shared values. However, most of us know a story or two of company cultures that go beyond this, and the...

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Working from home again? Key learnings for managers and leaders

Working from home again? Key learnings for managers and leaders

One could have been forgiven for having a bit of a deja vu moment when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the move to red light status. News that the Omicron variant is now circulating in many...

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Are New Zealand’s Local Government leaders effective?

Are New Zealand’s Local Government leaders effective?

There’s some good news for New Zealand communities – council employees report feeling highly motivated to put their customers first and are proud to serve. They also believe in the value of the...

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It’s time for leadership to evolve

It’s time for leadership to evolve

If there is one universal truth about leadership, it’s that there is no single way of doing it right. To be authentic, leaders must be themselves and, as we know, everyone is different. However, in...

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Social practice audits will not prevent worker exploitation

Social practice audits will not prevent worker exploitation

AS PUBLISHED IN THE NZ HERALD 27/10/21. Photo / Mike Scott, File Would you buy overseas hazelnuts grown and packed by exploited children? Or canned tomatoes produced by abused migrants? No? As...

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Organisational trust – does it matter and should leaders care?

Organisational trust – does it matter and should leaders care?

Organisational trust. It can take years to build and only moments to erode. But it’s absolutely critical to business success, given the close alignment between trust and performance. The COVID-era...

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Why leaders should be questioning everything they think they know

Why leaders should be questioning everything they think they know

As a leader you know your organisation inside out, right? You’re connected to your people, you’ve got a handle on your organisational strengths, you’re confident that you know what’s going on, and...

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Meaningful work: a must have in the war for talent

Meaningful work: a must have in the war for talent

In an earlier post, we talked about Global HR analyst Josh Bersin’s latest research into employee experience, which is fast emerging as the new frontline in the global war for talent. For...

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Employee Experience: The Secret Weapon to Attract Top Talent

Employee Experience: The Secret Weapon to Attract Top Talent

The war for talent is being waged on the new frontline of employee experience, and it just got a whole lot tougher, according to latest research from global HR guru, Josh Bersin. With the number of...

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Maximising Impact: Effective Strategies for Acting on Feedback

Maximising Impact: Effective Strategies for Acting on Feedback

Whether you are looking to improve your customer experience, increase productivity, revenue, or enhance your employee wellbeing, a regular feedback process can be one of the most powerful ways of...

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How to create psychological safety at work

How to create psychological safety at work

We recently heard about a company that was going through a period of major change, and had started a monthly ‘blue sky’ session where staff were asked to throw around big ideas and chat about...

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Has Covid put workplace social capital at risk?

Has Covid put workplace social capital at risk?

News that Covid-19 vaccines will soon reach New Zealand is giving us hope that we’re finally turning the corner on the pandemic. Yet, there are concerns that our working lives may never quite be the...

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Leading effective and human-centred change management

Leading effective and human-centred change management

2020 showed us that business is everything but predictable. The social and economic disruption of the past year is reflected in the new vocabulary we use. Speaking about a business planning a ‘pivot’...

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Three Phase Approach to Project Management Success

Three Phase Approach to Project Management Success

The world of work is becoming more complex and unpredictable. Covid-19 has made the term ‘business-as-usual’ seem almost redundant. So how do we begin to grapple with these complexities when leading...

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Project management a critical weakness across all sectors

Project management a critical weakness across all sectors

Our data shows that managing projects from concept to review is a critical weakness across all sectors of New Zealand’s business leadership, as evidenced by the chart below: Our Energy Sector...

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Workplace bullying - red flags and safeguards

Workplace bullying - red flags and safeguards

Workplace bullying is New Zealand organisation’s elephant in the room: it’s underestimated, misunderstood and unknown. Our research validates Stats NZ’s findings that New Zealand organisations are...

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Survey fatigue: triggers and tips on how to avoid it

Survey fatigue: triggers and tips on how to avoid it

Survey fatigue. Not a problem…We have probably all heard of it and some of us have experienced it but with a bit of thought it can be relatively easily avoided. Before we get into how, let’s think...

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How lockdown brought New Zealand bosses and workers closer

How lockdown brought New Zealand bosses and workers closer

AskYourTeam CEO, Chris O'Reilly, talks to TV One Breakfast team on the positive and surprising findings about working from home during lockdown. The insights shared are from our recent Wellbeing and...

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Why resilience and mental wellbeing have never been more important

Why resilience and mental wellbeing have never been more important

Most employees won’t put on a public display of their grievances for fear of being labelled difficult or missing out on future promotion opportunities, they simply take their frustrations home...

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Are wellbeing and employee productivity mutually exclusive?

Are wellbeing and employee productivity mutually exclusive?

As Sir Richard Branson famously said, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” That’s the kind of mindset that leaders and business owners must give...

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Leveraging technology to enhance a human workforce

Leveraging technology to enhance a human workforce

While historically it has been manufacturing and low-skilled labour roles that have felt the biggest impact from technological revolutions, today barely any role remains unaffected by its influence....

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Four tips to secure top survey uptake

Four tips to secure top survey uptake

As the ‘highly effective’ Stephen R. Covey said: “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Employee feedback is the pure gold that can enhance...

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Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men

Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men

The book Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men by Caroline Criado Perez, outlines the many ways in which data about women in the workplace is frequently excluded from...

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Keeping the Human in HR

Keeping the Human in HR

The rapidly evolving digital world is bringing changes to the landscape of the HR workplace. These are exciting times. But, with the excitement we should exercise caution and not underestimate the...

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The Impact of “Big Data” on HR

The Impact of “Big Data” on HR

Big data is not a new paradigm. It has been promulgated since Roger Mougalas of O’Reilly Media coined the term in 2005. The 14 years since its inception has seen the growth in storage data worldwide,...

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Designing a better employee experience

Designing a better employee experience

Is your thriving organisation really involving and empowering people to do their best work? We think it’s timely to share some fresh insight from Deloitte’s new 2019 Global Human Capital Trends...

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Three golden rules for successful change management

Three golden rules for successful change management

This year we welcomed Jen McKay, our new Client Services Director. Jen has over 15 years experience in top level corporate management consulting and programme management and specialises in complex...

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Pulled apart – how HR actually deals with sexual harassment

Pulled apart – how HR actually deals with sexual harassment

“We had a head researcher who told one of our in-house lawyers that if you stood in a certain spot under the glass stairs, you could look up women’s dresses,” says Alice*, an Australian HR...

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How do we get balance in all respects?

How do we get balance in all respects?

Thinking about the theme of International Women’s Day this year of #balanceforbetter, it struck me what a great theme it is. It sums up nicely one of the key challenges we all face, and with no...

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Gender balance in business

Gender balance in business

The race is on, for men and women to work together, to unleash the power of gender equality in business, politics, media coverage and wealth across the world. Diversity of thought informs better...

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Collaborative teams

Collaborative teams

Many collaborative teams work together frequently but can spin off to other projects and collaborations when necessary. Building collaboration into teams allows team members to push each other to...

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Checking the pulse

Checking the pulse

Digital disruption is reshaping the HR landscape, creating new opportunities for those organisations that are ready to transform. The most exciting are new digital HR tools that extend the influence...

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What is this thing called workplace empowerment?

What is this thing called workplace empowerment?

It’s clear that empowerment is one of today’s great positive buzzwords in management and HR, and creating an empowering culture is near the top of every HR professionals’ agenda. And there’s good...

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Attraction and retention of millennials through learning and CSR

Attraction and retention of millennials through learning and CSR

As the global talent shortage persists and new jobs are created as fast as others become extinct, business success depends on organisations having an effective career development strategy in place to...

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How to make continuous performance management work?

How to make continuous performance management work?

For many decades in HR, performance management has been centred around annual performance appraisals. These occurred at both the individual level (the dreaded annual review), and the company level...

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Anonymity key to overcoming unconscious bias

Anonymity key to overcoming unconscious bias

Diversity and inclusion are priorities for every HR pro today, but too often we shy away from conversations about the biggest barrier to creating more inclusive organisations -unconscious bias. This...

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Why the future belongs to HR

Why the future belongs to HR

There’s been seismic shift in the dynamics driving today’s most successful organisations that is being led by HR practitioners using the technology of our highly networked age. It’s the shift from...

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5 tips for transitioning from an engagement Survey to AskYourTeam

5 tips for transitioning from an engagement Survey to AskYourTeam

In the years before adopting AskYourTeam, we’d been heavily focused on employee engagement at Smith&Smith. While we saw improvements in engagement levels early on, progress had stalled. We wanted to...

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Engagement: Does it matter any more?

Engagement: Does it matter any more?

As an organisational development specialist and a Chartered Fellow of the HRINZ, I'm often asked if engagement is still important. That’s an easy question to answer with two words: ‘Yes’ and ‘But’....

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