Top tips from Laurence McLean.
1. Really focused on continue engagement with your employees.
I think it’s really focused on you know, continue that engagement with your employees. I know we talked about that. The last time I was here is having that open communication, engaging with your employees, making sure that they’re feeling the you know, they can see that plan you might have a plan but they might not know what it is and it might
2. Networking with with peer groups, or various organisations.
I think the other and we’ve kind of talked about this a little bit that networking with with peer groups, or various organisations are going to help you making sure you’ve got the support structure in place, you’ve got those, you know, sometimes it’s a technical aspect, the legal aspect, sometimes it’s just emotional support aspect. I think having that network group can can be really beneficial for a lot of businesses. And it’s something that I think kiwis, particularly are not so great at sometimes networking, you know, myself included, but but when you do it, you can you can really see the benefits really quickly.
3. Leveraging technology
I think the last tip I probably give us is really leveraging technology. We do it at implosion, particularly, we’ve had some innovations that have really helped to make our employees lives better, you know, give them more tools to do their job better, which they love doing, but also helping our clients helping our customers, the outcomes that we’re achieving for our, for our businesses as well. And I think no matter how big or small your businesses is always technology that you can use, obviously different scales. And it does come with a bit of work, you know, some investments, but it can really be beneficial for other businesses to make sure you’ve got, you know, you’re using that technology to supplement or support or to accelerate that growth, it’s never going to be a solution in and of itself, you know, whether it’s AI or anything else. But it can be a really strong supplement, I think to accelerate that growth or getting you in that phase in the first place.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, employees, new zealand, clients, medium sized businesses, issue, ai, effects, plan, small businesses, challenges, year, great, government, people, talked, support, peer groups, big, pendulum swing
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:00
Good morning, and Welcome to another edition of Better Business Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor. And today I am joined by one of our previous guests. So I’ve got Lance McLean back again.
Laurence Mc Lean 00:16
Planned for the future and not kind of, you know, I’m a weird person, personally but but running a business, I plan in advance and I make sure that I, I can see the potential challenges, I can see the potential benefits, and therefore I’m prepared for for both of those. And I can get that make the most of it essentially, you want to make sure that as those changes that are coming, they’re not catching you off guard, you’re not having to be reactive or scrambling to have a reaction, you’ve actually got that idea planned out, you’ve got that, you know, that potential planned out. And look, you may do 10 hours of planning for only one little change, but better to be over planned or prepared, I think and not need at the end to be underprepared and need a lot of pain that you haven’t done. So planning is definitely the right thing.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:03
Lawrence is the Associate Director of employee shore. And we had such a great chat last time round about employment issues and people that we invite him back on the show again. So welcome back.
Laurence Mc Lean 01:12
Thank you. Great to be here.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:13
Yeah, it’s really good to have you here. So the reason we got you back home was because this year and being 2024, we’ve got a new government in place, right. And obviously a new government. Nothing’s going to change overnight. But this government’s made it quite clear, they plan to make some changes quite quickly. And in fact, some of them were already implemented last year, I believe. So let’s have a chat about you know, first of all, let’s start with your background. And let’s hear about you and where you’ve come from, where you’re at. And then we’ll have a talk about where the government’s going.
Laurence Mc Lean 01:43
Yeah, so I was come from Bay, plenty Waikato region. So dealing with a lot of small and medium sized businesses do in my home towns, and really coming from more of a legal background, I practice for a couple of years and then have for the last, especially seven years now. So a bit of time, I’ve been working with employees or focusing on helping small and medium sized businesses across New Zealand, with the various employment relations and health and safety challenges that they come across. So it’s a really exciting space is so there’s lots going on, what’s there has been going on are really excited to see what what this is going to bring.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:13
And you’ve got over seven and a half 1000 companies. So isn’t it nice to do so seven
Laurence Mc Lean 02:17
A half 1000 companies in New Zealand and other 23,000 in Australia about must be 30,000 plus across our global or global partners as well.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:25
That’s fantastic. Okay, so the new government came in last year came in kind of almost almost well came in with a bit of a fizzle and then all guns blazing is my perception of it as in that took a long while to actually get some certainty. But now we’ve got it in there pretty clear about what they plan to do. What do you think are the biggest changes we’re likely to see,
Laurence Mc Lean 02:43
I think the new government, the National led coalition has really been focusing on or they campaigned on being more business friendly. So I guess maybe tipping the scales back towards businesses, if you want to describe it that way. The previous Labour Government focused a lot on empowering employees giving rights to employees. And, you know, there’s an argument for that, but obviously comes with challenges and costs for particularly small and medium sized businesses. So I think this is really about tipping the scales back, I guess, in the other direction. And it’s very common between governments, it’s often a pendulum swing back.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 03:14
The pendulum was like the example I’m going to use. I think it always goes backwards and forwards does, but we had to be on we’re not political on this show at all. But I suppose we have to be aware of the fact that New Zealand is made up of what 350,000 small and medium sized businesses, and it’s almost like the backbone of the country. It is yeah. And so in some respects, you know, being able to do a bit more for them, I think it’s a good thing. Okay, so what can we look forward to in terms of key improvements?
Laurence Mc Lean 03:37
I think if we if we look mainly at some of the key drivers or some of the key issues that this government has campaigned on, one of the ones that they’ve already put into effect is the repealing with fair pay legislation. So what that means is essentially that a lot of industry type jobs. So if you’ve worked, for example, a hospitality or retail, there was going to be a bargaining process where they would have a whole lot of similar terms, pay conditions, working hours, etc, etc, etc. And they were in the process of bargaining for that last year under the previous Labour Government, this new national ID coalition has scrapped those agreements completely, and essentially put it back to the the old ways of negotiating, which is essentially either through union, which is mainly for bigger organization, probably not, not really for smaller, medium sized entities, or just the individual one on one type employer and employee type negotiation. So that’s the change, it’s already come into effect, that’s probably going to be not so much a challenge because it never really came into effect in the first place. But it’s the it’s the elimination of a change that was going to occur, I guess that’s Yeah, sure.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:38
And so that’s only gonna apply for new contracts. So going forward, or do we have to look retrospectively as well?
Laurence Mc Lean 04:43
I mean, you’re right, it doesn’t apply to new contracts. Although it’s always a good process practice, I think to review your existing agreements, laws change all the time. You know, the way that your business might operate changes the way you might want to interact with your employee changes. So So yes, you know, you don’t even do a full negotiation when New hire a new employee, but it’s always good practice, I think to review your agreements and say, this is some improvements we can make both from the employees point of view and also from your business point of view. Okay.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 05:08
So how often would you recommend people do that yearly at least?
Laurence Mc Lean 05:12
So I think it’s always helpful. And look, it may be that you do a yearly review, and you decide not to change anything, but at least you know, you’ve had that lock. And you’ve made that conscious decision. But there are often changes that occurred, you know, normally there’s pay rates or pay reviews that might happen and performance reviews that might happen, they may result in changes to an employment agreement, your hours of work might change, your location of work might change, there’s lots of things that can change. So easily yearly, yearly, but hasn’t been required as well. It’s interesting,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 05:38
I was actually chatting with a couple of the Associate Directors at Baker, Tilly staples, Rob, where the other day, and they were saying that, you know, they’ve now moved to very much a hybrid working model, which is quite a big change from the old days, because that’s one of those things that has happened due to COVID, but is now really embedding itself as a more permanent thing. So that means actually looking at your employment contract is not a bad idea.
Laurence Mc Lean 05:58
We have lots of employers, your clients are still asking us questions about, you know, changing the type of employment to have that more hybrid work, or sometimes fully remote, or sometimes to bring hybrid or fully remote workers back to the office. So going through those sorts of processes. I think it’s still an ongoing issue for businesses, even though COVID is over, you can put that in quotation marks. It’s still around, but the excitement of it has kind of gone away. But it’s still a pressing issue. I think for a lot of businesses out there.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:25
It makes perfect sense. Actually, it is interesting to COVID hasn’t really gone away, when we’re talking about the potential can be quite a large spike around Christmas together. And also, I suppose it’s not going to be the last time we have some kind of outbreak either, is it? Exactly. It might not be COVID. But over the next the next variation is is on its way. So is that something that should be built into employment contracts? Because I have never really thought about that as an issue. I mean,
Laurence Mc Lean 06:49
Absolutely. Whether it’s employment contracts or employment handbooks or your policies, it’s a definitely a health and safety consideration that should be taken into effect. I mean, before COVID, it was flu season. Yes. But it wasn’t kind of a Zeitgeist II type topic that business has talked about, but it did have a big impact on businesses. I think COVID kind of really brought to the forefront for businesses to have front of mind. And I think moving forward, now, businesses are a lot more conscious about the effects that those sorts of seasonal outbreaks can have on a business, and particularly effects on your working staff your capacity to do that do what you’re in business for, essentially. So having good policies around, you know, do you support food, vaccinations, you buy those for your employees? Or, you know, do you have changed the way that sick leave works? Or, you know, do you have if there is a large outbreak, do you maybe change the way that you work, for example, have more hybrid working? Those sorts of I think things that businesses can think about the connection make a big difference?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:44
Yeah, it’s interesting, because, you know, obviously, I’m in the US implementer. And we actually, we have a thing called the accountability chart. And the accountability chart is very much it’s not about titles and about hierarchies. But actually, the main functions or business, who’s accountable for it, what are their main responsibilities within that, and it eventually does replace a traditional organizational chart, but we always make the kind of call that actually, you should review that on a regular basis, too, because nothing should be set in stone every 12 months, you might be in a slightly different situation, it’s a great chance to have a look at and go, Hey, has anything changed? Do we need to change the structure to support that?
Laurence Mc Lean 08:12
And I think that’s the other thing that COVID has taught otter businesses is you’ve got to be adaptable, you’ve got to respond to changes that happen. Sometimes they’re driven by central government, sometimes they’re driven by business needs or consumer demand. But you’ve always got to have that ability to adapt to the situation in front of you and deal with it and why that’s going to benefit your business.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:31
Okay, so back to the government things, is there any kind of reprieve or grants or like new things that could help small businesses, particularly in that sort of growth scaling up mentality?
Laurence Mc Lean 08:40
I mean, there’s a few other changes that the government has proposed to make one is going to be the reintroduction of Mancina trial periods for more businesses. So currently, they exist for those employers that 2019 or fewer employees. Exactly, that’s going to be changed. So now that it affects what’s that’s an option open for all businesses. So that’s in the government’s 100 day plan. So we’d like to see that in February or March this year, I would say, you know, it’s not something that all businesses would use. And the idea is that hopefully, you don’t need to use it in the first place. But it is a tool. You know, an employer should we do have a lot of clients as they use that particular tool to make sure they’ve got the right people that have the right fit for the organization. So that’s going to be an additional tool that businesses can use. I think the other big change coming down the line is there’s going to be a change to the migration settings. We know that in 2023, one of the biggest issues that that employees was clients had was really around hiring labor, you know, having the right people at the right time for the right role, they had the right fit. And I think the increase to migration, which is most likely going to be the outcome. We don’t know the exact details yet about what the government’s going to change, but they’ve indicated that it’s something they want to look at. And it’s likely to see an increase in migration. I mean, we already had I think, was 142% increase in migration year on year and the previous year. I think you’d like to see that continue to increase and therefore, you know, the market will probably only be a bit more employer friendly in the sense that there’s going to be more employees open to work and hopefully not as hard time trying to fill those those roles at businesses, there’s.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 10:09
Certainly been a lot of feedback from my clients is trying to find people to fill those roles has been about it really tough. And it has been good for an employee point, ease perspective, because it pushed rates up on it, monitoring them, but then we’re going to think that there was a lot of small businesses that are reliant on people to actually keep their doors open. If they can’t get those people we saw it throughout COVID, like the hospitality industry had a massive issue around being able to keep doors open, because they couldn’t work in there.
Laurence Mc Lean 10:33
And hospitality, retail tourism, you know, particularly just gone through the Christmas period Exactly. has, you know that that’s a industry that’s on the government’s and demand list. So we know that those are jobs that businesses are trying to fill. And we also know, as you pointed out, that, you know, a high demand for employees increases labor costs, you know, if you’re looking at, for example, last year, the inflation rate increased by 6%, that wages increased by between 6.6 and 7.1%. So outstripping inflation, essentially. And, you know, obviously, it’s great for employees, if you’re your business, it’s a positive, your employer, it’s a positive thing. But if you’re a business, and you’ve got tight margins, particularly small and medium sized enterprises, that can have a big effect on your business. So we like to see probably an easing of that, off that wage growth.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:20
That’s not to say that, you know, we all believe in a fair pay for a fair job. And that’s why I think most good people operators, you know, we want to pay people well, but we have to be cognizant of the fact that the impact that has on small businesses, bigger business can wear it a whole lot easier, smaller businesses are going to really impact them.
Laurence Mc Lean 11:34
And again, it’s that pendulum swing, you know, employees will have a really favorable year in terms of wages, and they might have a slow year next year, but it will swing back. And I think it kind of evens out that, you know, that’s that’s the economic theory, at least anyway, that we’ve gotten into the day, we
Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:46
Shall see how things kind of pan out. Okay, so what are the what do you think are the current challenges for SM ease at the moment in New Zealand, and particularly going forward further into 2024? Yeah,
Laurence Mc Lean 11:56
I mean, we’ve talked about hiring labor, we’ve talked about labor cost, I think those are challenges to this year. I think the global economic uncertainty, that’s still an issue. I mean, that’s been an issue since decrepit started to be honest, it’s things like, you know, supply costs, inflation is a global issue, it’s not just a New Zealand issue, it’s, it’s across the globe, you know, adapting to climate change, you know, that’s going to be a massive issue for a lot of businesses. And you may think it only applies to the bigger businesses, and to large extent that it’s going to fit them more directly. But smaller businesses see all the flow on effects for that, for example, transportation costs go up, it can have a large impact on the business or where you source your, your goods from or your materials from, or how you deliver your your products to your to your customers. So I think that global uncertainty is probably going to, at least for the first half of this year, I think the Reserve Bank has indicated that interest rates are going to remain high till at least 2025, potentially. So we’d like to see those sorts of challenges continue throughout this year as well, in a pinch on everything. That’s right. I mean, there’s lots of other challenges coming down the line as well, I think a debt adaption to AI, that that’s still an ongoing issue for a lot of businesses, not just climate changes AI as well. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that a global survey last year on our businesses and how they’re adapting to AI, we found us from New Zealand, only about 35% of clients were using AI and 5%, using it at all. And it can have a lot of positive. I mean, it comes with challenges, don’t get me wrong. And you’ve got to you’ve got to use it in the right way to get the real benefit out of it. But it can come with a lot of positives in terms of those more automated automatable tasks. And kind of research. Exactly creative writing, people use that a lot for AI a lot for that and have seen some good results here.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:40
So, it’s more or less is what it really kind of frustrated, but it’s more than just the people think about check GPT bi but it’s not that. So you know, I worked with a client that is a family business, they have a market garden, the AI they’re looking at is how do we actually harvest our fruit and vegetables easier? How do we actually ensure we remain weed free using AI that can actually go through and automatically we pillows and stuff like that. So it is it is more than just cheating. And I think that you think about it, if we can stop having people going out and pulling up onions and have it done by a machine, that person can be freed up to do things that potentially have more value or just more interesting.
Laurence Mc Lean 14:13
Exactly. I mean, you think about big businesses and how they use AI, they use it, for example, for quality control. And they can automate a lot of tasks very quickly and have a very high quality control. Think of small businesses are probably a bit more reluctant to use it. And it’s completely understandable. I can see why. But you can see that a big businesses can benefit from it. And if they’re gonna put all the money in investing it and you know, kind of perfecting it, then hopefully those small businesses can can get the some of the flow on effects from that as well. Yeah,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 14:38
I was talking to somebody the other day about that. And obviously there’s a couple the actual laws, but is it Moore’s law, I think the more that is available, then it becomes more realistic for smaller businesses, as well. And then it just kind of self perpetuates was great. So there’s plenty of really exciting things coming out and we should embrace AI of course, be wary of what potentially can happen but there’s some really great things we can do even as small
Laurence Mc Lean 14:59
Businesses It’s not gonna be replacement number eight for for humans in the equation, I think as they call it that AI can supplement your business to make it more effective or more efficient will just make your life easier to be honest as a business owner. And as
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:12
You said, I mean things like picking up imperfections and things. It’s actually much better than human, whatever. human element. Okay, cool. So we’ve got skill, shortage, labor, capital, global economic uncertainty, this is really fascinating, because I keep forgetting because most of my businesses this year have had over the last year had a fantastic year. And it’s like, I keep forgetting there’s actually a global economic crisis, but I was speaking to somebody who’d been over in the UK, and apparently it’s pretty shit over there. And it’s like, we I think we’re very well missile a bit sheltered here from what is going on over there. Yeah,
Laurence Mc Lean 15:41
I mean, it’s, you know, different countries experience it in different ways, like the US is having a bit of a boom, yeah, UK having a bit of a tough time. So, you know, again, back to that pendulum swing goes back and forward, basically, that, but you know, I think no matter even if you’re a local business, you might only have a local client base, a lot of the impacts of, you know, a lot of things that can impact your business are actually built on the global supply chain, or the effects that are happening in other countries. So it’s all interconnected, you know, we live in a multicultural multinational economy at the moment. So all we have for a long time. So it’s, you know, if you’re cognizant of that, you can kind of see potentially some of the effects that come from the line repeated for that, you can actually be more insulated against those effects when they do if and when they do, we
Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:23
Always talk about the emergency plan. And I say it’s like, it’s really good to have a plan A or plan B, and potentially even a Plan C, that you write in the good times, so that you’re actually writing it with a clear mind, looking at all the possibilities, looking at what can be done. So when the tough times hit when you’re in that almost fight or flight mode, you’re not making decisions based in fight or flight mode, you’re actually going back to the plan and going oh, yeah, that’s what we decided. Now we can execute on that in a nice calm, considered manner, or the poster guys.
Laurence Mc Lean 16:51
All the time, we’ve got clients that go through tough times, they might have to go through a restructure process, they potentially lose some of the really high quality employees. And then they get through that, you know, through a lot of hard work, a lot of dedication, and even the good times, but now they don’t have that staff that added a lot to their business. So not to say that it’s not always the right test, you know, sometimes it is the right decision to make that you don’t want to panic, you don’t want to be too reactive. If you plan for those bad times, and you have a plan throughout, they’re actually survivable. And you and you can work through it. And you can come out the other end on a very strong position. You don’t want to lose all your gains we know that you’ve you’ve worked really hard for just because we have, you know, a bad year, for example, a couple of months. Yeah.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:28
Okay, that’s cool. So what can we look forward to this year? Do you think so particularly the small and medium sized businesses? What’s the what’s exciting? I’m actually very excited about this year, I think that there’s some some huge opportunities. I don’t even I always argue that even we go through the tough times, it actually opens up more opportunities for us. So what do you think we can look forward to?
Laurence Mc Lean 17:47
I mean, I think we’re gonna see a lot of a lot of a lot more interconnectedness across a prosperous country. So the government has talked a lot about creating more jobs. And using migration to do that, I think we’re going to see a lot more of a diverse sort of skill set coming into New Zealand, which is going to open a lot of opportunities, I think, for a lot of businesses. You know, I think as you know, you think, for example, the space industry in New Zealand, it’s not something you would typically associate with New Zealand, but we’ve actually had quite a thriving industry in that regard, and have lots of offshoots for a lot of other businesses that can benefit from that. But it actually attracts a certain skill set that we never had New Zealand before a niche, it diversifies our workplace diversifies the types of roles in demand in New Zealand, I think can open up a lot of really new and exciting opportunities for businesses, if you’ve been selling the same thing for 20 years, you might have had a really successful business, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’re going to be successful for the next 20 years. And so I think being open to that sort of diversification to that adaption, as I talked about earlier, you know, embracing those changes, embracing the diversity, and some of the skill sets that we’re going to say, I think can result in some really, you know, maybe left field changes, but, but really exciting changes, nonetheless, I think, for businesses,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 18:59
So what do you recommend people do, because, you know, if you’re running a small, medium sized business, you’re often in the weeds, you’re often fighting fires, you’re just, you know, I always say it’s the 8020 editing your time trying to keep the business doors open. For some people, that’s 100% of the time, we’re really should spend 20% of our time thinking about what’s changing, how would we write things when I move forward? But if they’re stuck in those weeds and thinking, I don’t know what to do, what would you recommend they do to get themselves up out of that lift themselves up and and look for the possibilities
Laurence Mc Lean 19:24
When you talked about already have a plan? Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s the number one key thing you can do is plan for the future and not kind of, you know, I’m a Wingert person personally, but running a business I plan in advance and I make sure that I I can see the potential challenges. I can see the potential benefits and therefore I’m prepared for for both of those and I can get there make the most of it, essentially. You want to make sure that as changes are coming. They’re not catching you off guard, you’re not having to be reactive or scrambling to have a reaction you’ve actually got that idea planned out. You’ve got that, you know that potential planned out And lucky may do 10 hours of planning for only one little change. But better to be over planned or over prepared, I think and not needed then to be underprepared and need a lot of pain that you haven’t done. So planning is definitely the right thing. And then I think the other big thing is getting support. If you’re a business, small business in the weeds, you know, you’re probably not you didn’t get into business to deal with regulations or to deal with legal elements and deal with those sorts of challenges that you’ve got in business, because you’re passionate about what it is that you want to do. And that’s something that we connect with a lot of our clients that employ Sure, they’re passionate about driving trucks, baking cakes, building buildings, whatever it is, they’re not passionate about the Employment Relations and health and safety. I am because I’m a nerd in that area, that do not and so we use this to help them and you can apply that to all different aspects of businesses. So I think making sure you’ve got the support, you’re not, you’re not doing it alone, you’re not you’re not trying to struggle with it, because it’s not only is it often not helpful, doesn’t doesn’t really work. But she has a personal toll on business owners as well. And we know that a lot of small and medium sized business owners, you know, again, mom and dad, business owners for lack of a better term. And it can be really taxing, I think, to try to deal with all of that on your own.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 21:08
Yeah, I agree. I was looking at the three legged stool for any kind of business owner entrepreneur, and it’s, you know, I think you need to have a business coach or mentor or experts that can help you if you don’t know that you need an operating system. That’s, of course, my specialty in terms of, you know, having that framework having the plans on what to do. And then you have peer groups as well. And I think the peer groups are really important, because they actually give you a bit of a sense of okay, I’m not going through this alone, I can share things with people in a similar situation, who can actually, you know, share their experiences and help me because I’ve been there done that. So I really highly recommend things like, you know, the Family Business Association for Family, businesses, entrepreneurs, organization, YPO, for for those kind of non family, familial businesses, yeah, any kind of peer group you can get yourself into, I think it’s a great idea that
Laurence Mc Lean 21:49
It’s really easy to start a business, it’s really hard to get it right. I think New Zealand has the easiest in the economy, at least anyway, it’s the easiest startup business here in New Zealand, I think it still is, I think it still is, yeah, from a regulatory point of view, at least that is an ongoing thing, making it making it survive and scaling that growth up. That’s the hard but yeah, and I think a lot of people get into business, and then kind of do realize how hard it is. And if you kind of do that, before you start the business, then you’re more likely to be successful moving forward.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:22
I agree. That whole 8020 thing, I think if we can spend 80% of our time, you know, making sure the business is running, that we’ve been profitable and sustainable, and the business is keeping its doors open, it’s really important. And we can use things like a scorecard and measurables to make sure that’s happening. But you’ve got to spend 20% of your time actually working on moving the business forward. Exactly. And that is I mean, so to give you some context for that, I always sort of say that’s, that’s one day a week, you know, one out of five days, you should be spending a whole day because nobody can do that. But it could be two hours a day, it could be two half days. That’s the kind of monitoring we should be doing. Having meetings where leadership team, making sure that we’re looking at the opportunities, looking how we can improve the way we do things, as opposed to just keep doing what we’re doing
Laurence Mc Lean 22:57
100% And that’s employers motto actually is building better businesses, we’re here to help those businesses succeed.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:04
Okay, so what what do you think you’re going to be working on this year? So what are the things that you think employee show is going to be some really, yeah, focus on
Laurence Mc Lean 23:12
Definitely the first half of the year, we’re focused on making sure that we’re informing and educating our clients and some of the changes that are coming down the line, there are lots of changes coming down the line, we don’t know the details of mystery, all the changes so far. But what we’re going to do is make sure that our clients have that information, they’ve got those, they’ve got that information ready to go. And they can, as we talked about before, have that plan ready to go, I think in the second half of the year is really going to be about making sure that our clients are being successful that they have the bandwidth to, to see that success. See those plans come to fruition, we work a lot in helping clients through various issues that they might have it from an employer relations, or a health and safety point of view. But we’re really focused on making sure that when a challenge does arise, as we talked about before, clients have that support there they can, they can work through that challenge, and then they can go on and continue on with their plan or continue on 60s. So it’s gonna be a bit of both, I think it’s gonna be a bit of a mix, we again, we don’t know exactly the changes that have come down the line, we’ve gone through a couple of times already now. So we kind of know that there’s often a big flurry and particularly during COVID, we were we were issuing updates to our clients almost every day to understand the changes that were happening and a lot of time, government wasn’t 100% clear on exactly what that change mentor exactly how our business was implemented, which is really tough if you’re a small, medium sized businesses trying to survive through those changes.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 24:33
Well, they didn’t know did they? I mean, none of us really know what to expect. I mean, you know, for example,
Laurence Mc Lean 24:36
Vaccination requirements came out and there was certain requirements, but actually, what that meant in reality was open to interpretation. And it’s only now what is it for three, four years later, they were actually really trying to see okay, the court say Oh, this is how you should have done it or should have been done this way, which is too late now for small, small medium sized businesses to do that, right. So we’re trying to make sure we give our clients options were key with them informed, they can make informed educated decisions about what’s gonna be best for their business. In the new environment, they’re gonna be worked out that it’s gonna exist this year. And then really just working with our clients to help them overcome the particular challenges that they face, you know, on a day to day basis. That’s
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:16
Right, because you’re there to support them in terms of the longer term stuff, but you also there when really, when the chips at the Be honest,
Laurence Mc Lean 25:23
You know, we were both the fence at the top of the cliff. Yep. And the evidence at the bottom as well. I mean, I always like to say sometimes with a parachute on the way down, if you’re if you’re in a crisis situation, and you’re having to deal with various issues, you want that support the air to have a softer landing as as possible to minimize the effects. And, you know, you could be the best business owner in the world, you could be 100% prepared and you still come into a crisis situation, doesn’t mean that you’ve done something wrong with the business. But it does mean that you need to make sure that you’re, you know, you’re embracing that challenge. You’re working through it, you’re getting that support, as we talked about, and that you’re trying to keep your business in the best position it possibly can be.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:59
Now, I know that you do some amazing seminars and things, don’t you, whenever anything changes, you’ve always got something coming out that can go along, too. So if you wanted to find out about that, I’m assuming they can find that on the website. That’s
Laurence Mc Lean 26:09
Right. Pleasure runs seminars for our clients. But we also run seminars for public as well. They want to learn more about minimum entitlements, definitely some of the changes that are coming down the track, we’ll be running sessions on that, for free open to any business that wants to join.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:23
That’s awesome. And other places they can find information. I’m assuming, again, your website, Scotland, we’ve got some great newsletters, you’ve got all kinds of we
Laurence Mc Lean 26:29
We’ve got lots of guides available exactly lots of guides available, if you’ve got a particular question, and you’re not quite sure exactly how something works, you can go onto website, you can access that for free. Well, you could always just give us a call as well, whether you’re a client or not a client will just give you some advice anyway, and putting in the right direction.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:44
Yeah, okay. So if you’re having a bit of an issue, you can give them a call, you’ll give them a bit of a sense of what is involved, they can either go, yep, we’ll work with you, or they’re golfing
Laurence Mc Lean 26:52
Just, exactly. And we’ll always give them something that they will point them in the right direction that will help them find the right answer or get them to that outcome that they’re trying to get to, you know, point relations is hard in New Zealand, you know, we work in a very, there’s a lot of obligations, probably more so than any other, again, Western nation and the world. New Zealand has an employee focused environment, and that’s by design, it’s not to say it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just the way that it is. And so as a business owner, you’ve got to make sure you’re prepared to work through that. And, and it can manifest itself in a number of different ways. And, you know, sometimes it’s just, there’s no way you could ever have known the answer to that. So making sure you get support, I think is really helpful.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:32
As you know, I’m an EOS that I work for is actually a global organization, and it started in the US. And so sometimes when they talk about, you know, if this isn’t working out, just get rid of them. Okay, maybe you can do that in America, we’re gonna live in both Australia and New Zealand, fairly similar in terms of its employment in
Laurence Mc Lean 27:48
Australia is a bit more focused on, you know, what they call modern awards, or prescribing the certain ways that people have to work, I would describe New Zealand as more of a, it’s a bit of black and white on the edges and a lot of gray in the middle, which is easier in some ways, because you’ve got more options, you’ve got more right ways in which you can achieve your outcome. That’s harder in other ways, because you don’t really know what you’re doing. There’s not a guide there to walk you through it like it is in Australia, but, you know, built from the same foundation, Australia and New Zealand, manifesting itself in slightly different ways, you know, these days.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 28:19
Perfect. And so you, are you showing your nerdiness them you obviously love this stuff. And it’s I think it’s important, I think one of the key things that you’ve said is that as a business owner, we don’t have to be good at everything. There are other people out there who can actually help us. And I’ve always said, you know, ask for help. It can feel embarrassing at the time, because you’re going on well, why don’t I know. But in actual fact, you like helping people, I like helping people. You know, everybody loves to get to help other people. And so why not ask people to give you that help. And you’re the nerd that loves? You said it, not me. But you know, those are the people and the legal stuff. I’m the nerd that loves a lot of business planning and how you manage people effectively in the business. So yeah, just reach out, most of us are happy to help in some way. And
Laurence Mc Lean 29:01
You know, whether it’s you know, we do Employment Relations and health and safety. There’s other organizations that do tax integration, there’s lots of different areas of business you can run to challenges on and sometimes it can feel like a lot of debt to go to all these places for these different types of help. But you kind of scale, if you’ve got a really in depth issue on a particular area, there’s always gonna be some group that’s going to be able to help you out with that for us at some point relations, but you know, no matter what the issue is, I guarantee there’s somebody out there that can help you out.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:25
Okay, great. I look, let’s just go through quickly three top tips. We’ve talked about planning support, what else would you say are the three things people should think about when it comes to employment particularly,
Laurence Mc Lean 29:34
I think it’s really focused on you know, continue that engagement with your employees. I know we talked about that. The last time I was here is having that open communication, engaging with your employees, making sure that they’re feeling the you know, they can see that plan you might have a plan but they might not know what it is and it might
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:51
Jump in here. So we always say that it took seven times for somebody heard it for the first time so you can never overshare but you’ve got some recent research informing us well why were they said that we’re The change in technology and all these different devices and things we have available that you think it’s about 35 times now before, he has it for the first time. And of course, it’s much smaller snippets of information we tend to absorb. So you think you’re doing a really great job community. But I’ve told you this three times, only another one, is it another 32 to go with something before they actually go for the first time? Yeah,
Laurence Mc Lean 30:21
I can. I can attest to that myself, as long as it takes me a lot of times before I really, you know, taken what I’m being told, basically, there’s a lot, you know, we live in a complex world these days. So there’s a lot to take in,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:31
So you can never over communicate. Absolutely, absolutely.
Laurence Mc Lean 30:34
I think the other and we’ve kind of talked about this a little bit that networking with with peer groups, or various organizations are going to help you making sure you’ve got the support structure in place, you’ve got those, you know, sometimes it’s a technical aspect, the legal aspect, sometimes it’s just emotional support aspect. I think having that network group can can be really beneficial for a lot of businesses. And it’s something that I think kiwis, particularly are not so great at sometimes networking, you know, myself included, but but when you do it, you can you can really see the benefits really quickly.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:04
Yeah, I know, I run a thing called connected communities here in Auckland. And that was all family sized businesses, insides of high growth businesses. And we don’t do much so much of the actual peer support stuff that you and FPA do. But we have a lot of get togethers and just the discussions that go on around a table with other people who are in a similar situation. That’s where the value really comes in. Because it I think it embeds you get to get taught some stuff where you learn some stuff from some of the experts. And then by having the discussions with your peers, it really helps you to understand how that applies to your business.
Laurence Mc Lean 31:33
Exactly. Yeah. And I think the last tip I probably give us is really leveraging technology. We do it at implosion, particularly, we’ve had some innovations that have really helped to make our employees lives better, you know, give them more tools to do their job better, which they love doing, but also helping our clients helping our customers, the outcomes that we’re achieving for our, for our businesses as well. And I think no matter how big or small your businesses is always technology that you can use, obviously different scales. And it does come with a bit of work, you know, some investments, but it can really be beneficial for other businesses to make sure you’ve got, you know, you’re using that technology to supplement or support or to accelerate that growth, it’s never going to be a solution in and of itself, you know, whether it’s AI or anything else. But it can be a really strong supplement, I think to accelerate that growth or getting you in that phase in the first place.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:21
And go with an open mind, right? Just don’t just want to have a curious child, I wonder what is possible.
Laurence Mc Lean 32:28
I couldn’t agree with it more actually. Because sometimes you’ll see one solution, and you just go with that. And, and you’re like, Oh, this is the only way I know about doing it. So this is where I’m gonna keep doing that. But things are innovating and changing and improving all the time. And, and we’ve been, you know, we have been beneficiaries of ourselves that employee, sure, but also for our clients by looking at things that we never thought about before. And sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. But the ones that do work, it’s like, well, that’s amazing. It’s helped us a lot.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:54
Yeah, perfect. Okay, great. If somebody wants to get in contact via we’ve already talked about offices, employer websites, employee short,
Laurence Mc Lean 32:59
Or short.co.nz. Perfect. You’re on Google. And I’m assuming
Debra Chantry-Taylor 33:03
In Australia, it’s dot com.au. Is that right? Okay, good. So Australian listeners as well. And then if they want to get in contact with you like to get ahold of you,
Laurence Mc Lean 33:10
I’m on LinkedIn, if somebody wants to reach out to me, whether it’s a client or a potential customer, or somebody that wants to come and work and, you know, join our company here at unemployable. But I’m often doing a lot of seminars, or webinars or podcasts like this, or other events where, where I’ll be around and people can can reach out to me and be in touch. But, you know, if you come to employ sure there’s, there’s another 150 of you basically, supporting for me, because, you know, there’s lots of people there that, you know, and it’s actually exciting that, you know, it’s to see people actually, you know, come with that passion that I have, and hopefully should hit me basically, that’s, that’s what I love to see. Yeah,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 33:50
I always joke. So in the US worldwide, we have implemented all around the globe. We’re up to 700 now, and it’s kinda like, can you imagine several versions of me, to me, it absolutely blows my mind as well. But it’s, it’s always fun to get together in a room with them. Because you’ve got 700 Truly business passionate people. And the energy is just phenomenal. So
Laurence Mc Lean 34:08
That’s a common value that we shared employee share. It’s about doing the right thing of making sure that we’re supporting our clients to be the best that they can be.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:14
That’s why we’re here. Look, thank you so much, again, for your time really appreciate it. Been a pleasure to talk to as always, no problem.
Laurence Mc Lean 34:40
Thanks for having me.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand
Certified EOS Implementer Australia
Certified EOS Implementer UK
Certified EOS Implementer NZ
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, employees, new zealand, clients, medium sized businesses, issue, ai, effects, plan, small businesses, challenges, year, great, government, people, talked, support, peer groups, big, pendulum swing
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:00
Good morning, and Welcome to another edition of Better Business Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor. And today I am joined by one of our previous guests. So I’ve got Lance McLean back again.
Laurence Mc Lean 00:16
Planned for the future and not kind of, you know, I’m a weird person, personally but but running a business, I plan in advance and I make sure that I, I can see the potential challenges, I can see the potential benefits, and therefore I’m prepared for for both of those. And I can get that make the most of it essentially, you want to make sure that as those changes that are coming, they’re not catching you off guard, you’re not having to be reactive or scrambling to have a reaction, you’ve actually got that idea planned out, you’ve got that, you know, that potential planned out. And look, you may do 10 hours of planning for only one little change, but better to be over planned or prepared, I think and not need at the end to be underprepared and need a lot of pain that you haven’t done. So planning is definitely the right thing.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:03
Lawrence is the Associate Director of employee shore. And we had such a great chat last time round about employment issues and people that we invite him back on the show again. So welcome back.
Laurence Mc Lean 01:12
Thank you. Great to be here.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:13
Yeah, it’s really good to have you here. So the reason we got you back home was because this year and being 2024, we’ve got a new government in place, right. And obviously a new government. Nothing’s going to change overnight. But this government’s made it quite clear, they plan to make some changes quite quickly. And in fact, some of them were already implemented last year, I believe. So let’s have a chat about you know, first of all, let’s start with your background. And let’s hear about you and where you’ve come from, where you’re at. And then we’ll have a talk about where the government’s going.
Laurence Mc Lean 01:43
Yeah, so I was come from Bay, plenty Waikato region. So dealing with a lot of small and medium sized businesses do in my home towns, and really coming from more of a legal background, I practice for a couple of years and then have for the last, especially seven years now. So a bit of time, I’ve been working with employees or focusing on helping small and medium sized businesses across New Zealand, with the various employment relations and health and safety challenges that they come across. So it’s a really exciting space is so there’s lots going on, what’s there has been going on are really excited to see what what this is going to bring.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:13
And you’ve got over seven and a half 1000 companies. So isn’t it nice to do so seven
Laurence Mc Lean 02:17
A half 1000 companies in New Zealand and other 23,000 in Australia about must be 30,000 plus across our global or global partners as well.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:25
That’s fantastic. Okay, so the new government came in last year came in kind of almost almost well came in with a bit of a fizzle and then all guns blazing is my perception of it as in that took a long while to actually get some certainty. But now we’ve got it in there pretty clear about what they plan to do. What do you think are the biggest changes we’re likely to see,
Laurence Mc Lean 02:43
I think the new government, the National led coalition has really been focusing on or they campaigned on being more business friendly. So I guess maybe tipping the scales back towards businesses, if you want to describe it that way. The previous Labour Government focused a lot on empowering employees giving rights to employees. And, you know, there’s an argument for that, but obviously comes with challenges and costs for particularly small and medium sized businesses. So I think this is really about tipping the scales back, I guess, in the other direction. And it’s very common between governments, it’s often a pendulum swing back.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 03:14
The pendulum was like the example I’m going to use. I think it always goes backwards and forwards does, but we had to be on we’re not political on this show at all. But I suppose we have to be aware of the fact that New Zealand is made up of what 350,000 small and medium sized businesses, and it’s almost like the backbone of the country. It is yeah. And so in some respects, you know, being able to do a bit more for them, I think it’s a good thing. Okay, so what can we look forward to in terms of key improvements?
Laurence Mc Lean 03:37
I think if we if we look mainly at some of the key drivers or some of the key issues that this government has campaigned on, one of the ones that they’ve already put into effect is the repealing with fair pay legislation. So what that means is essentially that a lot of industry type jobs. So if you’ve worked, for example, a hospitality or retail, there was going to be a bargaining process where they would have a whole lot of similar terms, pay conditions, working hours, etc, etc, etc. And they were in the process of bargaining for that last year under the previous Labour Government, this new national ID coalition has scrapped those agreements completely, and essentially put it back to the the old ways of negotiating, which is essentially either through union, which is mainly for bigger organization, probably not, not really for smaller, medium sized entities, or just the individual one on one type employer and employee type negotiation. So that’s the change, it’s already come into effect, that’s probably going to be not so much a challenge because it never really came into effect in the first place. But it’s the it’s the elimination of a change that was going to occur, I guess that’s Yeah, sure.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:38
And so that’s only gonna apply for new contracts. So going forward, or do we have to look retrospectively as well?
Laurence Mc Lean 04:43
I mean, you’re right, it doesn’t apply to new contracts. Although it’s always a good process practice, I think to review your existing agreements, laws change all the time. You know, the way that your business might operate changes the way you might want to interact with your employee changes. So So yes, you know, you don’t even do a full negotiation when New hire a new employee, but it’s always good practice, I think to review your agreements and say, this is some improvements we can make both from the employees point of view and also from your business point of view. Okay.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 05:08
So how often would you recommend people do that yearly at least?
Laurence Mc Lean 05:12
So I think it’s always helpful. And look, it may be that you do a yearly review, and you decide not to change anything, but at least you know, you’ve had that lock. And you’ve made that conscious decision. But there are often changes that occurred, you know, normally there’s pay rates or pay reviews that might happen and performance reviews that might happen, they may result in changes to an employment agreement, your hours of work might change, your location of work might change, there’s lots of things that can change. So easily yearly, yearly, but hasn’t been required as well. It’s interesting,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 05:38
I was actually chatting with a couple of the Associate Directors at Baker, Tilly staples, Rob, where the other day, and they were saying that, you know, they’ve now moved to very much a hybrid working model, which is quite a big change from the old days, because that’s one of those things that has happened due to COVID, but is now really embedding itself as a more permanent thing. So that means actually looking at your employment contract is not a bad idea.
Laurence Mc Lean 05:58
We have lots of employers, your clients are still asking us questions about, you know, changing the type of employment to have that more hybrid work, or sometimes fully remote, or sometimes to bring hybrid or fully remote workers back to the office. So going through those sorts of processes. I think it’s still an ongoing issue for businesses, even though COVID is over, you can put that in quotation marks. It’s still around, but the excitement of it has kind of gone away. But it’s still a pressing issue. I think for a lot of businesses out there.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:25
It makes perfect sense. Actually, it is interesting to COVID hasn’t really gone away, when we’re talking about the potential can be quite a large spike around Christmas together. And also, I suppose it’s not going to be the last time we have some kind of outbreak either, is it? Exactly. It might not be COVID. But over the next the next variation is is on its way. So is that something that should be built into employment contracts? Because I have never really thought about that as an issue. I mean,
Laurence Mc Lean 06:49
Absolutely. Whether it’s employment contracts or employment handbooks or your policies, it’s a definitely a health and safety consideration that should be taken into effect. I mean, before COVID, it was flu season. Yes. But it wasn’t kind of a Zeitgeist II type topic that business has talked about, but it did have a big impact on businesses. I think COVID kind of really brought to the forefront for businesses to have front of mind. And I think moving forward, now, businesses are a lot more conscious about the effects that those sorts of seasonal outbreaks can have on a business, and particularly effects on your working staff your capacity to do that do what you’re in business for, essentially. So having good policies around, you know, do you support food, vaccinations, you buy those for your employees? Or, you know, do you have changed the way that sick leave works? Or, you know, do you have if there is a large outbreak, do you maybe change the way that you work, for example, have more hybrid working? Those sorts of I think things that businesses can think about the connection make a big difference?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:44
Yeah, it’s interesting, because, you know, obviously, I’m in the US implementer. And we actually, we have a thing called the accountability chart. And the accountability chart is very much it’s not about titles and about hierarchies. But actually, the main functions or business, who’s accountable for it, what are their main responsibilities within that, and it eventually does replace a traditional organizational chart, but we always make the kind of call that actually, you should review that on a regular basis, too, because nothing should be set in stone every 12 months, you might be in a slightly different situation, it’s a great chance to have a look at and go, Hey, has anything changed? Do we need to change the structure to support that?
Laurence Mc Lean 08:12
And I think that’s the other thing that COVID has taught otter businesses is you’ve got to be adaptable, you’ve got to respond to changes that happen. Sometimes they’re driven by central government, sometimes they’re driven by business needs or consumer demand. But you’ve always got to have that ability to adapt to the situation in front of you and deal with it and why that’s going to benefit your business.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:31
Okay, so back to the government things, is there any kind of reprieve or grants or like new things that could help small businesses, particularly in that sort of growth scaling up mentality?
Laurence Mc Lean 08:40
I mean, there’s a few other changes that the government has proposed to make one is going to be the reintroduction of Mancina trial periods for more businesses. So currently, they exist for those employers that 2019 or fewer employees. Exactly, that’s going to be changed. So now that it affects what’s that’s an option open for all businesses. So that’s in the government’s 100 day plan. So we’d like to see that in February or March this year, I would say, you know, it’s not something that all businesses would use. And the idea is that hopefully, you don’t need to use it in the first place. But it is a tool. You know, an employer should we do have a lot of clients as they use that particular tool to make sure they’ve got the right people that have the right fit for the organization. So that’s going to be an additional tool that businesses can use. I think the other big change coming down the line is there’s going to be a change to the migration settings. We know that in 2023, one of the biggest issues that that employees was clients had was really around hiring labor, you know, having the right people at the right time for the right role, they had the right fit. And I think the increase to migration, which is most likely going to be the outcome. We don’t know the exact details yet about what the government’s going to change, but they’ve indicated that it’s something they want to look at. And it’s likely to see an increase in migration. I mean, we already had I think, was 142% increase in migration year on year and the previous year. I think you’d like to see that continue to increase and therefore, you know, the market will probably only be a bit more employer friendly in the sense that there’s going to be more employees open to work and hopefully not as hard time trying to fill those those roles at businesses, there’s.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 10:09
Certainly been a lot of feedback from my clients is trying to find people to fill those roles has been about it really tough. And it has been good for an employee point, ease perspective, because it pushed rates up on it, monitoring them, but then we’re going to think that there was a lot of small businesses that are reliant on people to actually keep their doors open. If they can’t get those people we saw it throughout COVID, like the hospitality industry had a massive issue around being able to keep doors open, because they couldn’t work in there.
Laurence Mc Lean 10:33
And hospitality, retail tourism, you know, particularly just gone through the Christmas period Exactly. has, you know that that’s a industry that’s on the government’s and demand list. So we know that those are jobs that businesses are trying to fill. And we also know, as you pointed out, that, you know, a high demand for employees increases labor costs, you know, if you’re looking at, for example, last year, the inflation rate increased by 6%, that wages increased by between 6.6 and 7.1%. So outstripping inflation, essentially. And, you know, obviously, it’s great for employees, if you’re your business, it’s a positive, your employer, it’s a positive thing. But if you’re a business, and you’ve got tight margins, particularly small and medium sized enterprises, that can have a big effect on your business. So we like to see probably an easing of that, off that wage growth.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:20
That’s not to say that, you know, we all believe in a fair pay for a fair job. And that’s why I think most good people operators, you know, we want to pay people well, but we have to be cognizant of the fact that the impact that has on small businesses, bigger business can wear it a whole lot easier, smaller businesses are going to really impact them.
Laurence Mc Lean 11:34
And again, it’s that pendulum swing, you know, employees will have a really favorable year in terms of wages, and they might have a slow year next year, but it will swing back. And I think it kind of evens out that, you know, that’s that’s the economic theory, at least anyway, that we’ve gotten into the day, we
Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:46
Shall see how things kind of pan out. Okay, so what are the what do you think are the current challenges for SM ease at the moment in New Zealand, and particularly going forward further into 2024? Yeah,
Laurence Mc Lean 11:56
I mean, we’ve talked about hiring labor, we’ve talked about labor cost, I think those are challenges to this year. I think the global economic uncertainty, that’s still an issue. I mean, that’s been an issue since decrepit started to be honest, it’s things like, you know, supply costs, inflation is a global issue, it’s not just a New Zealand issue, it’s, it’s across the globe, you know, adapting to climate change, you know, that’s going to be a massive issue for a lot of businesses. And you may think it only applies to the bigger businesses, and to large extent that it’s going to fit them more directly. But smaller businesses see all the flow on effects for that, for example, transportation costs go up, it can have a large impact on the business or where you source your, your goods from or your materials from, or how you deliver your your products to your to your customers. So I think that global uncertainty is probably going to, at least for the first half of this year, I think the Reserve Bank has indicated that interest rates are going to remain high till at least 2025, potentially. So we’d like to see those sorts of challenges continue throughout this year as well, in a pinch on everything. That’s right. I mean, there’s lots of other challenges coming down the line as well, I think a debt adaption to AI, that that’s still an ongoing issue for a lot of businesses, not just climate changes AI as well. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that a global survey last year on our businesses and how they’re adapting to AI, we found us from New Zealand, only about 35% of clients were using AI and 5%, using it at all. And it can have a lot of positive. I mean, it comes with challenges, don’t get me wrong. And you’ve got to you’ve got to use it in the right way to get the real benefit out of it. But it can come with a lot of positives in terms of those more automated automatable tasks. And kind of research. Exactly creative writing, people use that a lot for AI a lot for that and have seen some good results here.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:40
So, it’s more or less is what it really kind of frustrated, but it’s more than just the people think about check GPT bi but it’s not that. So you know, I worked with a client that is a family business, they have a market garden, the AI they’re looking at is how do we actually harvest our fruit and vegetables easier? How do we actually ensure we remain weed free using AI that can actually go through and automatically we pillows and stuff like that. So it is it is more than just cheating. And I think that you think about it, if we can stop having people going out and pulling up onions and have it done by a machine, that person can be freed up to do things that potentially have more value or just more interesting.
Laurence Mc Lean 14:13
Exactly. I mean, you think about big businesses and how they use AI, they use it, for example, for quality control. And they can automate a lot of tasks very quickly and have a very high quality control. Think of small businesses are probably a bit more reluctant to use it. And it’s completely understandable. I can see why. But you can see that a big businesses can benefit from it. And if they’re gonna put all the money in investing it and you know, kind of perfecting it, then hopefully those small businesses can can get the some of the flow on effects from that as well. Yeah,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 14:38
I was talking to somebody the other day about that. And obviously there’s a couple the actual laws, but is it Moore’s law, I think the more that is available, then it becomes more realistic for smaller businesses, as well. And then it just kind of self perpetuates was great. So there’s plenty of really exciting things coming out and we should embrace AI of course, be wary of what potentially can happen but there’s some really great things we can do even as small
Laurence Mc Lean 14:59
Businesses It’s not gonna be replacement number eight for for humans in the equation, I think as they call it that AI can supplement your business to make it more effective or more efficient will just make your life easier to be honest as a business owner. And as
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:12
You said, I mean things like picking up imperfections and things. It’s actually much better than human, whatever. human element. Okay, cool. So we’ve got skill, shortage, labor, capital, global economic uncertainty, this is really fascinating, because I keep forgetting because most of my businesses this year have had over the last year had a fantastic year. And it’s like, I keep forgetting there’s actually a global economic crisis, but I was speaking to somebody who’d been over in the UK, and apparently it’s pretty shit over there. And it’s like, we I think we’re very well missile a bit sheltered here from what is going on over there. Yeah,
Laurence Mc Lean 15:41
I mean, it’s, you know, different countries experience it in different ways, like the US is having a bit of a boom, yeah, UK having a bit of a tough time. So, you know, again, back to that pendulum swing goes back and forward, basically, that, but you know, I think no matter even if you’re a local business, you might only have a local client base, a lot of the impacts of, you know, a lot of things that can impact your business are actually built on the global supply chain, or the effects that are happening in other countries. So it’s all interconnected, you know, we live in a multicultural multinational economy at the moment. So all we have for a long time. So it’s, you know, if you’re cognizant of that, you can kind of see potentially some of the effects that come from the line repeated for that, you can actually be more insulated against those effects when they do if and when they do, we
Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:23
Always talk about the emergency plan. And I say it’s like, it’s really good to have a plan A or plan B, and potentially even a Plan C, that you write in the good times, so that you’re actually writing it with a clear mind, looking at all the possibilities, looking at what can be done. So when the tough times hit when you’re in that almost fight or flight mode, you’re not making decisions based in fight or flight mode, you’re actually going back to the plan and going oh, yeah, that’s what we decided. Now we can execute on that in a nice calm, considered manner, or the poster guys.
Laurence Mc Lean 16:51
All the time, we’ve got clients that go through tough times, they might have to go through a restructure process, they potentially lose some of the really high quality employees. And then they get through that, you know, through a lot of hard work, a lot of dedication, and even the good times, but now they don’t have that staff that added a lot to their business. So not to say that it’s not always the right test, you know, sometimes it is the right decision to make that you don’t want to panic, you don’t want to be too reactive. If you plan for those bad times, and you have a plan throughout, they’re actually survivable. And you and you can work through it. And you can come out the other end on a very strong position. You don’t want to lose all your gains we know that you’ve you’ve worked really hard for just because we have, you know, a bad year, for example, a couple of months. Yeah.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:28
Okay, that’s cool. So what can we look forward to this year? Do you think so particularly the small and medium sized businesses? What’s the what’s exciting? I’m actually very excited about this year, I think that there’s some some huge opportunities. I don’t even I always argue that even we go through the tough times, it actually opens up more opportunities for us. So what do you think we can look forward to?
Laurence Mc Lean 17:47
I mean, I think we’re gonna see a lot of a lot of a lot more interconnectedness across a prosperous country. So the government has talked a lot about creating more jobs. And using migration to do that, I think we’re going to see a lot more of a diverse sort of skill set coming into New Zealand, which is going to open a lot of opportunities, I think, for a lot of businesses. You know, I think as you know, you think, for example, the space industry in New Zealand, it’s not something you would typically associate with New Zealand, but we’ve actually had quite a thriving industry in that regard, and have lots of offshoots for a lot of other businesses that can benefit from that. But it actually attracts a certain skill set that we never had New Zealand before a niche, it diversifies our workplace diversifies the types of roles in demand in New Zealand, I think can open up a lot of really new and exciting opportunities for businesses, if you’ve been selling the same thing for 20 years, you might have had a really successful business, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’re going to be successful for the next 20 years. And so I think being open to that sort of diversification to that adaption, as I talked about earlier, you know, embracing those changes, embracing the diversity, and some of the skill sets that we’re going to say, I think can result in some really, you know, maybe left field changes, but, but really exciting changes, nonetheless, I think, for businesses,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 18:59
So what do you recommend people do, because, you know, if you’re running a small, medium sized business, you’re often in the weeds, you’re often fighting fires, you’re just, you know, I always say it’s the 8020 editing your time trying to keep the business doors open. For some people, that’s 100% of the time, we’re really should spend 20% of our time thinking about what’s changing, how would we write things when I move forward? But if they’re stuck in those weeds and thinking, I don’t know what to do, what would you recommend they do to get themselves up out of that lift themselves up and and look for the possibilities
Laurence Mc Lean 19:24
When you talked about already have a plan? Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s the number one key thing you can do is plan for the future and not kind of, you know, I’m a Wingert person personally, but running a business I plan in advance and I make sure that I I can see the potential challenges. I can see the potential benefits and therefore I’m prepared for for both of those and I can get there make the most of it, essentially. You want to make sure that as changes are coming. They’re not catching you off guard, you’re not having to be reactive or scrambling to have a reaction you’ve actually got that idea planned out. You’ve got that, you know that potential planned out And lucky may do 10 hours of planning for only one little change. But better to be over planned or over prepared, I think and not needed then to be underprepared and need a lot of pain that you haven’t done. So planning is definitely the right thing. And then I think the other big thing is getting support. If you’re a business, small business in the weeds, you know, you’re probably not you didn’t get into business to deal with regulations or to deal with legal elements and deal with those sorts of challenges that you’ve got in business, because you’re passionate about what it is that you want to do. And that’s something that we connect with a lot of our clients that employ Sure, they’re passionate about driving trucks, baking cakes, building buildings, whatever it is, they’re not passionate about the Employment Relations and health and safety. I am because I’m a nerd in that area, that do not and so we use this to help them and you can apply that to all different aspects of businesses. So I think making sure you’ve got the support, you’re not, you’re not doing it alone, you’re not you’re not trying to struggle with it, because it’s not only is it often not helpful, doesn’t doesn’t really work. But she has a personal toll on business owners as well. And we know that a lot of small and medium sized business owners, you know, again, mom and dad, business owners for lack of a better term. And it can be really taxing, I think, to try to deal with all of that on your own.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 21:08
Yeah, I agree. I was looking at the three legged stool for any kind of business owner entrepreneur, and it’s, you know, I think you need to have a business coach or mentor or experts that can help you if you don’t know that you need an operating system. That’s, of course, my specialty in terms of, you know, having that framework having the plans on what to do. And then you have peer groups as well. And I think the peer groups are really important, because they actually give you a bit of a sense of okay, I’m not going through this alone, I can share things with people in a similar situation, who can actually, you know, share their experiences and help me because I’ve been there done that. So I really highly recommend things like, you know, the Family Business Association for Family, businesses, entrepreneurs, organization, YPO, for for those kind of non family, familial businesses, yeah, any kind of peer group you can get yourself into, I think it’s a great idea that
Laurence Mc Lean 21:49
It’s really easy to start a business, it’s really hard to get it right. I think New Zealand has the easiest in the economy, at least anyway, it’s the easiest startup business here in New Zealand, I think it still is, I think it still is, yeah, from a regulatory point of view, at least that is an ongoing thing, making it making it survive and scaling that growth up. That’s the hard but yeah, and I think a lot of people get into business, and then kind of do realize how hard it is. And if you kind of do that, before you start the business, then you’re more likely to be successful moving forward.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:22
I agree. That whole 8020 thing, I think if we can spend 80% of our time, you know, making sure the business is running, that we’ve been profitable and sustainable, and the business is keeping its doors open, it’s really important. And we can use things like a scorecard and measurables to make sure that’s happening. But you’ve got to spend 20% of your time actually working on moving the business forward. Exactly. And that is I mean, so to give you some context for that, I always sort of say that’s, that’s one day a week, you know, one out of five days, you should be spending a whole day because nobody can do that. But it could be two hours a day, it could be two half days. That’s the kind of monitoring we should be doing. Having meetings where leadership team, making sure that we’re looking at the opportunities, looking how we can improve the way we do things, as opposed to just keep doing what we’re doing
Laurence Mc Lean 22:57
100% And that’s employers motto actually is building better businesses, we’re here to help those businesses succeed.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:04
Okay, so what what do you think you’re going to be working on this year? So what are the things that you think employee show is going to be some really, yeah, focus on
Laurence Mc Lean 23:12
Definitely the first half of the year, we’re focused on making sure that we’re informing and educating our clients and some of the changes that are coming down the line, there are lots of changes coming down the line, we don’t know the details of mystery, all the changes so far. But what we’re going to do is make sure that our clients have that information, they’ve got those, they’ve got that information ready to go. And they can, as we talked about before, have that plan ready to go, I think in the second half of the year is really going to be about making sure that our clients are being successful that they have the bandwidth to, to see that success. See those plans come to fruition, we work a lot in helping clients through various issues that they might have it from an employer relations, or a health and safety point of view. But we’re really focused on making sure that when a challenge does arise, as we talked about before, clients have that support there they can, they can work through that challenge, and then they can go on and continue on with their plan or continue on 60s. So it’s gonna be a bit of both, I think it’s gonna be a bit of a mix, we again, we don’t know exactly the changes that have come down the line, we’ve gone through a couple of times already now. So we kind of know that there’s often a big flurry and particularly during COVID, we were we were issuing updates to our clients almost every day to understand the changes that were happening and a lot of time, government wasn’t 100% clear on exactly what that change mentor exactly how our business was implemented, which is really tough if you’re a small, medium sized businesses trying to survive through those changes.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 24:33
Well, they didn’t know did they? I mean, none of us really know what to expect. I mean, you know, for example,
Laurence Mc Lean 24:36
Vaccination requirements came out and there was certain requirements, but actually, what that meant in reality was open to interpretation. And it’s only now what is it for three, four years later, they were actually really trying to see okay, the court say Oh, this is how you should have done it or should have been done this way, which is too late now for small, small medium sized businesses to do that, right. So we’re trying to make sure we give our clients options were key with them informed, they can make informed educated decisions about what’s gonna be best for their business. In the new environment, they’re gonna be worked out that it’s gonna exist this year. And then really just working with our clients to help them overcome the particular challenges that they face, you know, on a day to day basis. That’s
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:16
Right, because you’re there to support them in terms of the longer term stuff, but you also there when really, when the chips at the Be honest,
Laurence Mc Lean 25:23
You know, we were both the fence at the top of the cliff. Yep. And the evidence at the bottom as well. I mean, I always like to say sometimes with a parachute on the way down, if you’re if you’re in a crisis situation, and you’re having to deal with various issues, you want that support the air to have a softer landing as as possible to minimize the effects. And, you know, you could be the best business owner in the world, you could be 100% prepared and you still come into a crisis situation, doesn’t mean that you’ve done something wrong with the business. But it does mean that you need to make sure that you’re, you know, you’re embracing that challenge. You’re working through it, you’re getting that support, as we talked about, and that you’re trying to keep your business in the best position it possibly can be.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:59
Now, I know that you do some amazing seminars and things, don’t you, whenever anything changes, you’ve always got something coming out that can go along, too. So if you wanted to find out about that, I’m assuming they can find that on the website. That’s
Laurence Mc Lean 26:09
Right. Pleasure runs seminars for our clients. But we also run seminars for public as well. They want to learn more about minimum entitlements, definitely some of the changes that are coming down the track, we’ll be running sessions on that, for free open to any business that wants to join.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:23
That’s awesome. And other places they can find information. I’m assuming, again, your website, Scotland, we’ve got some great newsletters, you’ve got all kinds of we
Laurence Mc Lean 26:29
We’ve got lots of guides available exactly lots of guides available, if you’ve got a particular question, and you’re not quite sure exactly how something works, you can go onto website, you can access that for free. Well, you could always just give us a call as well, whether you’re a client or not a client will just give you some advice anyway, and putting in the right direction.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:44
Yeah, okay. So if you’re having a bit of an issue, you can give them a call, you’ll give them a bit of a sense of what is involved, they can either go, yep, we’ll work with you, or they’re golfing
Laurence Mc Lean 26:52
Just, exactly. And we’ll always give them something that they will point them in the right direction that will help them find the right answer or get them to that outcome that they’re trying to get to, you know, point relations is hard in New Zealand, you know, we work in a very, there’s a lot of obligations, probably more so than any other, again, Western nation and the world. New Zealand has an employee focused environment, and that’s by design, it’s not to say it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just the way that it is. And so as a business owner, you’ve got to make sure you’re prepared to work through that. And, and it can manifest itself in a number of different ways. And, you know, sometimes it’s just, there’s no way you could ever have known the answer to that. So making sure you get support, I think is really helpful.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:32
As you know, I’m an EOS that I work for is actually a global organization, and it started in the US. And so sometimes when they talk about, you know, if this isn’t working out, just get rid of them. Okay, maybe you can do that in America, we’re gonna live in both Australia and New Zealand, fairly similar in terms of its employment in
Laurence Mc Lean 27:48
Australia is a bit more focused on, you know, what they call modern awards, or prescribing the certain ways that people have to work, I would describe New Zealand as more of a, it’s a bit of black and white on the edges and a lot of gray in the middle, which is easier in some ways, because you’ve got more options, you’ve got more right ways in which you can achieve your outcome. That’s harder in other ways, because you don’t really know what you’re doing. There’s not a guide there to walk you through it like it is in Australia, but, you know, built from the same foundation, Australia and New Zealand, manifesting itself in slightly different ways, you know, these days.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 28:19
Perfect. And so you, are you showing your nerdiness them you obviously love this stuff. And it’s I think it’s important, I think one of the key things that you’ve said is that as a business owner, we don’t have to be good at everything. There are other people out there who can actually help us. And I’ve always said, you know, ask for help. It can feel embarrassing at the time, because you’re going on well, why don’t I know. But in actual fact, you like helping people, I like helping people. You know, everybody loves to get to help other people. And so why not ask people to give you that help. And you’re the nerd that loves? You said it, not me. But you know, those are the people and the legal stuff. I’m the nerd that loves a lot of business planning and how you manage people effectively in the business. So yeah, just reach out, most of us are happy to help in some way. And
Laurence Mc Lean 29:01
You know, whether it’s you know, we do Employment Relations and health and safety. There’s other organizations that do tax integration, there’s lots of different areas of business you can run to challenges on and sometimes it can feel like a lot of debt to go to all these places for these different types of help. But you kind of scale, if you’ve got a really in depth issue on a particular area, there’s always gonna be some group that’s going to be able to help you out with that for us at some point relations, but you know, no matter what the issue is, I guarantee there’s somebody out there that can help you out.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:25
Okay, great. I look, let’s just go through quickly three top tips. We’ve talked about planning support, what else would you say are the three things people should think about when it comes to employment particularly,
Laurence Mc Lean 29:34
I think it’s really focused on you know, continue that engagement with your employees. I know we talked about that. The last time I was here is having that open communication, engaging with your employees, making sure that they’re feeling the you know, they can see that plan you might have a plan but they might not know what it is and it might
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:51
Jump in here. So we always say that it took seven times for somebody heard it for the first time so you can never overshare but you’ve got some recent research informing us well why were they said that we’re The change in technology and all these different devices and things we have available that you think it’s about 35 times now before, he has it for the first time. And of course, it’s much smaller snippets of information we tend to absorb. So you think you’re doing a really great job community. But I’ve told you this three times, only another one, is it another 32 to go with something before they actually go for the first time? Yeah,
Laurence Mc Lean 30:21
I can. I can attest to that myself, as long as it takes me a lot of times before I really, you know, taken what I’m being told, basically, there’s a lot, you know, we live in a complex world these days. So there’s a lot to take in,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:31
So you can never over communicate. Absolutely, absolutely.
Laurence Mc Lean 30:34
I think the other and we’ve kind of talked about this a little bit that networking with with peer groups, or various organizations are going to help you making sure you’ve got the support structure in place, you’ve got those, you know, sometimes it’s a technical aspect, the legal aspect, sometimes it’s just emotional support aspect. I think having that network group can can be really beneficial for a lot of businesses. And it’s something that I think kiwis, particularly are not so great at sometimes networking, you know, myself included, but but when you do it, you can you can really see the benefits really quickly.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:04
Yeah, I know, I run a thing called connected communities here in Auckland. And that was all family sized businesses, insides of high growth businesses. And we don’t do much so much of the actual peer support stuff that you and FPA do. But we have a lot of get togethers and just the discussions that go on around a table with other people who are in a similar situation. That’s where the value really comes in. Because it I think it embeds you get to get taught some stuff where you learn some stuff from some of the experts. And then by having the discussions with your peers, it really helps you to understand how that applies to your business.
Laurence Mc Lean 31:33
Exactly. Yeah. And I think the last tip I probably give us is really leveraging technology. We do it at implosion, particularly, we’ve had some innovations that have really helped to make our employees lives better, you know, give them more tools to do their job better, which they love doing, but also helping our clients helping our customers, the outcomes that we’re achieving for our, for our businesses as well. And I think no matter how big or small your businesses is always technology that you can use, obviously different scales. And it does come with a bit of work, you know, some investments, but it can really be beneficial for other businesses to make sure you’ve got, you know, you’re using that technology to supplement or support or to accelerate that growth, it’s never going to be a solution in and of itself, you know, whether it’s AI or anything else. But it can be a really strong supplement, I think to accelerate that growth or getting you in that phase in the first place.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:21
And go with an open mind, right? Just don’t just want to have a curious child, I wonder what is possible.
Laurence Mc Lean 32:28
I couldn’t agree with it more actually. Because sometimes you’ll see one solution, and you just go with that. And, and you’re like, Oh, this is the only way I know about doing it. So this is where I’m gonna keep doing that. But things are innovating and changing and improving all the time. And, and we’ve been, you know, we have been beneficiaries of ourselves that employee, sure, but also for our clients by looking at things that we never thought about before. And sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. But the ones that do work, it’s like, well, that’s amazing. It’s helped us a lot.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:54
Yeah, perfect. Okay, great. If somebody wants to get in contact via we’ve already talked about offices, employer websites, employee short,
Laurence Mc Lean 32:59
Or short.co.nz. Perfect. You’re on Google. And I’m assuming
Debra Chantry-Taylor 33:03
In Australia, it’s dot com.au. Is that right? Okay, good. So Australian listeners as well. And then if they want to get in contact with you like to get ahold of you,
Laurence Mc Lean 33:10
I’m on LinkedIn, if somebody wants to reach out to me, whether it’s a client or a potential customer, or somebody that wants to come and work and, you know, join our company here at unemployable. But I’m often doing a lot of seminars, or webinars or podcasts like this, or other events where, where I’ll be around and people can can reach out to me and be in touch. But, you know, if you come to employ sure there’s, there’s another 150 of you basically, supporting for me, because, you know, there’s lots of people there that, you know, and it’s actually exciting that, you know, it’s to see people actually, you know, come with that passion that I have, and hopefully should hit me basically, that’s, that’s what I love to see. Yeah,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 33:50
I always joke. So in the US worldwide, we have implemented all around the globe. We’re up to 700 now, and it’s kinda like, can you imagine several versions of me, to me, it absolutely blows my mind as well. But it’s, it’s always fun to get together in a room with them. Because you’ve got 700 Truly business passionate people. And the energy is just phenomenal. So
Laurence Mc Lean 34:08
That’s a common value that we shared employee share. It’s about doing the right thing of making sure that we’re supporting our clients to be the best that they can be.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:14
That’s why we’re here. Look, thank you so much, again, for your time really appreciate it. Been a pleasure to talk to as always, no problem.
Laurence Mc Lean 34:40
Thanks for having me.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand
Certified EOS Implementer Australia
Certified EOS Implementer UK
Certified EOS Implementer NZ
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