Opinion

When going through a formal disciplinary process with an employee is it important to provide them with all relevant information relating to the offending action, at the earliest opportunity. A case in point is that of Mr Bailey who was employed by PTS Logistics as a casual, on-call truck driver. He claimed he was unjustifiably dismissed after an incident with the police on August 6 in 2011. Bailey would drive from one region to another, including between the North and South Islands. On one of the trips, he received permission from his manager to stay two nights in Taupo in order to attend his daughter’s 18th birthday party on August 5 that year. On the morning after the party Bailey

Magic Memories took out three award categories and the Supreme Award at the NZ International Business Awards. Catherine Beard has their story.   John Wikstrom has spent the last 20 years building up an award-winning international business selling a unique yet universal currency – smiles. Magic Memories captures people enjoying their unique experience of visitor attractions around the world, from Queenstown to London and various places in between. The concept is clever yet simple: “A smile is infectious, it is universal and it is at the very heart of what we do” – and the product has evolved to take advantage of cutting edge technology. I caught up with John just before the 2015 NZ International Business Awards, where Magic Memories

Every small business owner knows the feeling when you have to make a critical decision outside your everyday operational experience. Will adding an extra employee increase productivity or reduce profitability? How should you best meet the challenge of a new competitor? Why are sales increasing but profits reducing? For some people, these decisions are what makes business an enjoyable challenge, but for many, the excitement is tempered by the knowledge that they’ve their house on the line if they get it wrong. So how would it be if you could call on someone who had seen others face the same issues and knew the solutions that worked? I’m not talking about a business coach or mentor with experience of the issues all

Philippa O’Mara explains the principles behind business growth, and which levers are most effective. There’s a great deal of talk at the moment about the economy growing and businesses with it.  Understanding the principles behind business growth is important, whether you are trying to grow, planning how to grow faster, or even trying to keep control of growth. Good growth is always the best growth, after all. Let’s define growth as ‘increasing profit’. If you’re looking to grow profit then there’re only two options: increase revenue or decrease costs. Growth is only good if the business maintains its gross profit, otherwise sales may be growing while the business runs out of cash. Let’s deal with decreasing costs first. There are

  Most individual employment agreements (IEAs) state that where an employee fails to give the full contractual notice period when resigning, the employee forfeits the equivalent wages/salary for that period of notice not given. In addition in this circumstance, that amount of money can be deducted from their final pay. The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) case of Livingston v GL Freeman Holdings dealt with the issue of whether deducting the portion of a notice period not worked by an employee was a penalty or compensation for breach of the agreement. Ms Livingston was employed as a receptionist by GL Freeman Holdings, owner-operator of the Redwood Hotel in Christchurch. Clause 12.1 of her IEA provided: “Employment may be terminated by either

Every behaviour in which an organisation engages has a marketing effect. Plan for it or pay the price, says Brian H Meredith. Vodafone blocked my mobile again today for a late monthly bill payment, despite the complete lack of a reminder or any warning.Spark (nee Telecom) had yet another network crash last week – a trend which has become too common.Despite Vector’s promise to the contrary, our last heavy wind and rain bout was yesterday and we had yet another power cut.Data suggests that less than ten percent of traffic accidents have speed as a factor. Yet it seems the police continue to concentrate a very substantial percentage of their resources on speed. Worse, this results in little or no