Case study: The Workplace Wellbeing project

The Workplace Wellbeing project seeks to value and support employment in the tangata whenua, community and voluntary sector through workshops across the country.  The workshops have provided:

• practical skills about effective employment relationships
• opportunities to gather input on development of sector specific resources
• discussion of strategic issues about employment in the sector.

The project involves collaboration between the New Zealand Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations (NZFVWO), the New Zealand Council of Social Services (NZCOSS), the Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU), Community Waikato, and the Department of Labour (DoL).

Employment issues are important for the voluntary sector on a number of levels. Concerns have been raised in many ways over time about poor practices, the lack of employment experience and skills of committees, and low salaries in comparison to other sectors.

Over last two years, the NZFVWO has been involved with other voluntary and government agencies in providing workshops and presentations on a variety of topics for voluntary organisations throughout New Zealand. As well as being useful consultation exercises, these events have established strong communication channels between a range of organisations. Sector networks and umbrella organisations have been strengthened at both local and national levels.

Common ground and different perspectives around employment issues were identified by discussions between three voluntary organisations:

• Community Waikato ran several successful employment workshops with local mediators. They suggested such workshops would be of value in other places.  NZFVWO met with them and the team leader of the mediators to discuss and agree in principle.
• At same time, a senior advisor at Community Waikato undertook research as part of postgraduate study, identifying a number of issues about employment practices for managers of voluntary organisations.
• NZFVWO published its Personnel Practices manual for voluntary organisations in the 1980s and the idea of an updated resource was raised on several occasions. After talking with mediators, an online survey about employment issues was run to gauge interest in a joint project. This survey identified significant interest in training and resources for voluntary organisations, and a list of organisations willing to host such workshops.
• NZCOSS identified issues important across its networks. Issues of pay equity had been informally discussed, and an approach made to Mercer (now Strategic Pay) about tailoring their remuneration survey more specifically to smaller organisations.
• These organisations jointly met with Dept of Labour mediators, who agreed to be involved in project to run workshops across the country. The format and resources developed by Community Waikato provided a useful template.

Seven workshops were run from September 2006 to June 2007 in Hamilton, Hutt Valley, Auckland, Christchurch, New Plymouth, Stratford, and North Shore.

A flier outlining details was distributed by both the local organisations and national umbrella groups. Local groups organised the venue, catering and welcome, and hosted the forums on the day.

A standard outline was developed for the workshops, and these were delivered by a local mediator from DoL and at least one facilitator from the three voluntary organisation umbrella groups. In total over these workshops, five mediators and four umbrella group staff were involved.

At the NZCOSS conference in October 2006 a further workshop was run to discuss the project. This initial work was done within existing resources of the organisations.

Initial discussions with union contacts revealed a contestable fund for employment relations education at DoL. An unsuccessful application was made in 2006.

In 2007 the project team met with the national organiser of the Service & Food Workers Union and they agreed to be involved in the project – and supported a more comprehensive application to the 2007 funding round for this grant. A further successful application was made in 2008.

This enabled the project team to employ a project manager, who set up and facilitated another 13 workshops over 2007/08 and progressed discussions about resources and other strategic actions. Local SFWU organisers attended nearly all the workshops in 2008, in addition to the mediators and umbrella group staff.

The project has now developed a resource kit of guidelines about good employment practice in the sector, based on the experience and discussions at these workshops.

The team also initiated several discussions about sector-wide strategies for improved practices - working with Strategic Pay to make the remuneration survey available to smaller organisations,  arranging a national visit of an organiser for UNISON (a Scottish union working in the sector in Scotland), and presented this work at the ANZSTR conference in November 2008.

This project is a strong demonstration of several important elements of engagement between government and the sector. The project has developed knowledge and understanding about a complex subject for all the involved parties, and works in ways that are mutually beneficial:

• For the government department:
  Direct access to a sector which they had identified as wanting to better serve
• Local voluntary organisations:
  Provides excellent, relevant information and training and an opportunity to discuss their needs and what else could be done
• Local networking organisations:
  Strengthens local networks and builds their role in local communities
• National umbrella groups:
  Provides the national umbrella groups with considerable first hand information about community needs as a basis for further actions and strategising
• SFWU:
  Initiated discussion about the role of unions in a sector that is not well served at present and hard to reach.

Case study uploaded December 2008.