Editorial

Barbara Nebel, CEO, thinkstep-anz This year has seen a significant rise in consumer concern around environmental and social issues, and a corresponding demand for better information about products and business practices. Colmar Brunton’s Better Futures report[1] in February found that New Zealanders had the highest levels of concern about climate change in a decade, but also that how companies talk about their social and environmental commitments is confusing. The In Good Company report[2] in November – commissioned by the Sustainable Business Council, Porter Novelli and Perceptive – found that New Zealanders wanted more transparent communication on sustainability from all industries and considered sustainability in their purchase decisions. It is more important than ever for manufacturers to be able to tell the story of product sustainability. We look back at how government and businesses alike have stepped up to this challenge. Government changes  Single-use plastic bags were banned from July this year, signalling a watershed moment for plastics use. The Government has recently announced[3] the next steps to tackle plastic waste, starting with moving from single-use packaging and containers made of hard-to-recycle PVC and polystyrene, towards high-value alternatives like HDPE and polypropylene. In November, New Zealand made headlines overseas as the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill passed with cross-party support, committing the country to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050. The passage of this bill gives businesses certainty of the long-term framework for reducing emissions and will make it easier for them to plan their own transition. The Ministry for the Environment, accredited product stewardship managers and the Sustainable Business Network have collaborated on Fuji Xerox’s roadmap[4] to develop a product stewardship scheme. Companies and other organisations participating in accredited product stewardship schemes have diverted more than 1/3 million tonnes of waste from landfill to date. How are companies responding? […]

-Gemma Stanbridge, ViAGO International Limited Are the managers in your company empowering employees to pursue their broader passions, skills, and experience? Or are they pigeon-holing employees into a box defined by their current job title, taking them at face value of their job title, and restricting further development? These latter rigid typecasting behaviours serve only to limit employees from reaching their full potential and they discourage initiative and innovation within a company. An artificial limit is imposed on the value an employee can provide because the additional strengths or skills the employee has which are not required for the specific position are overlooked. Jack Stack, author of The Great Game of Business, shares in his introduction to the new edition, a story of a company he worked for where a drill press operator was actually a self-made millionaire who had built his wealth through real estate investments. “Here was this incredible entrepreneur working under our noses and all I had this guy doing was drilling holes. What a wasted opportunity.” Stack and the company failed to use the drill press operator’s full range of talents, asking the operator to only think about drilling the perfect hole, not about how they could build a better company. Why did this happen, and why does this still happen today, over 20 years later? Managers or recruiters look for and hire people to do a specific job or position that needs to be filled. Upon employment, the employee is labelled with their specific job title and job description. Managers (and even other employees) are often blinded by job titles, only giving each employee as much information as they feel is needed for their respective job title. Typically, operational and strategic decisions are handled by the appropriate higher managerial function and so many employees are […]