Covering the blind spots.
By Pauline Stewart.
Trish Kilburn is the face of Employsure on the Coromandel Peninsula. She is the Business Development Manager in the Waikato which includes the Coromandel and leads seminars for small and medium size businesses as well as consults with them, on just about every matter that can arise between employers and employees. She will be in Whitianga leading a seminar on Wednesday, 12 July.
“I always say to my clients, ‘It’s better to have a policy and not need it then to need it and not have one,’ “says Trish. “Employees (and Employers) mostly need boundaries and guidelines, and if there are no boundaries; it means that there can be misunderstandings and tensions that will affect others and, in the end, hurt the business. Business owners don’t always understand the financial cost of having an unproductive employee whether that’s excessive leave or whether that’s too much phone or haphazard reasons for taking time off. They get too busy with too much to do. Busyness or ignorance are no excuse to not get these matters in place.”
Trish explains that the core focus of Employsure’s work is businesses employing from one to 20 people. For this size business, it is not viable to have a HR person on staff. “We can be the outsourced HR person for companies. From our experience, we know that if a small company gets the process wrong, it can be very costly to put things right.”
Trish, through Employsure, enables employers to have all the necessary policies and agreements for their particular work environment and business to be written down so there is no misunderstandings. “Verbals do not work over a long period of time. It has to be written down. Key ‘need-to-be-written-down’ policies would be things around social media, phones, absenteeism, the details around taking annual leave or sick leave,” says Trish.
“What I like about this role is the feeling of knowing that I am helping small business owners get legislation right, to know their obligations and to manage the obligations in a sustainable way.
We are currently four years into a ten-year employment relations reform. It’s complicated and complex and it helps some companies to pass that over to a company like Employsure.
Trish looks forward to seeing many businesses represented at the seminar at Aotearoa Lodge and Conference Centre.
Caption: Angus Campbell of Anchor works with Employsure. “It is like having an insurance policy and a framework that gives both employer and employee confidence and a sense of security,” says Angus.