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Acquaint The Newcomer To The Workplace

"Employing anyone is an investment, and you want to take care of your investment the best that you can." Cath Randall, Grow Wellington

Acquainting the newcomer with the work environment is part of the recruitment process. Lose your new recruit at this stage in the recruitment process and your investment will be wasted.


Familiarise the new recruit with your workplace culture

New Zealand workplace can be generally described as relaxed and informal with a ‘do it yourself’ culture. Each organisation has its own set of ‘rules’ that can be best described as ‘the way we do things around here.’ Some of these behaviours may seem puzzling to an outsider. Familiarise your new recruit with your organisational culture so that they can respond appropriately.

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Share your local knowledge

A newcomer may bring international experience, new skills, different languages and perspectives but will need local knowledge and networks to make best use of their ability in a New Zealand context. Share your local knowledge by introducing the newcomer to your professional and social networks. Allow the newcomer to learn through observation by shadowing your attendance at client meetings and relevant events.

Provide ongoing support

Providing a buddy to new employees during the early stages of employment will give them social support as well as help them acclimatise to your organisation’s culture.

Additional language support may be required for newcomers where English is a second language so that they improve their fluency as well as become familiar with ‘Kiwi English’.

Learn about each other’s cultures

Building a diverse workforce will require adjustment from both sides. What one may regard as ‘normal’, others may see as ‘foreign’, and vice versa. Learn about each other’s cultures, the similarities and the differences, different ways of doing the same thing. There should be acceptance by everyone in the organisation, that no one can claim that their culture is better than another. Missing the importance of this principle can often lead to conflict.

Keep the communication channels open and clarify issues before they lead to misunderstanding. Everyone should feel valued and listened to. The Office of Ethnic Affairs has developed a programme in intercultural awareness and communication to help with this process.

A welcome that works – retaining skilled migrants in your workplace, offers advice to employers about how to make it easier for their skilled migrant employees to settle in New Zealand.

Educating each other

We’d like to leave you with some stories that capture the willingness and flexibility of employers and newcomers to work together in New Zealand. This publication Brain Gain: Migrant Workers in New Zealand (.pdf 960k), published by the Human Rights Commission, includes a Top 10 check list for employers of migrants that have come from a wide variety of employers in industry sectors such as dairying, bakery, accountancy, local government, public service and the hospitality industry throughout New Zealand.

This document is in a pdf format. You need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. You can download a free version from the Adobe site.