Here for good: What new arrivals need to fit in, be productive and stay by Jenny Magee.
Does your company advertise and recruit offshore for skilled staff? Then Here For Good is the book is for you. New Zealand employers are increasingly searching overseas for skilled employees. It’s a costly and protracted process to find the best people who are willing to move their lives and their families across the world. Helping those staff settle well is not only good business sense, but it’s also the right thing to do if you want them to thrive and to stay. The onboarding processes you’re using for locally hired staff simply aren’t enough to help newcomers to understand and adjust to Kiwi culture. While providing relocation support is standard practice for multi-national companies, most smaller businesses are leaving the essential learnings about culture, communication and connections to the individual or to chance. These same businesses are then left wondering why there is miscommunication and misunderstanding. Here For Good is a call to action for New Zealand SMEs, who, with the best of intentions, are leaving their new arrivals to sink or swim, hoping that well-meaning colleagues will fill in the gaps about ‘how we do things around here.’ Drawing on more than 30 years of working across cultures in New Zealand, Jenny Magee offers practical advice for you to help your new staff to settle in, get quickly up to speed and stay. She has worked with many businesses and migrant employees, whose settlement experiences range from the cautionary to the positive. Choosing to come to New Zealand is definitely about the job, but also, importantly about lifestyle, safety and a host of other reasons. When businesses help new staff, and their families, to understand local culture and communication and to build connections, everyone benefits - the new arrival, their manager, the team, the clients, as well as your organisation’s reputation as a great reason to move across the world. For more information about supporting migrant employees and strengthening multicultural teams, visit www.jennymagee.com