Short on staff and a strategy
SMEs (small to medium enterprises) make up 97% of all businesses in New Zealand and are the backbone of the country. They keep us going.
Every day, we see and hear about sectors struggling to find workers. When we talk with other businesses around the country, they all report the awful situation of trying to find new staff and, as we have experienced, hiring workers at the living wage and losing them in short order.
The official unemployment rate in the first quarter was 3.2%, or fewer than 100,000 people, but the number on Jobseeker benefits in March was 177,642. The government tells us we should be hiring more New Zealanders, but guess what: they aren’t there. It has been three years since our business achieved a full
