Month: February 2026

The first few months in a new role are an important period for both employees and employers. It’s a time to settle in, understand expectations, and see how well the employment fit works in practice.  Many employers use trial or probationary periods at this stage to help assess fit before making a long-term employment commitment, but the two are not the same, and getting them wrong can create unnecessary legal risks.

Here’s a clear, practical overview of how each works under New Zealand employment law.

Trial Periods

A 90‑day trial period can only be used for new employees who have never worked for the employer before. When valid, it allows an employer to dismiss an employee within the first 90 calendar days without the employee being able to raise a personal grievance for unjustified dismissal.

However, trial periods only apply if everything is done correctly. They must:

• Be clearly outlined in the employment agreement
• Be signed before the employee starts work
• Be agreed after the employee has had a reasonable opportunity to seek independent advice

If any of these steps are missed, the trial period may be deemed invalid.

It’s also important to remember that if an employer chooses to enact a 90-day trial period clause they must provide the notice period stated in the agreement (or reasonable notice if none is specified) and other personal grievance rights such as discrimination or harassment continue to apply.

Probationary Periods

A probationary period is a set evaluation timeframe used to assess an employee’s performance or suitability and can apply to both new and existing employees.

There is no set maximum length for a probation period, although it must be reasonable (three months is a common duration). Unlike trial periods, probationary periods do not remove the right to raise a personal grievance.

That means if performance or suitability concerns arise, employers must follow a fair process.  This includes:

• Clearly explaining expectations and concerns
• Providing regular feedback
• Offering support or training where appropriate
• Giving the employee a genuine opportunity to improve

If after following the above steps there are still performance or suitability concerns, employers should clearly outline the reasons for considering an end to employment, supported by appropriate information, and give the employee a genuine chance to provide their feedback. While a probation period does not offer the same protections as a 90‑day trial period, following a fair and reasonable process can still allow decisions to be made efficiently, without the need for a drawn‑out process.

The key when it comes to trial periods and probationary periods is not just which option you choose, but how well you manage it. Clear agreements, early conversations, and consistent feedback during the first 90 days can significantly reduce risk and set up stronger employment relationships from the start.

With unemployment rising to 5.4%, a slow economic recovery and the Government racing to make changes in legislation before the end of their term, 2026 is looking like it will be an interesting year in the HR space.

“Employees are a company’s greatest asset – they’re your competitive advantage.”

Anne M Mulcahy, Former CEO of Xerox Corporation.

This may be the case, but employees don’t become your greatest asset just by walking in the door.

It takes management effort, focus and a strong understanding of the environment to fully realise the competitive advantage your team can create.

Aside from the legislative changes, what other HR trends should you be considering in 2026?

Our top picks are:

Playing AI Catch up

The use of AI is everywhere now, across every Industry and role. So why aren’t we seeing the productivity gains that AI promised? Many employees and businesses have moved to adopt AI into roles yet haven’t considered what the positive benefits could be.

Are your team doing more in less time? Are they improving productivity? Can you do more with less people, reducing cost? What do you want AI to be used for and what don’t you want it used for? How do you protect data security and privacy?

This year the focus needs to be not just on using AI but on harvesting the benefits.

A renewed Engagement & Employee Wellness focus

With many businesses having been in survival mode for the past few years, the “nice to have” around engagement had gone on the back burner. The result of this is often a passive, unenthusiastic team, negatively impacting results.

Most businesses are right sized now so it is time to refocus on building high performing, highly engaged teams. You may be working with smaller budgets and teams with different needs, so really understanding their drivers and being creative is essential.

Providing essential support for this is having an Employee Wellbeing program.

Outcome based accountability

Accountability is a word we heard a lot in 2025, with more and more leaders wanting it from their team – but not knowing how to get it.

So, what exactly do you mean by accountability? Have you articulated this? Does your team know what they are accountable for? Do your team actually know how to be accountable for expected results? Do you have the systems in place to make this crystal clear and then manage your team accordingly?

This will be shift in leadership style for some, and a change to their way of working for your team. Being deliberate and focused on outcomes will bring about the change you need.

Leadership and Power skills become imperative

As automation, AI and data reshapes the way we work, there is an increasing awareness of the importance of the human centred power skills like leadership, communication, motivation and conflict management.

These power skills are not just complementary to technical skills; they are essential for a thriving business. Can you inspire your team to come on the journey? Can your leaders lead through change?

Communication, adaptability and resilience are all key skills for improving retention and performance, and they are essential for effectively leading your team today.

Salary pressure

Cost of living pressure is still a reality. After several years of stagnant salaries, many employees are looking for significant increases. This conflicts with the business pressure of keeping costs tight. This dynamic can foster dissatisfaction.

Add in pay transparency and a flooded labour market and you may find that some of your team can’t move and so become your silent quitters. Having a well thought out salary strategy which is transparent, well communicated and focused on retaining talent should be an essential part of your HR strategy in 2026.

Continuous Learning and Career Pathing

Ensure that your workplace environment has a continuous learning system to provide new learning opportunities for everyone. This type of feeder system is essential for retention as it opens up internal career path opportunities for talented employees.

Positive People have over 30 years helping businesses establish their HR Strategies and HR Plans.

Contact us now to discuss your HR plan for 2026.

With 2026 already shaping up to be a year that gives us the unexpected, having a team that is resilient, adaptable and on board with your vision is a must.

So, as we return to work and start on our 2026 goals, it is a good time to consider your people – what you need from them in the year ahead and if you are providing the right environment for them to successfully deliver?

Having an HR plan which is aligned to your business plan makes good sense. It focuses you on the right improvement areas, mitigates risk and potential derailers, and will help your team to thrive.

Choosing the right areas to hone in on is harder than it seems, particularly if you want to do it all well.

Outlined below are a few priority areas to get you started on developing a value-added HR Plan.

Growth

If 2026 is a year of growth for your business, consider:

• Succession Planning and talent management – With growth comes opportunity for your team. Have you identified your future leaders? Do you have key talent in place, so you don’t get slowed down by turnover? Promoting internally is a safer bet than external hiring. It is more cost effective and you achieve better productivity faster.
• Employment Brand – If you need to recruit, will people want to work for your organisation? What is your reputation in the marketplace and are you offering the right salary, benefits and a workplace that will secure talent? Focusing on this in advance will make sure you are an attractive employment proposition and help secure great people when you need them.
• Recruitment and selection systems – Are your systems set up to get the right people for your culture and team? Do you have appropriate checks and balances in place while ensuring a great candidate experience? A bad recruitment decision will inevitably cost you and your business, so having a great process ready to go is essential.
• On-boarding – Once you bring a talented new team member on board, how quickly do they start contributing? How well connected are they to your brand? Getting on boarding right not only reduces turnover, it also gets new team members firing and ready to go a lot quicker.

Productivity Improvement

For some businesses this year may be about stability, with the focus on doing things better. If that’s you, we suggest thinking about:

• Performance management frameworks – Are your team really clear on their accountabilities? Do they know how they are performing and what areas to improve? Are these conversations motivating and forward looking? Your team cannot be more productive unless they know what you want and how to do it, so mastering these conversations and process is essential.
• Learning and Development plans – A sure-fire way to improve performance is to give your team new skills and knowledge so they can do things better, and perhaps differently. Does each team member have a development plan in place? This doesn’t mean signing up to long expensive external courses. Look for local options, short or virtual courses, internal mentoring – even a well-developed podcast can bring about a light bulb moment.
• Continuous Improvement – Generally, to be more productive, your team will need to do things slightly differently. Improve a process, reduce wastage, cut out unnecessary red tape. Do you encourage this? How does your team go about making a suggestion? And how do you ensure it is acted upon? You would be surprised how much even a small change can improve your business – and the best ideas come from the people doing the work!
• Engagement – A key part of your team improving their performance is having them “want” to do better. You want them committed and walking forwards alongside you, not being dragged. Do you know how engaged they are? Do you know what areas of the business they would like improved? If not, it is time to ask and to work with your team to bring them on the journey.

Retrenchment or realignment

We understand some businesses still need to “right size” or make some internal changes so that you have the right people in the right roles. If this is something you are thinking about, now is the time to focus on:

• Change readiness – Even a small change at work can throw some people into a tailspin and have a very negative impact on results. If you know change is coming, take the time to prepare your team. Normalise change, talk about it, encourage small changes and highlight the benefits. Listen to your team and involve them in decision making.
• Communication plans – A key mantra we live by with communicating to teams is to communicate messages three times in different ways, to ensure the message is received. I know we have all heard “I never knew that”, even though it was on an all staff email the week before. Strong communication will ensure your team understand the reasons for change. It will create trust and encourage collaboration – all of which will improve your business resilience.

“You don’t build a business, you build people, then people build a business. “

Zig Ziglar.

Positive People have over 30 years’ experience helping business get the best from their teams.

 Call us now on 0800 00 00 49 or email us on info@positivepeople.co.nz to discuss your 2026 HR plan.

With the economy remaining sluggish, the pressure is increasing to improve results – for both our country and our businesses.

As part of this drive for results, it is normal to start asking for more from your team. Asking them to step up, asking them to deliver more and asking them to take more accountability for results.

But what are we asking for here? What do we mean by accountability and how do we get it?

Accountability is defined as:

“Committing to doing what you say you will. It is about taking ownership of your work, your actions and delivering the required outcomes.”

Having a team that understands and fully embraces personal accountability will make a big difference to your business. It means an outcome focus, increased ownership of results and stronger resilience as a team. And it is a skill and attitude that can be developed and strengthened with the right plan in place.

1. Reframe accountability

Often when we talk about accountability, it’s in a punitive sense – “You need to show more accountability”, “Why don’t my team show accountability?”

Accountability is actually a positive skill. People who have this competency achieve their goals in life and are more successful. They understand what is important, overcome challenges and take the required actions to achieve the things they want.

Helping your team to fully understand what accountability is will make a big impact in gaining their commitment.

2. Define accountabilities clearly

Do your staff really know what they are accountable for? Is their understanding the same as yours? Have they confused just completing tasks with actually taking full accountability for them?

Imagine a Sales Manager who thinks he’s performed well because he has completed the required number of calls, even though he hasn’t met the sales targets. He is accountable for meeting the sales budget, and the calls are one step to take to help achieve this. However, confusing the two creates misunderstanding and poor performance.

3. Do they know what actions to take to improve their accountability?

Taking accountability doesn’t mean you achieve everything you want to. In fact, being good at accountability is also around your behavior and actions when things aren’t heading in the right direction. You should encourage:

• Investigating solutions, not finding problems – There is always a reason for things to go wrong, and it’s easy to stop there. We didn’t achieve X because of Y, and that’s it. Taking accountability is about asking how we solve Y and still focusing on delivering on X.
• Eliminate blame – “I couldn’t do it because no one got me the information on time”. How often do you hear statements like that around the office? If you have an area of accountability, it sits squarely on your shoulders to achieve the required outcomes. Encourage your team to remove the finger pointing and focus their energy on actions and results.
• Verifying your role – Looking at our contribution to problems or issues is difficult. However, it is essential for growing and developing. Practice asking your team “How did you contribute to this problem and what could you do differently in the future?” This helps them to honestly assess themselves and improve accountability.
• Extract lessons – Achieving the outcomes you want in your areas of accountability might take several goes. Key is extracting the lesson and applying this learning until you get it right. Accountability is about not letting it go. You keep trying until you succeed.

Having accountability as a core strength for everyone in your business will improve their results at work and outside the office.

“Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to the result.”

Bob Proctor.

Positive People has over 30 years’ experience helping businesses to build high performing cultures. If you need help with building accountability in your business call us now on 0800 49 00 00 or email us at info@positivepeople.co.nz.  

Employment Policies. – not the most exciting part of the HR remit, but certainly one of the most essential and foundational pieces.

We are often asked to help with an ER issue, where the answer seems clear cut. For example, Sally in Marketing has been making expense claims without providing receipts. One of the first questions we ask is “What does your expenses policy say?”

Quite often there isn’t one.

Then it becomes complicated. Is Sally in the wrong if this hasn’t been outlined to her? Can you rely on the opinion that this would be common sense or that you had a verbal conversation about this with her when she started?

Suddenly not quite so clear cut!

Having the right policies in place isn’t just about being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, there to rely on when things go wrong. If they are well written and well communicated, policies set clear expectations, prevent problems before the occur, and help the workplace run smoothly.

To be truly effective think about these key things:

1. Do your policies cover off the basics of Employment Legislation?

Whilst policies are internal bespoke documents to guide workplace behaviours, they also serve to outline at least the minimum requirements under relevant employment law. In this way they assist organisations to steer clear of falling foul of the law. This is obviously important.

2. Do you have policies to cover what you need to?

Making sure that you have the right polices in place is important. This doesn’t mean that you have you have policies for absolutely everything, but it does mean that you need to have the essential ones in place.

3. Are your policies fit for purpose, and do you have the systems and processes to support them?

It’s all very well having an Expense policy, but if it outlines that your team need to complete a monthly expense form, then you need to have an accessible form available. Otherwise, how do they adhere to your policy? Check that the forms and processes work in practice and have the supporting information required to make it easy for your staff to adhere to the policy.

4. Communicate widely

You cannot expect your team to follow a policy when they don’t know what it is. Making sure a proper explanation of the relevant policies form part of your On-Boarding process is critical. Equally, continued education can be helpful for your team. Do you do reminders? Annual refreshers? Training when you make policy changes? These things keep the expectations top of mind and ensure the policies are put into practice.

5. Consider drafting “Key Points” briefs

Policies can often become long, with the scope, definition and escalation points. Think about your workforce and the level of literacy you have. While you may understand them, do they? Writing in plain English or having a short version with the points critical to your team helps to make sure everyone understands what is expected of them.

6. Ensure they are accessible

It’s quite common for us to hear “we have that policy somewhere”, and then it is produced from some deep dark corner of an intranet. If you can’t find it, how will your team? These aren’t confidential documents which must be hidden. They should be live reference points for the team so they can check when they have questions and get guidance on what’s expected when they need it.

Strong policies don’t just manage risk – they build a foundation for a positive, productive workplace culture. They turn your expectations into action, building clarity, fairness and trust.

Positive People have over 30 years helping organisations build strong foundations. Call us now on 0800 00 00 49 or email us at info@positivepeople.co.nz  for support in introducing or updating polices.

No-one wants bullying in their workplace.

Most of us would have worked with someone at some stage in our career who would be classified as a bully. We all know how destructive and demoralising bullying can be.

It is right to take bullying seriously and take a firm line with it at work.

But what about when that line gets blurred?

Over the past several years we have seen a marked increase in workplace bullying complaints.

In many of the cases, after a thorough investigation, the threshold for bullying has NOT been reached.

There may have been a frustrated comment, some relationship issues or a misunderstanding. All of which could have been solved in a quicker, more effective manner than lodging a complaint.

So how do you get this right? How do you make sure you encourage your team to come forward when bullying is occurring without encouraging complaints for every little comment they don’t like coming their way?

Education and prevention are key!

1. Education annually

Most businesses will have a bullying and harassment policy in place, which is a great starting point. But does that mean your team actually read and understand it?

Do they know the difference between bullying and the legitimate managing of performance? Or bullying and a one-off frustrated vent?

Once someone formally raises a concern as bullying you do have to investigate. This is usually very time consuming, costly and can result in counter complaints if the original complaint isn’t upheld. It can get messy.

Holding annual training sessions around bullying and harassment can result in people correcting their own behaviour and it can also help your team to understand what bullying is, and equally important, what bullying isn’t.

2. Bullying Complaint checklist

Having a checklist your team can use to make a formal complaint also helps them to process what it is that is worrying them and reflect on it as part of the complaint process.

Answering questions like: “the behaviour is repeated because…” or “the behaviour is endangering my health and safety because…” can help your team to understand if bullying has occurred or not. It also helps you to triage any complaints you do receive, as some behaviours may not align with your values or breach your code of conduct, but do not reach the threshold of bullying.

This helps provide you with a proper understanding of exactly what you are dealing with and approach it accordingly.

3. Mediation skills

Using education to empower your team with the skills to solve their own relationship problems at work is helpful to catch things before they escalate too far.

Utilising a clear feedback model that focuses on the behaviour or action, the impact it has had and the change they would like to see can keep the conversations constructive, stop them from becoming too personal and solve problems early.

Encouraging your team to listen and take feedback on board is equally important.

In 90% of workplace relationship issues, team members don’t want to make someone else feel bad, they are just not aware of the negative impact their behaviour is having. If you arm your team with the skills to manage these situations themselves it makes for a happier, more connected team.

In any workplace conflict will arise. Different personalities, values, experiences and stress levels converge.

Managing through this can be challenging, so education and early intervention is key!

Positive People have over 30 years’ experience helping manage workplace conflict and bullying and educating teams. Call us now on 0800 00 00 49 or email us at info@positivepeople.co.nz to help you successfully navigate bullying complaints.