Employers
Employer’s approach to ethical and sustainable work practices
Information for employers to help you ensure you treat employees lawfully and fairly.
As an employer, you must comply with employment standards, which are an essential foundation for ethical and sustainable work practices. ‘Ethical and sustainable work practices’ means treating workers lawfully and in a fair and decent way that can be maintained over time. It’s avoiding practices that contribute to worker harm and exploitation.
Find out more about ethical and sustainable work practices:
Why ethical and sustainable work practices are important for employers
Your duties
As an employer, you must give your employees their minimum employment rights under the law.
Employer rights and responsibilities
Employee rights and responsibilities
If you are a labour-hire or temping agency and your employee is working in a client’s business, it’s still your responsibility to make sure they are treated fairly in the workplace.
On the other hand, if an employee of another employer is working under your direction, you could be liable if your actions contribute to that employee being treated unfairly.
The Labour Inspectorate help ensure that employers comply with employment standards. Labour Inspectors investigate potential breaches of employment standards and complaints. They also proactively audit employers where they identify high risks, for example, not paying the minimum wage. Inspectors can take legal action to make employers correct problems and can take them to the Employment Relations Authority and courts. Find out more:
Business risk
Treating your employees lawfully and fairly makes business sense and protects you against risks like:
- losing access to suppliers and markets — some suppliers, countries or sectors may not want to trade with organisations that have poor work practices
- damaging your organisation’s and product’s reputation through negative publicity. This could reduce revenue, profit, financial viability and market value
- missing out on investment and insurance because investors and insurers might not want to associate with organisations that have poor employment practices
- being unable to attract and retain good workers
- not achieving your organisation’s potential for productivity
- creating unfair competition within industries, which contributes to poor business models
- negatively affecting the health, safety and wellbeing of the workforce.
You should take steps to:
- check your organisation has ethical and sustainable work practices and is complying with employment law, and
- address any risks of worker exploitation or poor work practices in your organisation.
Check you have ethical and sustainable work practices
As an employer, you should proactively look for risks of worker exploitation and non-compliance with employment law in your organisation.
Check positioning statements
Start by examining what your vision, mission and values statements say about how your organisation values and treats employees. These statements set the scene for everything that happens in your organisation, so it’s important that they are clear and meaningful.
Check compliance with employment standards
Check you’re complying with employment standards by completing the 'Employment standards: employer self-assessment checklist'. This checklist helps you assess your compliance with employment standards and work out what actions you may need to take.
Employer self-assessment checklist [PDF, 654 KB]
The 'Employment standards: employer self-assessment guide' has supporting information to help you complete the checklist.
Employer self-assessment guide [PDF, 934 KB]
Other things to check
In addition to employment standards, employers have other legal responsibilities. We’ve listed some of these below, including what to check for. As well as completing the self-assessment checklist for compliance with employment standards, you should:
- make sure your contractors are really contractors and not employees. For example, how much do you control their working arrangements? For more information see Employee or contractor?
- check that employees’ work patterns match their contracts. For example, are casual employees actually working regular hours? Do you have a genuine reason to employ someone on a fixed-term contract instead of a permanent one? For more information see Types of worker.
- make sure employees are legally allowed to work in New Zealand. Use Immigration New Zealand’s online VisaView tool to check visa information if you need to.
- make sure you allow employees to join unions if they want to, and allow them to go to at least 2 union meetings a year. Also make sure you do not discriminate against an employee because they are, or are not, involved in union activities.
VisaView tool – Immigration New Zealand(external link)
For information about other legal responsibilities you have as an employer, visit:
Address risks and non-compliance
You can proactively minimise the risk of worker exploitation and non-compliance in your organisation by:
- creating and communicating a code of conduct (or code of conduct statement)
- ensuring your organisation has robust employment systems and processes in place
- educating employees (including managers) about employment rights and responsibilities.
Create a code of conduct (or code of conduct statement)
A code of conduct tells employees what your organisation’s goals, values and rules are. It should include at least:
- your values, business ethics, and the behaviours you expect from employees
- a statement that confirms your organisation will follow employment-related laws
- information on how you will treat employees fairly, for example, the Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code, an internationally recognised code of labour practice
- information on how to report employment issues confidentially — this can be critical to making your code effective and empower employees to speak up if the code is breached.
Ethical Training Initiative Base Code – Ethical Trading Initiative(external link)
As an example, have a look at the Air New Zealand Code of Conduct and Ethics. This is suitable for a large company with international operations.
Corporate and Social Responsibility Policies – Air New Zealand(external link)
If your organisation is not ready to develop and implement a detailed code of conduct yet, you could produce an initial code of conduct statement instead. Your code of conduct statement can be as simple as the following key messages.
- We are committed to providing you with a safe and healthy workplace.
- We are committed to providing you with all your employment rights and entitlements.
- You can find out more about your employment and health and safety entitlements on the Employment New Zealand and WorkSafe New Zealand websites.
Employee rights and responsibilities
Workers – WorkSafe(external link)
You should use your internal communication channels including emails, posters and newsletters to tell your employees about your code or statement. You should also consult with employees before implementing a code of conduct, particularly if it outlines expected employee behaviour.
Ensure you have robust employment systems and processes in place
Robust employment systems and processes will help you meet the commitments in your code of conduct or code of conduct statement. Make sure:
- your payroll systems and processes ensure compliance with employment law. Test them regularly - for example, check you’re paying employees correctly for leave and holidays (you can use the employer self-assessment checklist to help you do this).
- your workplace policies and procedures protect employment rights, fair treatment of employees and equal opportunities
- your recruitment processes include questions to identify whether a person may have been trafficked, paid a premium (fee) to get a job or was exploited whilst seeking employment
- you have an easily accessible process that lets employees raise issues and resolve any problems in the workplace, including an escalation process and point of contact to report worker exploitation.
Creating workplace policies and procedures
Educate employees about employment rights and responsibilities
If your employees (including managers) know their employment rights and responsibilities, they can promote your code of conduct or statement and help you bring it to life. Some things you can do to educate employees and managers include:
- making sure that all your managers complete our free online learning modules for employers
- encouraging all employees to do our free online learning modules for employees, starting with the ‘Introduction to employment rights’ module
- investing in any other relevant training and qualifications for staff, for example, training on spotting the warning signs of modern slavery and worker exploitation and how to report it.
ADD LINK TO LEARNING MODULES
Looking beyond your organisation
To thoroughly identify and reduce risks of worker exploitation, you’ll need to look beyond your own organisation and examine your value chain, too. Find out more by looking at our other ethical and sustainable work practices resources, including:
Procurer’s approach to ethical and sustainable work practices
Franchisor’s approach to ethical and sustainable work practices
Responding to questions about modern slavery
If your organisation exports or is part of a larger supply chain, you may be asked to show how you identify and address risks of worker exploitation in:
- your organisation, and
- your supply chain.
One way to prepare is by developing a set of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and responses. Mekong Club has guidance and sample questions and responses to help with this.
Modern Slavery and SMEs [PDF, 700KB] – Mekong Club(external link)