Meet NZ’s Business Innovation of the Year Award Winner

by Tim Forsyth, Operations Manager, EncoreNZ

EncoreNZ is a recruitment specialist in the Industrial and Manufacturing sectors, providing long term staffing solutions throughout New Zealand.

Operating from our base in Mt Maunganui, it was becoming increasingly difficult to provide the level of care to our clients that we had always been proud to offer.

This was due mainly to our sector growth and our need to always be at the ready to fully mobilise for recruit drives.

For some time our Director, Teisha Pihama, had been considering that there had to be something in a digital format that would allow our team to create work opportunities while also creating rapid turnaround times for clients. However she wasn’t able to find an end-to-end platform that would allow this. So, instead, she went about creating the solution.

The objective was to find a system that would allow the team to recruit anywhere in the world without needing to have face-to-face contact, while still keeping the company’s full integrity for the end-to-end process.

Teisha also wanted to reduce the company’s environmental footprint by cutting back on the increasingly large paper trail that is sometimes needed in this industry.

Tracking on 18 months and Teisha had created a system that is truly revolutionary. Not only can EncoreNZ recruit anywhere in New Zealand with a click of a button but it’s super-fast!

Candidates can literally apply in the morning and be working in the afternoon. Furthermore, it has the support of the candidates who state that it’s very user friendly and a quick tool to use.

Since the RCSA awards we have taken the technology even further. We have now digitised our client proposals, aiding in efficient closing of sales and commencement of new business relationships.

As a bi-product to this new technology, EncoreNZ has been able to reduce office stationary wastage by 90%.

This new technology truly came into its own when New Zealand was put into lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, making it near impossible to recruit new essential worker candidates. We also knew there would be a huge influx of candidates needing work and clients needing staff when the doors were able to re-open.

Winning the RCSA Business Innovation of the Year is a great honour. It truly recognises the work we’ve done and is an amazing reward for all our team who were responsible for rolling this new technology out and selling it to our clients.

The next step for EncoreNZ is to explore more innovative ways which will help us broaden our reach even further.

If I could give any advice to newcomers in the industry it would be to listen to what the market is telling you and find solutions that can be acted on.

Be accountable and strive to continue evolving to meet this ever-evolving industry.