Mahitahi - Working with us
Our people are at the heart of our organisation, and we want Contact to be Aotearoa’s most sought-after workplace. We have over 1,200 team members across 19 sites country-wide, all focused on building a better, cleaner and sustainable Aotearoa New Zealand by leading the country’s decarbonisation.
We’re creating a business filled with capable, engaged, productive people excited about the challenge before us.
We focus on putting our energy where it matters. This starts with giving great value, great products and great service to our customers and our people.
Connected by human kindness, our people are encouraged to be curious and look to the future, we’re purposeful in everything we do, and we’re inspired by innovation.
Mahi your way
Through our Transformative Ways of Working programme we have looked at all the elements of work and empowered our people to redesign and reimagine the ways in which we work.
That means many of us can choose where we want to work whether that be home, an office, the bach, or somewhere else. And although some roles are based at a specific site, we also offer flexible hours if it works for the team.
Pretty much, as long as it’s safe, secure and benefits you and the business, it’s your call! We don’t work with the 9-5 mentality because that’s just not real life. We work towards results, not hours, so if you need to do school pick-ups, train for that half marathon or organise work around your life, we’re open to making sure you get the work-life flexibility that is best for you.
Even better, we have both the culture and the technology in place to enable this radical flexibility. Our way of working is as individual as you are and it’s not an experiment or a trial run, it’s who we are and how we show up.
Looking after your wellbeing
We want you to be the very best version of yourself so we’re always thinking about how we can help you stay on top of your wellbeing. We’ve put together a programme that covers the things our people say are most important:
- ‘Good to be home’ payment: we offer an annual payment to all people to support their home setups
- Flexible mahi guide: this enables our people to have flexibility in where and when they work, depending on the needs of their role
- Wellbeing Network: the voice of all things wellbeing at Contact, our Wellbeing network comprises people from across our business
- Free skin checks: thanks to our annual skin checks, our skin specialists have found early stage melanoma, so this service is already saving lives
- Access to Clearhead: a mental health platform that provides wellbeing resources, offers free counselling sessions for our people and their whanau, as well as financial advisory services
Grow your whānau
We are proud to offer a comprehensive and far-reaching parental leave policy, offering financial security and flexibility for Contact team members who are starting or adding to their whānau.
Our Growing Your Whānau Policy offers benefits for primary carers including:
- Salary top-up: to full salary for the 26-week Government paid parental leave period
- KiwiSaver Employer contributions: 3% employer contribution for the duration of parental leave
- 6 months flexible working: returning employees can choose to work 80% of their normal weekly hours, while receiving 100% of their normal pay for the first 6 months
- Childcare koha: $5,000 (pre-tax) as a contribution towards childcare
- 10 days paid Special Leave: pregnant employees will receive 10 days paid special leave for pregnancy-related appointments
- Annual Leave: paid at normal pay when employees return from parental leave
- Fourth Trimester: 3 months free electricity for employees with a new baby who are Contact customers
- Food package: pre-prepared meals on the arrival of baby
The benefits for partners (over and above legislation) include:
- Partner’s leave: four weeks paid leave, which can be taken flexibly over 13 months
- Fourth Trimester: Three months free electricity for employees who are Contact customers on eligible plans
- Food package: pre-prepared meals on the arrival of baby
Ngā Hua – making you feel special
We know work’s not just about the pay cheque. We believe that when you do the mahi, you should get the treats. That’s why we offer a range of special things that make a difference to our people.
- Health Insurance: we work with Lifetime to provide you with Southern Cross health insurance, and discounted rates for your whanau
- Extra leave: sometimes four weeks off isn’t enough, so you can buy more leave and spread the cost throughout the year
- Share scheme: we give you the opportunity to be a shareholder and have some skin in the game by purchasing shares in Contact
- Other discounts: from automotive discounts to fitness offers to banking offers, and even some retail therapy, we’ve partnered with a range of services to offer you discounts on every day and special day purchases.
Located Aotearoa wide
Just like our customers, we're located right across New Zealand. Our contact centres are based in Levin, Wellington and Dunedin, and our corporate offices are in Auckland and Wellington. Our generation sites are spread across the country in Taupō, Whirinaki, Taranaki and Clyde.
Building our talent pipeline
The market for talent and skills is tight so we’re focused on building a pipeline of new talent, particularly among youth and those with specialist expertise.
We’re creating opportunities for young people to join Contact, particularly in generation and trading where we have an aging workforce. Each year we put the mahi into finding graduates to join us, and we recruit summer interns, offering paid work experience to students.
On top of this, we sponsor a scholarship with First Foundation. This charity supports students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds into university via scholarships, work experience and mentorship.
We also search offshore from time to time, particularly for specialist expertise. In 2023 we joined a number of employers and partnered with experts in the field to undertake an international campaign targeting highly skilled, hard-to-find talent. Through this campaign we successfully enticed several engineers from offshore markets to join our team.
Supporting our people to grow and learn
Contact people are propelled by curiosity and have a thirst for knowledge, so we offer a range of educational modules through our learning platform, Contact University. Every year our people collectively complete thousands of courses, building their skills and knowledge across a wide range of topics.
Through our annual performance cycle, our people set individual goals and KPIs at the beginning of each financial year, and participate in a formal performance review at the end of the year which incorporates feedback from leaders across the business. This is supported by informal check ins throughout the year to discuss progress.
Diversity and inclusion
Our vision is to build a better Aotearoa New Zealand. We believe we will do this by reflecting the diversity of our customers and communities, creating a culture where inclusion is deeply embedded, and our people are able to truly be themselves.
Our diversity statistics suggest our workforce may be lacking diverse voices, and some of our communities are under-represented. So we’re making targeted improvements to build a diverse and inclusive team that better represents our communities and ensures a broader range of perspectives are represented in our decision making. Here’s what we’re doing:
- Pride at Contact: We continue to support Rainbow Inclusion through our Pride Network driving initiatives to allow our team to bring their whole selves to work. We are an accredited Rainbow Tick organisation.
- Women’s Network: we are focused on achieving gender balance through a number of initiatives. We partner with Global Women: Champions for Change, an initiative monitoring the progress of participating organisations towards our shared goal of gender balance, which is 40:40:20 (% of men:women:open). Our Women’s Network is set up with the funds and authority to support women across Contact.
- Māori & Pasifika Network: our self-governing network is empowered to drive initiatives to support members and find ways of making Contact more attractive to Māori & Pasifika talent.
- Unconscious Bias training: we offer training to all employees to help identify and reduce unconscious bias.
- Diverse recruitment: following a review of our recruitment practices, we now deliver best practice talent acquisition via advertising that reflects Aotearoa New Zealand and diverse panels for interviews.
Sustainability
We operate long-life power stations and we're committed to caring for natural resources that we rely on in a way that enables future generations of New Zealanders can continue to enjoy them too.
Community
We work hard to be a good neighbour and lend our support to initiatives that are important to locals. For us, it's all about being a responsible and positive part of the community.