People – Our Greatest Asset

14 July 2019

This article is by Te Kapunga Dewes, CEO of PF Olsen Ltd. It first appeared in Wood Matters July 2019

Tena Koutou

It is with great pleasure that I welcome Nikki Iuli to the team at PF Olsen into our newly created role of Group Director of Human Resources. We have positioned this role to sit on our senior leadership team across New Zealand and Australia. This demonstrates our strategic commitment to growing our people, and continue to deliver high quality professional services to our clients and business partners. I have invited Nikki to introduce herself in a subsequent section while I discuss the importance of our people to our business and our clients.

We believe in operating with the highest levels of professionalism, responsively delivering social, environmental, and commercial outcomes that are sustainable for the long term. We think that the people who work with and in our business are our greatest asset, and that everyone has a right to go home to friends and family unharmed everyday. We recognise that our clients are our “lifeblood”, and we need to be responsive to their needs and the changing macro environment. Our reality is that we are only able to continue delivering these outcomes by engaging and investing in the best people, ensuring they are provided the tools and decision autonomy that allow us to act with agility and remain client centric.

Many factors contribute to being successful. Having a sound strategy, having a marketable service (or product), operational delivery excellence, and having efficient processes are all important. However, it falls to the people within the organisation to actually identify, adapt, and execute on the strategies, plans, and processes to make our business successful. Many leaders and managers understand this concept intellectually and genuinely intend to deliver an environment where people can achieve this. However, when we see how employees are treated in most businesses, the authority they’re given or the level of trust and value they command indicate that the intent and the delivery can be quite divergent.

Extensive research has been done in this area, and it is well proven that people who feel valued and engaged are significantly more likely to improve business performance, and beyond that provide significant value to clients through exceeding expectations.

These facts become particularly important given the current movement in export log pricing. Whilst we all understand the market dynamics that Scott discusses in more detail in the market update, it is people who need to adapt, innovate, and execute against plans and actions dictated by a change in the market. With great people, we are capable of proactively responding with speed, rigour, and customisation.

I am very fortunate to have entered a company full of exceptionally skilled and professional people. It is our strategy to build on a well-established successful business model and process excellence to deliver value for our people thereby ensuring PF Olsen is a great place to work. This will enable us to provide even greater value in professional quality outcomes for our clients. Our strategy has people at the forefront of our long term aspirations and recruiting an exceptional individual into a newly created role established specifically for this purpose is a significant part in this.

A warm welcome to Nikki, and another step forward in the delivering of our strategy.

Nga mihi nui

Te Kapunga