Mum's the worker: why this NZ fishing company brought in a school hours shift

Covid has been the mother of invention for fishing firm Sealord.

Chief executive officer Doug Paulin says the business, like many, had been affected by labour shortages after the pandemic halted the flow of itinerant workers on working holiday visas through its Nelson factory.

The company, which has New Zealand deep sea fishing operations and a “wet fish” processing facility in the South Island as well as offshore operations, had to innovate through adversity, Paulin says.

Its usual shifts run from 5.30am-2pm, 1.30pm till 10pm and then 9.30pm to 6am with a half-an-hour changeover in between.

After brainstorming with staff, feedback from some of its workers who had school-aged children led to a change.

One of the ways it plugged its worker shortage was by introducing a school-hours shift from 9am until 2pm, which has seen 74 new employees – many of them mothers – join Sealord at its Nelson facility.

The school-hours shift was so popular, Paulin says, Sealord had more applicants than it could accommodate without disrupting its other shifts. It took a fair bit of logistical heavy lifting to make it work, but it did work.

Paulin says Sealord is continuing with the school-hours shift after New Zealand’s borders have reopened and it was able to bring in foreign workers for its hoki season which runs until September, with about 19 staff currently clocking in at the factory while their kids are at school.

“[The school-hours shift] has been really positive,” Paulin says. “Obviously, those staff on the school shift have had trouble finding companies that are willing to allow them to work during school hours. Having the opportunity to do that was what they were looking for. And they said they hope that more companies will inevitably bring it in. Each company has got to look at its own requirements and see, how can I make things like this work? I never speak on behalf of others, because they know how to run their businesses, but I'm very positive for Sealord.”

A recent study has highlighted the work struggle in particular of single parents. 

More than 3500 single parents were surveyed in 2022 for the Mako Mama - Mangopare Single Parents Project which was conducted by iwi Ngati Kahungunu and the research organisation Project Gender.

The project reported widespread discrimination against single parents, with many facing negative attitudes from government departments, employers, and the wider community. 

“These attitudes, among other systemic barriers, affect their access to education, employment, healthcare, and other basic needs,” the report said.

Mind the gap

The majority of single parents want to be in some, or more paid work, but were often unable to due to the need to look after their children and the lack of affordable childcare, the Mako Mama report found.

Another report released in 2018 found single parents tended to have lower rates of employment, and incomes for sole parents who were employed were on average lower than two-parent families who had one parent working.

"Sole parents (particularly those living without other family members or adults who can contribute to the household income) are more likely than coupled parents to have incomes below 60% of the median household income, after accounting for housing costs," the report published by the former Social Policy Evaluation and Research Unit found.

“Despite the significant challenges faced by single parents however, they are incredibly resourceful and an untapped potential workforce,” says Project Gender director Angela Meyer.

The Mako Mama report recommended businesses ensure that hourly part-time pay rates are the equivalent of the full-time hourly pay rate, that they provide senior leadership roles on part-time or job-share basis and create flexible employment as well as providing, or subsidising, affordable childcare for single parents.

It also supported allowing employees to work during school hours like Sealord's new shift, and asked businesses to consider a no meetings after 3pm rule, and allow single parents to use sick leave to care for their children.

It found businesses could encourage single parents into the workforce by integrating flexible working policies, bringing in single-parent inclusive policies and reporting and monitoring gender and ethnic pay gaps.

The reason to report and monitor gender pay gaps is simple, Meyer says. 

If we don’t measure it, we can’t do anything about it.

The Mind the Gap Registry lists the firms who have committed to reporting their pay gaps.

Mind the Gap’s Nina Santos says when the campaign was started in late 2021 it could only find about six organisations that were being transparent and reporting on their pay gaps. 

“A year after launching the Pay Gap Registry, we have 100 committed organisations. While this is a great achievement which speaks to just how much the culture has changed over the last year, we note that we still need the Government to legislate as the 100 employers reporting only cover a small percentage of total businesses.”

She says Mind the Gap analysed the impact of public pay gap reporting in seven countries and it found mandatory reporting could reduce gender pay gaps by between 20% to 40%, “which is huge”.

“NZ is already lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of pay gap transparency,” Santos says, with Australia recently introducing a law making it mandatory for businesses with more than 100 staff to report gender pay gaps.

'People with childcare responsibilities tend to be very productive'

In April the register got a boost, with lobby group BusinessNZ joining and encouraging other businesses to sign up as well.

Chief executive Kirk Hope said in April that the more businesses that report their gender pay gaps, the more normalised it becomes – and the more attractive a business is in the competition for talent.

"Reducing inequality and committing to providing equal opportunities is part of being an inclusive and diverse place to work,” Hope said.

BusinessNZ advocacy director Catherine Beard says big businesses would have read the Mako Mama report with interest.

She says businesses work closely with the Ministry of Social Development to bring single parents into the workforce, and keep them there. For example, a women in welding course which saw single mums trained to weld saw three women become a firm's "best welders".

"Particularly big companies are quite innovative. It can be harder for smaller firms, particularly to do financial things, but flexibility is part of the modern way of working and that's been enhanced by the Covid experience."

Beard says if NZ businesses want to keep the next generation of people having children, they have "got to make working doable".

"In my experience people with childcare responsibilities tend to be very productive. They go hard, you know, they work hard in the time they've got available. I think there's a realisation that they're very good employees."