However, it’s the broader "fun stuff" that makes the day job worthwhile. It’s not always the easiest way to do business, and there isn’t always a clear and immediate outcome, but it is more rewarding.
Our communities are supported by voluntary firefighters, ambulance responders, lifeguards, community workers and countless clubs, charities and PTAs. These are great individuals who volunteer their discretionary time outside of their day jobs because it’s the right thing to do and gives them purpose.
As a company, our cause may not be as noble, but our platform is much greater. We have the opportunity to integrate doing some good into our way of doing business. To have a purpose beyond profit.
Today, not-for-profits are struggling for funding as the government continues to tighten its belt to pull through this recession. While I understand the need to cut costs, we also need to invest in strategic opportunities to grow.
Any business person knows that if you cut back too much, you’ll lose market share and take longer to recover. As a country if we cut back too much it’ll be a devastatingly long recovery. We need investment in productive innovation, revenue and profit growth as a country and I’m not seeing that from the government in the near term. In fact in some corners of the coalition government, the free-market policy and "anti corporate welfare" rhetoric is really concerning.
Doing business in New Zealand isn’t easy, doing it from Dunedin has even more challenges. But what we need to understand is that at 0.24% of the world’s GDP, NZ is never going to get ahead by just supplying NZ and we’ll certainly never get there if we’re all competing for the same dollar. To fund our health system (like a fit-for-purpose hospital), education, infrastructure and environmental needs we need to look out, at how we can grow our share of the 99.76% of the rest of the world’s GDP instead.
And no that absolutely doesn’t mean selling our companies, infrastructure and offshoring IP commercialisation to venture ("vulture") equity.
This leaves it to us, the business community, to band together and to support programmes that in the long term are going to make it more sustainable to do business here — like youth development programmes, young entrepreneurship schemes, angel investment, policy advocacy for the sectors we work in and supporting charities that help make our communities more resilient and equitable. Healthy engaged communities grow great talent and great talent grows companies.
Take Mainland Angel Investors (MAI), for example. MAI started across Dunedin, Invercargill and Queenstown with a small group of us wanting to see more than 2% of NZ’s early-stage capital invested in companies in the lower South Island. The companies are generally first-time founders who have made huge personal sacrifice and are often impact-led, developing products that will make the world better.
When they can’t get money locally, they either wind up or chase it up North or overseas. By having a local investor scene, we’ve been able to retain more jobs across the region. This year, MAI hopes to raise over $2 million to invest in startup companies, which is a great outcome.
Another incredible example of industry joining together to make an impact was the NZ Aerospace Summit in Christchurch. I was a sponsor and exhibitor, and I even got some stage time. Being a speaker at an aerospace conference was never on my bucket list of possibilities!
In its third year now, the Summit attracted over 650 attendees, up from just under 300 three years ago. With international governments and major companies ranging from Nasa to Japan, the European Trade Union and the UK, Aerospace NZ has helped put NZ on the map as a credible aerospace nation. The flow-on export effects for our economy and high-value jobs for our communities are massive, demonstrating that industry collectively is bigger than its individual parts.
Finally, the power of a collective and consistent industry voice has been evident through Advanced Manufacturing Aotearoa and the Minister Andrew Bayly’s Manufacturing Productivity Advisory Group. With over 500 manufacturing members across the country, we’ve stimulated collaboration across companies and industry groups.
Spanning regions and sectors, from food and beverage to hydrogen, space, medical and biotech. Addressing common themes like education, investment, R&D funding, export support, and technology know-how sharing such as automation. Perhaps the most practical recent examples are helping to fund existing high school outreach programmes into STEM across the country, co-ordinating a response for the Vocational Education Training Review and seeing manufacturing content included in trade missions and NZ Space Agency marketing collateral for the first time.
It’s not all altruistic, everything I’m involved in has a strategic thread that aligns with our company purpose. I’ve had countless real new business, collaboration, or employee opportunities arise from my governance roles, volunteering and events, and more qualified and deeper relationships are formed as a result.
So yes I’m involved in lots of "stuff", it’s time consuming and it’s often not immediately obvious that there are benefits to our core business United Machinists. However I get to hangout with some seriously cool passionate people and I believe in the long game — that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and by working as part of the whole, our small part only stands to benefit.
• Sarah Ramsay is chief executive of United Machinists.
