Week 3 – Mentor Whiplash is a thing!

Week 3 was hard.

Over the ANZAC weekend, we started thinking that the problem we have identified might not be a problem. This caused some serious concern. The mentoring sessions were helpful but it was hard to absorb all the information without grinding to a halt. Talking to businesses helped us to nail down what the real issues are and yuss we found a way forward!

We have refined our focus now to employers of NZ and Working Holiday Scheme workers in the horticulture and viticulture industries. Below is the usual format.

The Good

• having mentors was fantastic!
• talking to businesses made things real and reinforced that the employment of seasonal workers is an area of passion.
• given this was a hard week, team resilience and self-care were not taken lightly.
• receiving awesome support from the Labour Inspectorate of MBIE.
• Whiteboards, flip-charts and post-it notes are such important stationery.

The Bad

• Mentor Whiplash as we struggled to absorb all the feedback.

The Ugly

• Comments here are deleted

Quotes of the week

Julian – “Validation, invalidation and re-validation – more, faster, better.”

Victoria – “It’s a relief we’ve narrowed our scope as this is such a complex area to tackle.”

Suki – “Thank goodness that we have come out of our fast spin cycle. That was not nice.”

QUESTIONS TOP OF MIND

• Let us know how people on Working Holiday Scheme communicate about jobs?
• How do you find great New Zealanders to work in the horticulture and viticulture industries?
• What can we do to help NZ businesses to employ enough suitable NZ and Working Holiday Scheme workers when they’re needed?
• How can we excite government about the opportunities that we see for NZ businesses who employ seasonal workers?

Full force forward 😀

Week 2 – We are down to 1 hypothesis, can you believe it!?

Week 2 flew by, lots of head down and time spent on talking to businesses to validate our hypotheses and further nailing down the sources of business compliance pains. Usual format below, the good, the bad & the ugly, team members’ quotes of the week and questions that are top of mind.

The Good

• We moved swiftly from 2 active hypotheses down to 1, really helped by knowing that StatsNZ will put the Agricultural Production Survey online this July.
• Our active hypothesis is now focussed on the supply and demand for seasonal workers
• We have received great insight and support from Nick Rowney and Miramar Mike (Twitter @MiramarMike)
• CreativeHQ lined up great sessions with the likes of Sascha Meinrath and the Lightning Lab alumni.

The Bad

• We are struggling without a full whiteboard to use/draw/play with.
• We would have liked to have talked to more businesses but scheduling times with already very busy people is not easy.

The Ugly

• We are very aware that having things simply put online will not make things easier. So this cannot be the sole part of our solution.

Quotes of the week

Julian – “Invalidating assumptions reduces wasted effort = lean in action.”

Victoria – “I want to spend my time on solving real problems faced by business.”

Suki – “Gosh, Friday night at 7pm I am still working and almost don’t want to finish the working week!”

Questions that are top of mind

• Where are the compliance pain points for business and government when employing seasonal workers?
• Where is the most acute pain in this space?
• How do we have a more succinct problem definition and yet capture all the information?

Go easypeasycompliance!

Week 1 – DONE!

Week 1 was a whirlwind! We were swimming in a sea of data trying to find our focus on which compliance areas we want to make easy. Below is a summary of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Also check out our team members’ quotes of the week and the questions that are top of mind.

The Good

• We have a full team with Julian Apatu, an experienced entrepreneur joining our team. Yay 🙂
• We’ve reformulated the topic from Making Compliance Easier to Making Compliance Easy – easier is not good enough!
• After much data digestion, we developed 16 hypotheses, which we have now reduced to 2:

o   Making compliance easy for those that need to fill out the Agricultural Production Survey.

o   Making compliance easy for employers of seasonal workers.

The Bad

• The key challenge for us in Week 1 was narrowing down our broad topic Making Compliance Easy into a narrower scope.

The Ugly

• Weaving through the government systems is always an interesting challenge.

Quotes of the week

Julian – “Easy is absolute. Make compliance EASY.”

Victoria – “Can’t wait to talk to business and hear their perspectives.”

Suki – “So much buzz and excitement that I don’t even know how to relax into my Saturday morning!”

Questions that are top of mind:

• What do businesses think about our hypotheses?
• If you are a business either completing the Agricultural Production Survey and/or having to employ seasonal workers, what is the hardest part and why is it so hard?
• How do we generate buy-in from businesses as well as government about our project?

If you have any comments and/or answers to our questions, we would love to hear from you, either leave us a comment or email easypeasycompliance@gmail.com.

Join the movement, follow us @easycomply.

Hello world – We are team EasyPeasyCompliance!

All businesses in New Zealand have compliance obligations. Wouldn’t it be great if compliance was easy, less time-consuming, less costly and just less annoying? Our team’s mission is to bring you that world.

We are part of the first-ever Business-Government Accelerator in New Zealand – the R9 Accelerator (http://creativehq.co.nz/acceleration/r9accelerator/). In 12 weeks, we will drill into the pain points that businesses experience when complying, create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), validate and iterate the MVP, and pitch the solutions as fundable projects.. The R9 Accelerator is part of a new initiative in the New Zealand Government, where government is taking a fresh look at how it can provide better tailored services for businesses so that businesses can concentrate on the most important thing – the business itself!

Keep an eye out here for our weekly updates and join our journey of changing the face of compliance. @easycomply

EasyPeasyCompliance 🙂