Hiring immigrants pays for supermarket

An Auckland supermarket has created a prayer room for its Muslim workers and allows them time off to pray several times a day.

Mt Albert Pak 'n Save, which says it is New Zealand's most multicultural supermarket in terms of both customers and staff, won an "innovation" award in last night's work and life awards from the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust.

It not only gives prayer time to its 28 Muslim workers, but also encourages all 320 staff to speak in their own languages, and gives them name badges with their national flags to show customers which languages they speak.

Produce department supervisor Abdirizak Ali Diriye, who came here from a Somali refugee camp in Ethiopia seven years ago, said he was grateful to get a Pak 'n Save job, initially collecting trolleys, when his English was still poor in 2000.

He said Islam required prayers five times a day, and the Muslim staff prayed in the laundry until the small prayer room was opened recently.

Store owner Brian Carran said the prayer room and the store's tolerant culture paid off in staff loyalty and low turnover. Recruiting and training each new worker cost $3000.

"I have two or three vacancies, less than 1 per cent. Some of my colleagues are facing up to 10 per cent vacancies, partly because they are cautious about new immigrants.

"They do take longer to train. We have a more comprehensive training process, and if necessary I will get someone to take people through it again in their mother tongue.

"But we are getting lawyers and doctors, and at one stage we had two female dentists. At one stage we had three doctors. We had a lawyer who was very useful when we redrafted the contract.

"They are over-qualified. But if someone walks in the door with a degree, even if you get only a year or two or three from them, you know they are ambitious, they are intelligent and they can do hard work."

Mark Franklin, chief executive of power company Vector which won the main work-life award, said $300 annual fitness grants to pay gym fees for his 350 staff more than paid for themselves by avoiding the costs of recruiting a single new engineer or analyst in today's tight job market.

"We go to London. We have a recruitment consultant permanently appointed there to identify people."

The company has cut its staff turnover from 12.7 per cent in 2002 to 7.2 per cent this year, and has reduced work absences from 1.4 per cent to just under 1 per cent despite its policy of setting no limits on leave to deal with family crises.

"Don't tell me how much money it's going to cost," Mr Franklin said. "You will be very surprised at how much money you save by spending a very little bit of money [to meet family needs]."