Kiwi Business Story: Tom Oliver from Hortus

Tom Oliver, Labour Operations Manager at Hortus is a  Leadership Development Programme Alumni.

This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 12 July 2022, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Who is Tom? 

I am half Samoan half British. I was born in Singapore, raised in New Zealand, and I have an English partner. My career started at the bottom; I had known AJ for years before he took on Hortus. I came back from England after eight years. I was looking for a building apprenticeship, by the time I came home there was a recession happening and not much was going around the building Industry. I asked AJ If he had a job for me until I found something better, that was 12 years ago now.

I started off pulling out broken posts in the vineyards. Then I did a little bit of supervising and a year or two into it, I became the RSC coordinator. So I went over to the islands, Vanuatu in particular and did some recruitment. We started off my first year with a recruitment of 60 RSC, and then the next year went to 180. I did it for two years, then that got a wee bit too much for me. I am not very good on the computer and reporting and stuff like that, which is a major part of the job.

I went back to supervising for about seven years and then became a Field Manager. I saw the growth on the labour side was booming, a bit more than the machinery side.  I decided to stop machinery and try and work my way up the ladder in labour. Then last year, I became the Labour Operations Manager. This role is very people oriented. It is all about managing people. I know we work in the viticulture industry, providing Labour and stuff like that. But my current role now is about managing our supervisors, my field managers under me, and trying to develop them to become good leaders.


What is one thing you wish you knew at the start of your career journey? 

How to manage people, because throughout most of my journey, it’s been around managing people with a bit of Vineyard work on the side. But if you cannot manage people, you cannot do the job properly. It came with experience; I am not too bad at it now. Staying true to our company values I think helps.


Hortus is known for the strong values and culture and impact within the community, unpack what value and culture means to you and how is it important?

Well, it is particularly important, because for Hortus we have currently got 500 staff. It has a big mix of different cultures, New Zealand culture, you got your Māori culture, Indonesian, Vanuatu, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomons, Tuvalu, Tonga.


When do you talk about your values with your team? 

Every toolbox meeting. We have a toolbox meeting for the supervisors every fortnight, the first thing we do is we discuss what happened over the last two weeks. We talk about the celebration, the wins and then we talk about the negatives. Because everyone is aware of what our values are, it is an effective way for people to be able to hold each other accountable in an open space.


How did you find the Leadership Development Programme?

I loved it. It was run well, Jo the facilitator, she was awesome. The guest speakers were good. The class was good. It was full on, there is a lot to cover, you are constantly taking notes, but I could relate to a lot of the things that they were talking about. Not that I knew how to do certain things. But I could relate to a lot of it, I personally really enjoyed it.


Was there anything you implemented from the programme back into the business, and your lifestyle? 

There is not one massive thing that I implemented, there was just a lot of little learnings, especially around culture, and especially around finance, because finance was one of my weaknesses when I did the course. So, it just gave me a good understanding of how budgets and spreadsheets work.

I have learnt, the better I do at work the better for my myself and my soul, because I do put a lot into this job, and everyone here does. If I do really good work, I feel good and I go home happy to my family and my three kids.