Short Term

All industry worried about Labour. The labour situation is very tight

The recommendation is for any employers to apply to become an SSE employer.  This will give you more long term certainly for labour declarations

Below is an outline of the options available to you.

MBIE Text out database In the event of a labour shortage declaration, Immigration has the ability to  text out to people on appropriate visas to let them know there is a labour shortage in a region and opportunity to vary the conditions of the visa to be able to work.  This should help to get travellers to the region if a shortage is declared.

Further information

Seasonal Labour Opportunities – Supplementary Seasonal Employer scheme (SSE) and Student Job Search

For those looking at potential labour supply opportunities, an additional employment scheme has been made available to Hawke’s Bay employers.

The Supplementary Seasonal Employer Scheme (SSE) is for people already in Zealand on a student or visitor visa, who can then make a one-off application for a work visa to do seasonal work in the horticulture or viticulture industries.

Employers must apply to be an SSE employer through the RSE unit (you do not have to be an RSE employer) and demonstrate that they are working with their local Work and Income office. The RSE scheme and GlobalGAP, GRASP certification will be useful resources with which to demonstrate good employment and business practices. We have been advised that Government are setting up systems and processes to deal with these applications as promptly as possible – get in quick so these can be processed ASAP!

For those employers that become SSE accredited, please let us know so we can work with Pick NZ and MSD to provide you with SSE employees.

Please find attached two documents – one explaining the SSE and the other in more of a Q&A format.

You can find out more about SSE from the following link to the Immigration New Zealand website:

SSE - Immigration NZ

Further information for workers wanting to apply for an SSE work visa can be found at this link:

SSE - Employee Applications

If employers have questions about their open SSE Approval in Principle application then they can contact the RSE Unit at RSEUnit@mbie.govt.nz

In addition, MSD have suggested we look at Student Job Search as another employment tool. Students are a great pool of labour, and with EIT in the region we need to exhaust every option available. Click the link below to go straight to their website.

Student Job Search