Romancing the steel – we’re on a mission to build a tribe by sharing our history and story!
History helps us understand change. The world around us is in a constant state of change, and understanding this in society plays a pivotal role in being able to interpret the world that we see now. Up until now the history of HERA has been recorded in typical factual style. But, we believe there is much more to…
Your current employees are the key to helping our industry promote itself!
What do you ACTUALLY do? Your answer can help our industry better promote itself. There is no doubt that heavy engineering has an image problem. We’re consistently hearing how hard it is to attract and retain quality staff. Students are not choosing it as a study focus. Apprentices are hard to find. Women are not…
Introducing ‘Whanake’ – a HERA Scholarship and step towards addressing the skills gap
At HERA we have a real commitment to help our members address the challenges that are facing them. One we hear often is the skills gap which is hindering our members from delivering what’s in their pipeline – particularly as we look to the future. As a research association, it’s often hard to find a…
Diversity dissonance – broaching a taboo topic
It’s not often you’d expect a heavy engineering research association to talk homelessness to their membership. But, having recently discovered that three homeless people were sleeping in the undercover area at the back of HERA House – here we are. The discovery led to some really challenging discussions amongst HERA House tenants on how to…
Stand up and move: is sitting the new smoking or bacon?
Sitting for long periods is thought to slow the metabolism, which affects the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, blood pressure and break down body fat. This makes it a serious health and safety consideration with emerging awareness of its impacts. A range of studies show growing evidence for the serious consequences of pro-longed sitting.…
Reflecting on 2018 – a year that covered a lot of territory!
2018 has been a big year for HERA. Firstly, we had a change of leadership from Wolfgang Scholz to myself – HERA’s first ever female CEO! We also had the retirement of our longest serving employee, Peter Hayward. At the same time, we recruited two new team members; Musarrat Begum as our new Information Services…
Benchmarking New Zealand’s performance in innovation and R&D
New Zealand’s R&D and innovation performance – can we do better? The answer is yes! NZ’s expenditure on R&D is benchmarking alarmingly low. This is the key takeaway from MBIE’s recently released 2018 Research, Science and Innovation System Performance Report. But why does this matter? According to the OECD and Treasury, low R&D investment…
What are HERA’s values?
That’s a good question and one we have been asking ourselves. So much so, that we’ve been working with our team to define them. Initially, by getting our lead team to propose what we think are the really important values we want to live by, and then having discussions with our full team to see…
Call for interest – tell us your problems you’d like us to solve with R&D!
It’s that time of year when we’re sending out our feelers for potential R&D project proposals from our membership. For us, it’s crucial that our chosen R&D focuses are industry driven. This is because we 100% want to deliver you value from the outcomes – and we can’t do that if you we don’t know…
Notice – demystifying HERA’s research levy & how all of industry can leverage it (including SMEs!)
In our 2018 membership survey, you let us know that you’re mostly very happy with our support. However, we consistently hear from SME’s that they believe we’re only here for the bigger players. And, that the way the levy is administered is unclear. So let’s start by saying that HERA is absolutely here to support…