(c) The Press and Fairfax New Zealand Ltd. 2006. All rights reserved

It’s less where you start than how which determines where you end and how.

Rosita Guy began by folding teatowels in Ballantynes' Christchurch department store.

Today she runs a one-woman motivational management consultancy; her services as speaker, seminar leader and conference facilitator are in demand everywhere from her homebase in Christchurch. Yesterday she was a guest of the New Zealand Institute of Management, Southland Branch for the second time. On her first visit she spoke about dealing with difficult people; this time she dealt with difficult situations, one sometimes a product of the unresolved other.

Since the implementation of the Employment Contracts Act it is more difficult to get rid of staff who are just not up to it.

“The secret of success lies in hiring the right people in the first place and then ensuring everyone knows what is expected by putting in writing what the job entails,” she said.

If expectations on both sides are realistic, misunderstandings are less likely, disappointment and conflict avoided. Taking on the right person for the job is the key. It calls for less a gut feeling than a considered response.

“Only by testing the water, asking the applicant the sort of questions, which show what the job’s about, do the right appointments become routine,” she said.

And getting it right is important today, the basis of good employment relationships, resting on the twin issues of hiring the right person and then seeing that the right job is done, right.

Four years after folding that first teatowel Ms Guy was Personnel Manager for the big Canterbury retail firm. During the decade since she has studied business management techniques, worked for the Canterbury Employers Association for whom she still does some training and has developed a consultancy, which is in demand.

Yesterday, for example, she talked in the morning about performance problems and disciplinary procedures and in the afternoon about performance appraisals, saying the point to note was the middle syllable of the word, praise.

Praise is what appraisals ought to be about, not paeans of it but just recognition of worth. Performance appraisals ought to take place more often than at contract renewal time, perhaps three, or four times a year when people on both sides can assess what is happening.

It is fair enough to touch on sins of omission and commission then but only in referring to changes since because at the time things go wrong, issues should have been addressed.

Appraisals are two-way talks, in which employees have the chance to talk, of their hopes, ambitions, ideas.

From a solid background in Human Resource Management, often as hands-on as it can get, Mrs Guy sees the minefield that the new employment laws are for some but is ready to show how, with care, obstacles can be navigated.

Ms Guy, mother of an 11-year-old daughter, wife of a supermarket manager, said many people take home ideas from management consultancy courses and put them into practice in their private life.

"And yes, of course that works because the same principles of fairness and thought for others, of honesty, justice and recognition of the work and rights of others have to be there too."