Overcome the brain drain

Whether it’s the wanderlust gene or a genuine search for better pay, avoiding student debt or limited career opportunities many young New Zealander’s make the move offshore. Systems integration specialist Synergy is well aware of this trend and does what it can to support its staff when they want to venture overseas. After three years at Synergy consultant Stephanie Cooper embarked on a world trip and booked four months off work. “I’d saved up annual leave and Synergy offered me three months of unpaid leave. Naturally four months turned into five, then six. I kept in touch with my manager, Nick Turner, who nicely suggested that I might have to resign as I was making the month-end numbers look bad,” she says. Aware that six months was looking more like nine Cooper resigned with the assurance there would be a job for her at Synergy when she returned. “When I came back to New Zealand I called up Nick, had a coffee with the consulting team and was back in the office within two weeks.”Cooper’s not the only Synergy employee to go offshore. One of the company’s Java developers has returned from working in the UK and several others have relocated to Synergy’s London office. “Nick keeps in touch with everyone who goes travelling and eventually we hope they’ll decide to join us back in Auckland.”