When Christine van Hoffen joined a startup as employee number 12 she would never have predicted where it would take her career
Christine van Hoffen never expected to be a senior HR leader.
She was a medical writer, an executive assistant and designer and illustrator before doing a MBA and becoming operations manager and then head of people at Tracksuit, a brand tracking platform based in NZ.
“It has been a squiggly journey,” she told HRD.
van Hoffen, who was named a Rising Star of the Year in the 2024 HRD Awards New Zealand, says the skills gained in previous jobs turned out to be a “perfect” combination for her current role, but it’s her MBA work on pay transparency that’s had the biggest impact on her work at Tracksuit.
Every employee at Tracksuit knows how much everyone else is paid.
“On the spectrum of pay transparency it’s almost at the very far end. It’s radical,” van Hoffen said.
It’s been that way from the start, led by business co-founders Connor Archbold and Matt Herbert wanting a “no secrets” approach to everything, including pay.
When van Hoffen joined as employee number 12, she was responsible for setting up a framework to scale the initiative, which is still in place despite the company growing to 160 staff.
“It is one of my personal goals to see how long we can maintain it,” she said, admitting it does get harder as the company gets larger.
“But the fact that it is harder doesn’t mean that the reason we put it in place in the first place doesn’t exist anymore.
“All of the problems of hiding people’s pay and the inequality that that allows - none of that goes away when you are bigger so for me it doesn’t make sense that we back off as we get bigger.”
van Hoffen said the most important element of the pay transparency policy is staff don’t just see the salary information; they can ask questions.
“It’s a useless policy if you can look at the salaries, but then it's like ‘too bad, you’ve got a question, but we’re not changing what we do’,” she said.
“It has no teeth unless you let people ask the question and so being open to people asking you questions about pay does take a lot of time."
van Hoffen said the business rarely changes pay rates following discussions but believes being able to talk about it and for staff to be able to voice an opinion is a better outcome and holds leadership accountable for fairness.
van Hoffen joined Tracksuit after being on maternity leave and one of the reasons was their support for parents, especially new mums like herself.
When she came on board as operations manager working two days a week, the company paid her 2.5 days.
The extra half a day’s pay became one of the company’s first formal initiatives to help parents return to work and offers three months paid parental leave to primary and secondary care givers.
van Hoffen says they are also tackling systemic issues such as the disparity in savings often face by women in retirement due to repeated parental leave periods.
The company continues to make contributions to KiwiSaver during paid and unpaid parental leave, and extends participation in the company’s employee share scheme. Parents on leave or about to go on leave are also included in pay reviews and any promotion opportunities.
“Having empathy and compassion is so important,” van Hoffen said.
“It makes it harder because you’re feeling a lot of everyone’s pain. The people on my team are some of the most empathetic people I know. Anytime we are going to do something we stop and think how is it going to make other people feel, is there a way we can do it that approaches it more gently.”
Nominations are now open for the HRD Awards New Zealand 2025, which celebrate achievements in leadership and innovation in the HR profession in the past 12 months.
Winners will be announced at the national HR Summit NZ on 19 November at The Cloud, Auckland.
Winners will be honoured across six individual and team categories:
HR Director of the Year
HR Manager of the Year
Rising Star of the Year
Employer of Choice (less than 200 staff)
Employer of Choice (more than 200 staff)
HR Team of the Year
Nominations close on June 27.
