Marielle Veraa of Amplifon New Zealand explains why embedding HR in business strategy drives better outcomes
When Marielle Veraa joined Amplifon New Zealand as head of HR a little over a year ago, she brought with her a clear mandate: build an HR function that shapes business outcomes, not one that simply manages paperwork.
That philosophy – honed across a career that began in finance administration in the Netherlands – is quietly transforming how the Italian-owned hearing care group operates across its approximately 600-person New Zealand workforce, which trades locally as Bay Audiology and Dilworth Hearing.
"I don't want to have an HR department that is indeed just there for admin or seen as a principal's office or the keeper of grounds when it comes to policies," Veraa said. "The best HR departments are those who are really partnering with the business, understand what's going on, understand what drives the outcomes and then also understand the influence that we can have on that as being HR."
From finance floor to people strategy
Veraa's route into HR was unconventional. She started her working life in finance administration, an experience she credits as foundational. Understanding how profit and loss statements are structured, how budgets are built, and how decisions ripple across an organisation gave her an advantage that most HR professionals lack.
"You're really the best HR person who can stand your business as a business partner if you understand what's going on in a particular department and what's driving certain decisions," she said. "Then you can also better equip how you fit in with your HR skill set, the advice that you give, the outcomes that you're going for."
That commercial literacy extends to her team. Veraa ensures that every member of the Amplifon HR team understands the labour cost implications of their decisions and the downstream effect on the company's profit and loss – a discipline she views as essential for long-term thinking.
"My whole team understands the labour cost impact they have for the further impact on the P&L of the decisions that we make. So that also makes sure that they can think about it long term."
It is a philosophy that aligns with a broader shift in the profession. Organisations without a genuine strategic HR function risk being, as one report put it, "a boat without a rudder."
The hidden weight of change management
One of Veraa's more striking observations concerns what she calls the "unseen" dimension of HR work – the emotional labour absorbed by her team, particularly her HR business partners (HRBPs), during periods of organisational change.
"People often confide in them when they have their worst day in their life. So stuff may have happened at work, or they didn't like their manager, someone has passed away, or all sorts of things that may have happened. And we all absorb these types of emotions."
When Amplifon introduces significant changes to the way it operates, that emotional weight lands squarely on the HR team. Veraa has made it a priority to surface this reality with her leadership team colleagues – not as a complaint, but as data.
"If we're bringing so much change, this is actually the impact of it. We'll work through it. But it's a lot of unseen things."
The benefit of making that visible, she says, is that other departments now engage HR earlier and more proactively. Rather than handing HR a communication challenge after a decision has been made, leadership team colleagues now ask for input before implementation begins.
"They ask my input up front and then they'll go away with it and actually action and execute it themselves. And we advise and are there for sure to help out. But it's a different shift that you get with that partnering."
This kind of cross-functional collaboration is increasingly central to how high-performing HR teams are structured in Aotearoa and beyond.
The emotional toll on HR teams during change is well documented. Research highlighted in HRD New Zealand found that what employees think about change management strategies often diverges significantly from leadership expectations – a gap HR is routinely left to bridge.
What makes New Zealand's workforce different
Having worked in the Netherlands and for multinational companies operating across a range of markets, Veraa is well placed to identify what sets New Zealand's workforce culture apart. The answer, she says, comes down to community.
"The community piece and how we all work together is very important. Whereas what I've seen before in the Dutch culture, but also working for multinationals and American companies – it's nice to have your own team, but you're also there for yourself and you want to perform and basically want to outperform because that's your career."
In Aotearoa, she observes a different orientation. Employees are more likely to weigh individual advancement against its impact on the team. That collective instinct, she believes, is something employers should actively protect.
"If that operates well, a lot of things actually basically happen by itself because everyone feels in place, they all know their function and they collectively progress as a team and not as sets of individuals that you've managed to make work in a team."
This sense of communal identity also influences how messaging is delivered. Veraa notes that New Zealand workplaces require greater care around tone and the emotional impact of communication – a contrast to the more direct styles she encountered elsewhere.
It is a view echoed by some of New Zealand's most recognised people leaders. NZ Post's former chief people officer, speaking to HRD New Zealand, argued that HR should be business-people first and people-people second – a framing that mirrors Veraa's own philosophy almost exactly.
For organisations seeking to build more resilient and people-centred cultures, Veraa's experience offers a practical framework: embed HR in commercial decision-making, treat emotional labour as legitimate data, and take seriously the cultural values that make a local workforce cohesive.
