Let me say something that most people in this industry are reluctant to admit publicly.

This work is not for everyone.

Engaging with people about their debt is one of the most interpersonally demanding jobs there is. Our teams speak with individuals who are under real financial pressure. And more often than not, they are met with hostility. Anger. Frustration. Sometimes outright abuse. Not because our people have done anything wrong, but because the situation is painful and our teams are the ones on the other end of the phone when that pain comes out.

I say this not to complain. I say it because acknowledging it honestly is the starting point for building a team that can handle it well.

The question most HR practitioners do not ask

When I look at a candidate for a role at Newvest, the standard checklist is the baseline, not the goal. Communication skills, attention to detail, ability to work under pressure — these are given. What I am really trying to understand is something harder to see on a CV.

Can this person maintain their professionalism and their humanity when someone is shouting at them? Can they separate the person’s behaviour from the person’s situation? Can they hold the line on how we conduct ourselves even when the person on the other end is not holding any line at all?

Those qualities are not common. And they cannot be fully assessed in an interview room.

Walking the talk

Our brand values are public. Results That Respect. Integrity First. Human and Tech Synergy. Growth Through Trust. Adapt and Advance. But a value statement is only as meaningful as what happens behind it operationally.

One of the conversations I have been having with our Managing Director is about how we build an induction programme that genuinely reflects these values rather than just introducing people to them.

What we are developing is a field immersion component as part of our programme. Before a candidate is offered to join us, they spend time in the field, observe experienced team members, handling real engagements, experiencing the work as it actually is. Not as we describe it in an induction deck.

The reasoning is simple but important. We want candidates to make an informed decision about whether this work is right for them. And we want to make an informed assessment of whether they are right for this work. Both things matter equally.

Why this changes everything

The traditional induction model invests heavily in everyone upfront and discovers mismatches months later. That is expensive for the organisation. But it is also unfair to the employee who discovers too late that this environment is not what they expected.

Our approach flips that. By bringing candidates into the field first, we concentrate the full investment of our induction programme on candidates who have already demonstrated two things. They can do this work. And they want to do this work.

That distinction matters enormously. A team built on people who are genuinely suited to this environment and have consciously chosen it performs differently from one assembled purely on paper qualifications. The culture that emerges from deliberate hiring like this is not something you can manufacture with posters and values workshops. It is built person by person, decision by decision.

What good culture actually looks like

Culture in a debt recovery organisation is not about making the work feel comfortable. It is about making sure that even when the work is hard, and it is often hard, the standards do not slip.

That means training is not a one-off event. Conduct is something we talk about openly and regularly, not something assumed. When someone on the team has a difficult interaction, there is a framework for processing it, learning from it and moving forward without carrying it into the next call.

It also means leadership has to model the standard, not just communicate it. The values our teams are expected to bring to every debtor interaction have to be the same values they experience internally every day.

The industry is changing

The Consumer Credit Act 2025 and the standards being set by Consumer Credit Commission are raising the bar for conduct across the receivables management industry. That is a good thing. But compliance with external standards is the floor, not the ceiling.

The organisations that will define this industry going forward are not the ones that adjust their behaviour because a regulator requires it. They are the ones that built the right culture before it was required, because they believed it was the right way to operate.

At Newvest, that is what we are working toward. Not just a team that follows the rules. A team that understands why the rules exist and chooses to exceed them.

That is what treating people properly actually requires.

Anis Mohamad is Director of Finance and HR at Newvest. She oversees human capital development, financial governance and the people systems that sit behind Newvest’s operational standards.