Skills For Good - September 2019: Careerforce turns 25, Rugby player leads Pasifika and more

Kia ora

Surviving 25 years in today’s modern business environment is no mean feat, so today we celebrate, as we mark our 25th anniversary.

We are grateful for the support of our customers over the past 25 years. We know that the employers with whom we work have choices available to them. We have enjoyed increased engagement with employers over the past few years. In this issue of Skills for Good, we are pleased to report solid progress on the actions we committed to, to address the concerns and issues you raised with us in our last survey. The third annual iteration of this annual survey is due to roll out over November, so that will be our ‘moment of truth’ to assess just how closely we have been listening.

One other current priority for us is around monitoring trainee activity rates, as our Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) funding is contingent on meeting agreed activity rate targets. If you are aware that your trainees may be lagging behind where they should be, we would welcome an opportunity to have a discussion with you about how we can support you. Feel free to email me at andrew.saunders@careerforce.org.nz

Ngā mihi

Andrew Saunders
General Manager, Employer Services

The one thing that hasn’t changed is our fervent belief in, and absolute commitment to workplace-based training, and to improving the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders. We would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and applaud the critical role that you, as employers, have played over the last 25 years. The success we have achieved would quite simply not have happened without the dedication and commitment to training by our employers. Back in 1994, we started as an organisation of 9 staff, and we are proud to have grown to an organisation of 160, working with over 1000 employers nationwide, and presently supporting over 15,000 trainees and apprentices.

You may also be interested to know that back in 1994, Yahoo and Amazon launched, together with the PlayStation, Michael Jackson married Lisa-Marie Presley, we were introduced to Friends and Chandler Bing, and Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s President.

Kai is developing his own career further and is now completing the Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management with the support of Careerforce.

Training athletes in Tonga for the Oceania Paralympics in 2008 first ignited his interest in helping people with disabilities. When he saw the incredible successes these people could achieve, it simply melted his heart.

His rugby career took him overseas, offering great opportunities and experiences, yet his passion was still to work with people with disabilities one day. In his thirties, and realising he couldn’t play rugby forever, he moved to Christchurch and found his ‘dream’ role as Disability Coordinator for Vaka Tautua. For more information, read more.

19 September marks Careerforce’s 25th Anniversary as an Industry Training Organisation, and 16 October is Thank Your Cleaner Day. Careerforce is an official sponsor of Thank Your Cleaner Day. It’s our way of recognising and applauding the fantastic and often unseen work that our cleaning workforce do, day in day out.

To celebrate these two events and the important work being done in our sectors to enhance people’s health and wellbeing, we are offering free enrolments in selected Level 2 and 3 programmes during September and October 2019.

We are offering free enrolment in Health and Wellbeing and Cleaning Level 2 programmes in September 2019 and Free enrolment in Health and Wellbeing and Cleaning Level 3 programmes in October 2019. For more information, read more.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced the final decisions from the proposed reforms last month. These reforms will result in significant change to the vocational training landscape in New Zealand, but will be implemented very gradually. When announcing the changes, Minister Hipkins made it very clear that he remains absolutely committed to workplace-based training, and expects to see more of this happening.

The Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE) is intended to create a stronger, and more sustainable and unified vocational education system. Nonetheless, it represents a generational change in the approach towards vocational education, and we are continuing to work very closely with education officials as reform implementation plans are developed.

As we have previously outlined, industry training organisations such as ourselves currently perform two key functions:

The ‘arranging training’ function, which will be transitioned across to the new NZ Institute of Skills & Technology (NZIST) or other providers. The current timeframe for this transition is that it is not expected to be completed until 31 December 2022.
The ‘standard setting and skills leadership’ function, which will be transitioned across to new Workforce Development Councils (WDCs) with the expectation that these will be up and running by June 2021.

However, for now, everything remains business as usual. We will continue to keep you updated as the reform implementation plans are developed, but if you have any questions about these reforms in the meantime, please drop us a line.

This will run across the month of November, and you will receive an invite to participate early November.

In the meantime, we continue to make strong progress against our committed actions resulting from the 2018 survey. Most recently, this includes the release of redesigned assessments for the apprenticeship core modules. This follows on from clear feedback from survey respondents around the need to simplify the language used in assessment questions.

We have also made strong progress around enhancing our trainee welcome and engagement activities, with the launch of welcome emails to trainees at the start of this month. This is being followed up next month with the sending out of a physical welcome pack to all new trainees and apprentices, which includes a training notebook packed with tips and tricks. These also include a link to our new training support page on the Careerforce website.

For qualification based pay equity, support workers either need to have an actual New Zealand Certificate in Health & Wellbeing (Level 2-4), or a qualification which has been assessed as equivalent to it. Careerforce was given responsibility for determining qualification equivalence, and to date, have assessed over 7000 New Zealand and overseas qualifications.

You can find out more about the assessment process here.

In each issue of Skills for Good, we will continue to publish the latest 'Pay Equity and Qualification Equivalency' updates.

The Mayors Taskforce for Jobs (MTFJ) and the councils run Industry Training Mayoral Graduations to recognise the achievements of their local graduates of industry training.

Graduation ceremonies are attended by graduates who have recently completed a qualification with an Industry Training Organisation (ITO) such as Careerforce, the graduates’ family and whānau, the local Mayor and Councillors, and the ITO representatives.

The graduations are a time for celebration as well as a way to thank local employers for their ongoing commitment to upskilling and training.

As of 2019, ITO Graduations will take place in two "runs" - a May run and a November run.
The following Councils have confirmed to be hosting a graduation ceremony.