Skills For Good - October 2018

Welcome to our inaugural Skills for Good employer e-newsletter.

In our annual employer survey last year, one of the areas noted for improvement was around communications, hence the launch of this regular employer e-newsletter.

The purpose of Skills for Good is to add value to your respective roles, and to ensure we are better communicating with you on the things you need to know to support your workplace training endeavours.

Why Skills for Good? Last year, we completed some brand refresh work, including the development of a new tagline, “Qualifications for Life, Skills for Good”. We firmly believe that this embodies the incredibly valuable services that you and your employees are providing out in the community, combined with the value of a highly competent workforce through practical workplace based training. The naming of this e-newsletter helps bring our tagline to life.

Happy reading. As always, we value your feedback, please contact us.

Andrew Saunders
General Manager – Employer Services

After more than seven years at the helm, Careerforce Chief Executive Ray Lind’s last day with Careerforce is 2 November, 2018.

Under Ray's watch, Careerforce has seen significant growth with trainee numbers growing 202%, a strong reflection of the increasing demands upon the health and wellbeing sector, but also the increasingly recognised benefits to New Zealand’s health strategy of a more highly skilled and competent workforce.

It’s clear he is passionate about opportunities for people working across our sectors, and education in general. “When I first started, 80% of our enrolments were doing Level 2 and now we have a huge range of qualifications and pathways,” he says. “It has been an honour to lead Careerforce these past seven years and to serve the tens of thousands of trainees who use our qualifications."

According to Careerforce Board Chair Richard Westlake, “Ray has been an exceptional leader, and pivotal to the growth Careerforce has experienced, and setting up the organisation for continued growth. He has an intimate understanding of the New Zealand health system, and Careerforce will sorely miss his extensive experience and strategic contributions, as indeed will the wider health and wellbeing sector.”

Recruitment for Ray’s successor is currently underway and Andrew Saunders (General Manager, Employer Services) will be interim CEO.

When Grant Taylor, Service Manager Health & Disability at Lifewise Homecare Services, introduced a literacy and numeracy (L&N) programme, the outcomes were quickly evident. “Our support workers are just different!” says Grant, “They are more communicative, more confident and more supportive of each other. They are clearly more engaged in discussion, presenting ideas and asking questions.”

Lifewise Health and Disability Service is a community-based healthcare provider, working with older people and people living with a disability. Based in Auckland, Lifewise Health and Disability Service has 180 staff who make 250,000 visits a year to some 1,400 clients.

We are changing the way we assess for literacy and numeracy to include all trainees who have not previously experienced tertiary-level education.

The Tertiary Education Commission acknowledges that their blanket rule of assessing only Level 2 trainees does not identify people enrolled at higher levels who may have learning support needs. It also does not take into account people entering our industry at Level 2 but with higher qualifications from previous careers.

So we are introducing new criteria for literacy and numeracy assessments.

Changes have been made to the Privacy section on the Training Agreement to clarify how we may use employer and employee information.

On the Training Agreement, we clarify that we contact employers and employees via email or phone to share information that is relevant to their training. From time to time we may also provide material such as news, and event information.

Employers and trainees may wish to unsubscribe from these communications.

Please remember to always use the latest Training Agreement. Check out the latest on the forms page of the Careerforce website.

In each issue of Skills for Good, we'll be sharing top tips on how you can support your employees with their training. In this issue, we focus on the importance of setting goals.

Top Tip 1 – The importance of goal setting
It’s important that you work with your staff to help them develop training goals. Setting training and professional development goals are important to retain high-performing staff and keep them engaged. Setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound) for your staff doing training will help them:

clarify their ideas,
focus their efforts,
keep them motivated, and
use and manage their time well to achieve their qualification.

"Give them short, small targets to start off with until they feel confident," says Pam Harris, Careerforce Workplace Advisor and former Learning and Development Manager at Nurse Maude. Pam shares her experience, learnings, and the benefits of setting goals.

While much is known about the state of the workforce for the higher profile health sectors such as care in hospitals and challenges for aged residential care and mental health and addiction, very little is known about the current state of the home and community support workforce. This is despite it being a 16,000-strong workforce, responsible for providing home support services for approximately 75,000 people aged over 65, numerous New Zealanders recovering from injury, and 7900 disabled people in 2017.

This report, Spreading our Wings – A Report into the Training and Development Needs of the Health & Disability Home and Community Workforce, has just been published, and has highlighted many areas for both concern and opportunity.

“When I finished my work placement, it opened my eyes to what I really wanted to do,” says Victoria Penitani of Auckland Girls’ Grammar School. Such was the effect of having work experience at Youthline Auckland.
Victoria signed up for her school’s Gateway programme to gain credits towards her NCEA. She was leaning towards social work, so her Gateway Coordinator thought of the youth development organisation, Youthline.

Cathy Aiavao, Manager at Youthline said they try to support a couple of students every year for work placements. “It was good having Victoria. We have various departments that support the youth development sector that she could work in. It was about finding the right fit for her. We wanted to help her find her strengths.”