Capacity Building in Regional Australia

1
Capacity Building in Regional Australia

• Tom Murphy
• Western Research Institute
• Charles Sturt University
• 28th 29th September 2006

2
What is Capacity Building?

• Capacity Building
• the power to make the most of available
  resources and to develop the ability to generate
  even more resources should they be required
  (Alison, Gorringe Lacey, 2006)
• The Agrifood industry is currently challenged by
  a static labour supply range of industries
  and regions under the heading Agrifood means no
  single strategy, is the answer

3
Topics

• Attracting and retaining skilled workers
• Identifying and accessing untapped workforce
  resources
• The costs and benefits of training for the
  employer
• Aligning industry needs with training packages
• Employer attitudes towards formal qualifications
• The impact of training and skill acquisition on
  regional performance

4
Attracting and Retaining Skill Workers in
Regional Areas

• Difficult due to situation with regard to
• Alternative employment
• Female employment
• Crime rates
• Tertiary education
• Child care
• Transport
• Cultural (Richard Florida)

5
Attracting and Retaining Skill Workers in
Regional Areas

• Easier by
• Reversing any in previous slide
• Regional communities more binding
• Generally good for raising families in younger
  productive years
• Attracting more difficult than retaining

6
Attracting and Retaining Skilled Workers

• Skilled workers retained despite severe drought
  in Bourke
• GRP contracted by 21 from 2001-2006
• No crop at all in 2 years
• Casual staff mainly indigenous lost their
  jobs BUT
• Permanent staff have been retained
• Workers moved their families out of town as crime
  increased

7
Untapped Workforce Resources Female Supply Side

• Orange, Cowra and Condobolin
• 1/3 of women had been seeking employment for a
  year or more
• Nearly 90 prepared to undertake training during
  work time
• 65 prepared to undertake technical and further
  education in own time
• 43 require part-time and 28 childcare
• Those employed concentrated in health retail and
  education

8
Untapped Workforce Resources Female Demand Side

• Neater more attentive to detail and more focused
• Mature age more reliable, stable
• More dexterous and better at talking to people
• Food manufacturing more thought in their work
• Mining trucks and Russian police prefer them

9
Untapped Workforce Resources Female Disparities
Side

• Employers rank experience one but females lack
  paid work experience
• Women seek work through newspapers and agencies
  but regionally word of mouth is method by
  employers
• Generic skills and personal qualities ranked 2nd
  and 3rd by employers but women rank selves lowly
  on these on self report

10
The Situation in Parts of Regional Australia

• Indigenous Population
• Bourke 25, North Western 11 and NSW 2
• Lack of employment associated with increased
  crime rates particularly in relation to theft and
  alcohol related offences
• High crime rates discourage skilled workers with
  families
• Need to develop skills and provide employment

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Moree Aboriginal Employment Service (MAES)

• Preparing indigenous for employment by indigenous
• Mentoring service for each employee
• Community activities designed to reconcile
  Aboriginal and white communities such as Croc
  Eisteddfod
• Employers prepared to use the services

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Impact of MAES

• 433 job placements in just over 4 years
• 34 apprenticeships and traineeships
• Crime rates fell dramatically
• Schools and career advisors reported greater
  interest in good school results and gaining
  employment
• Skilled prepared to move to Moree with families

13
Immigrant

• 1986 Chris Murphy at Conference of Economists
  forecast skill shortage start to bite in
  Australia in 2006
• Government reduced relative expenditure on
  education and training
• Mining in regional areas, coast and capital
  cities magnet for skilled workers
• Gap hard to fill with Australian residents

14
Immigrant

• The procedure
• Overseas migrants submit skills list for
  sponsorship assessment
• List made available to interested businesses. The
  most interested businesses have been those
  managed by immigrants
• Candidate travels to Australia for an interview
  on temporary visa
• Business can then nominate successful candidates
  to sponsor for permanent residence

15
Riverina Model
16
The Costs and Benefits of Training for the
Employer

• ANTARAC Costs of Apprenticeships
• Average net cost of electrical apprentices 40
  000
• Average net cost of mechanical apprentices 17
  000
• Performance of employers varies widely from
  extremely positive to extremely negative
• Training school apprentices are more cost
  effective, but the cost falls as skill level
  rises. Vice versa for other apprentices

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Aligning Industry Needs with Training Packages
(Content)

• Farmers
• Key areas of need are
• marketing product of the farm
• business management
• OHS
• Cutting edge techniques for core activities
• Practical
• No padding

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Aligning Industry Needs with Training Packages

• Farmers
• Short half day sessions
• Younger like accreditation
• Follow up courses favoured
• Interactive, hands on, on-site
• Modular
• Long lead timing taking notice of seasons

19
Aligning Industry Needs with Training Packages
(Sustainability)

• Awareness of environmental issues spawned world
  wide multi billion dollar environment services
  industry
• Practical skills to promote sustainability would
  be required by employers
• Sustainability skills could be introduced in the
  same fashion as generic skills
• Cuts across all training packages

20
Employer Attitudes Towards Formal Qualifications

• In the equine industry the strength of tradition
  often overrides tolerance of new ideas and
  scientific progress
• follow fashion rather than fact (Somerville,
  2005)
• This encourages a culture to ignore modern
  research efforts and/or formal training
• formal qualifications are viewed as unnecessary
  and sometimes pretentious
• Lack of employer education
• One of the challengesis unlearning the old
  practices and beliefs as well as learning new
  ones (Pogson, 2000)

21
The Impact of Training and Skill Acquisition on
Regional Performance

• Each year the Western Institute of TAFE and
  students contributed over
• 97million in GRP
• 70 million in household income
• 2000 full-time jobs
• Graduating with Certificate III or above was the
  most influential factor in determining average
  income.
• Each Certificate III completion increased the
  mean taxable income of region by 1.15

22
Summary

• Skilled labour is at the centre of capacity
  building
• Skilled labour creates a virtuous circle in
  regional Australia
• A lack of skilled labour creates a vicious circle