Being in Canberra with the Jobs and Skills Summit, at Parliament House, was an exciting time and it was interesting to see who was invited and the brief time that people were allocated to share points.
The Australian Jobs and Skills Summit will inform the white paper akin to,
“In 1945, Prime Minister John Curtin released the Full Employment White Paper, which charted a course for the Australian labour market in the post-Second World War era. Curtin knew that if Australia was to prosper after a period of great upheaval it needed to rewrite the social contract, and to be meaningful, full employment needed to be at the core of it.”
Streamlined and Simplified
Well, what areas can be streamlined and simplified?
- Industry advisory structures
- Latent capacity in the workforce
- National Vision and Agreement
- Training Packages
- VET Workforce
Industry Advisory Structures
Industry advisory structures are quite a mess with committees, organisations, peak bodies and associations, stepping over each other, and the model of Industry Clusters doesn’t seem to help streamline but rather confuse the situation.
Replicate national structure at a state and territory level means that Australia’s VET system should be one of those across the globe that has close alignment to employer and industry needs… but we all know that many Training Packages are out of date and old fashioned.
Workforce Capacity
Where is there latent capacity in the workforce? One way to look at this question is by considering where improvements to engagement in the labour market could be made such as:
- Carers
- First Nations people
- Parents particularly those with young children
- People from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse background including migrants and refugees
- People with disabilities
- Retirees and pensioners
- Underemployed people including those who are self-employed
- Veterans and defence families
- Women
Considering of strategic workforce planning and development should incorporate strategies that attract, develop and retain these cohorts with consultation and communication that fits the purpose.
National Vision and Agreement
The Hon Brendan O’Connor MP, Minister for Skills and Training, met with federal, state and territory skills ministers on 7 October 2022 considering outcomes of the Jobs and Skills Summit, establishment of Jobs and Skills Australia, a 12-month Skills Agreement, Standards for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), and VET Workforce Capability Blueprint.
The Skills Reform Engagement Hub takes you back to the main Skills Reform website and this discussion is going around in circles at the moment when it needs to be a spiral, stepping up to the next level.
Outlining a long-term National Vision and Agreement say for 5 years, for Australia’s workforce and VET system, should be a priority for Skills Ministers. This is a feature of many countries VET/TVET system including developing countries that aim to incorporate outstanding practice from around the world.
Training Packages
There is an easy way to think about streamlining units of competency that create qualifications by having a structure of core skills, functional skills and industry specific (technical) skills. Tagging units in this way would identify many areas of duplication where the same type of skill has been developed across many different industry sectors and Training Packages.
The process of Training Package development can be innovated too – by building job skills profiles for current and future jobs then benchmarking against employer and industry job and position descriptions. This is an approach that we used many years ago undertaking a very efficient process and training package review for a specific sector.
VET Workforce
In cases of outstanding Registered Training Organisations, the VET workforce has capability well beyond the minimum requirements, taking qualifications and units of competency as the baseline and building up to what industry really needs.
See previous post> https://workforceblueprint.com.au/taking-australias-vet-system-from-complex-and-complicated-to-simplified-and-streamlined-background/