by Tom Strachan, Managing Director
Friday, 27th May 2011
The word around the paddock of late is BUDGET.
With a $3 billion package rolled out over the next six years to address the nation’s skills shortage and a focus on distributing skilled and trained employees where they’re needed, it is said that this year’s federal budget favour job hunters and employers.
There are some great long term initiatives focused on investing in skills and training to ensure apprentices are upskilled to the best of their potential. In his interview with ABC Inside News, SKILLED Group’s CEO, Mick McMahon has expressed that the challenge is to get these initiatives to gain traction quickly because it will take years to see the results.
True. To address skills shortage and the distribution of skills in the long run, businesses need to play a role in engaging the disengaged workforce by assisting in mentoring them. And this is by no means something that will be an overnight success.
Over the last decade, our business has been strong because of our ability to engage and develop our staff on a professional and personal level. At AWX we pride ourselves as “Partners in People”.
Our people are the centre of our business, and we believe the long term solution lies in supporting them and in turn, their talent and skills will support Australia’s growing industry.
One of the things we have put in place to engage the disengaged workforce is the First People program – where we are working closely with Indigenous leaders and clients to mentor Indigenous Australians to be work ready before placing them in sustainable jobs in the workforce.
It’s all part of a long term solution to deliver skilled Australians to not just metropolitan Australia, but especially to rural and regional areas where there’s a shortage of skills - to ensure that people, businesses and industries far and wide benefit.
The real benefit will come when we see the budget initiatives enable the redistribution of skilled people in rural and regional Australia.