Forestry Workforce Roadshow 2020

Marion Schrama, Manager Skills, Training and Workplace Safety for Te Uru Rākau: Cool so, nau mai, haere mai. Welcome everybody to the Forestry Workforce Roadshow, brought to you very proudly by Te Uru Rākau.

So, this is the third year that Te Uru Rākau, in conjunction with the industry, has brought together a Workforce Roadshow. It’s designed to connect employers with agencies so that you can recruit and retain and train your people. It’s a whole new world that we’re operating in post-COVID so I’ll bring you across that later as well.

So, Te Uru Rākau, why do we exist? If you haven’t heard, if you don’t know much about us, so we’re working to expand and utilise forest resources for the benefit of the environment, regions and our people and they are some key teams which work within Te Uru Rākau and what they do.

So, there’s One Billion Trees and I’ll give you an overview of that, the Industry Transformation Plan, the Forestry and Wood Processing [Workforce] Action Plan, so I’ll touch on that a little bit but Fraser will take you through that in more detail later on today. We support investments and then there are some targeted projects.

So, for me, what I will do I  I'll talk to you mostly about the targeted work that we do in terms of skills, recruitment and training.

Te Uru Rākau is working to the Government's eight goals around forestry sector. Primarily, I will focus on the strong, stable and reliable labour market which is number four up there.

So, the work that we've been doing. I look after the Workforce Skills and Training team. And so, we are dedicated to, obviously, skills and training. So, the things that we've been doing to help build a sustainable sector include the Te Uru Rākau scholarships. So, you may or may not have heard of those. They’re in their third year. They're designed to encourage Māori and women into the forestry sector and create that continuity and bring them into higher, more skilled roles.

So, as I said, this is year three. We have 22 scholarship recipients so far, six, eight, six and eight. The scholarships are for a Bachelor of Forest Engineering or Forestry Science. They run for four years and each of those scholarships is worth $8,000 per annum. And there is at least one paid summer internship for those students so they're an awesome thing and they've been hugely successful.

We’re also obviously bringing to you the Workforce Roadshow, designed to connect you with the right people to build a sustainable workforce. So, this is, as I said, this is the third year that we've done that.

So earlier this year [2020], we also pulled together, in conjunction with MSD, a recruitment campaign to get our employers ready and support them for the planting season. So that kicked off in about March - January, February, March, because planting starts in May. We pulled together about 240, in conjunction with MSD, 241 forestry jobs were filled with best guess being an additional 500 roles needed. So that was, that went really, really well and that's why Kal is here today again to talk to you about how MSD helps bring people into work. Similarly, Kal will talk about the work that FICA did as well to bring people into work. So, we did that campaign which kind of morphed as we went into lockdown.

Also, for the past two years, and now moving into the third year, we’ll be doing a survey amongst the forestry sector to get an understanding of how many roles are required for the season, the planting season.

So, the Industry Transformation Plan. Show of hands if anybody's heard of that because I know there was, thanks folks, back at the end of October, there was a workshop between industry and government to begin to figure out what are the opportunities and barriers to lifting productivity across the supply chain. So, this is a big long-term plan that Te Uru Rākau is working on in partnership with industry, government, workforce and Māori and as the slide says, we're looking at 2050 and beyond.

[Marion points to the screen above].

So how do we take what we do and instead of doing lots and lots and lots of it, volume, how do we create great value out of that? So that's what work is underway through Te Uru Rākau, expected to be completed in the second half of 2021.

And then we have the Forestry and Wood Processing Workforce Action Plan. So, that is the plan, which I think you've all been given a copy of now, that Fraser will talk about, where government and industry worked together, back in 2019, to talk about how do we create a sustainable workforce? It's available now in your hot little hands but also on the Te Uru Rākau website for you to review.

So that is being, the Action Plan is being implemented by the Forestry Workforce Council and it ties in really, really closely to the Food & Fibre Skills Plan as well because what we're finding is right across primary industries, the challenges are the same. How do we bring good people into the roles that we have and how do we keep them? How do we support them?

And so there are four areas of that plan; knowledge, attraction, education and training, and employment. So, if you ever want, if you have any questions about that plan, one, you can talk to Fraser, he'll be up here a bit later on, but also you can contact us at the workforcecouncil@mpi.govt.nz.

Right, so post-COVID, the environment has really, really changed. So, what you already know and have seen is that the Government is supporting industry in terms of jobs. So, the Labour Party Manifesto, they have whole pile of themes around skills that I just wanted to share with you to help you get a handle on what's happening for us and government and for you as a sector. So where the opportunities are for us as well.

So the key things that are sitting in that Manifesto is we need to invest in our people and there's 121 million dollars’ worth of funding available through the TEC and through MSD. So free access to apprenticeships and trade training. So how do we tap into that for our people?

And the Manifesto also talks about jobs, jobs and more jobs so rolling out Jobs for Nature and building on Opportunity Grows Here, which is an initiative which is being rolled out by MPI. I'll touch on that a bit more later.

Education; there is still free access to apprenticeships, there's a Reform of Vocational Education as well. So some of you may already know about that or will be involved in it, but that's basically how do we make sure, in terms of vocational training, that we do it, that we do it not the right way but how do we do it differently to ensure people have access to the training that they need? So we're talking about access to trainers, access to assessors and the right credentials for the right people at the right time.

Our new Government too is also focusing on social services and reinstating training incentives for sole parents and disabled parties, people and bring the abatement threshold up to support people to take up part-time work.

So that's the activities that's going on for all of us and they’re the opportunities for us. So for me and my team, we look at that and go, right so how do we connect people with these apprenticeships, how do we connect them with MSD, that's why we're in the room today, to make sure we make the most of that?

Fit for a Better World is a piece of work also being done right across primary industries where we're looking at basically primary industries being one of the cornerstones of supporting economic recovery. So, the targets that MPI and the group have for set for themselves are 10 percent more Kiwis into the primary sector by 2030, so that’s 15,000 people. We’re putting New Zealanders into jobs and there's a budget sitting there of 25.3 million to attract people, New Zealanders into roles in the primary sector and again, just touching on the Industry Transformation Plan.

So what this is telling you and what it’s showing, showing us, is that there's a lot of focus being done in the primary sector, forestry included, in making sure that we get people into jobs, people are trained, that we can keep them and that we also are looking towards the future to make sure we are sustainable and we get more value out of what we do.

So, part of that investment is the Primary Sector Workforce Campaign which is branded Opportunity Grows Here and that works right across the primary sector, involves forestry. That's one piece of work that's underway, so if you have roles that you want to advertise, they can go through MSD on Work the Seasons, they can go through Opportunity Grows Here. It all links in.

[Marion gestures to the audience].

Again, Richard [Lynch] at the back there is working on workforce data and forecasting. So understanding the gaps, understanding the roles and understanding future needs in terms of employment.

Familiarisation courses, which we are calling taster courses, through Taratahi and Telford. How do we create wee courses where people can get a taste of what it's like to work in forestry? And then we can connect them with employers and bring them into that. So, one of my team [members] is working to pull together a taster course for forestry in time for the planting season next, next year [2021].

A Regional Workforce Liaison Service, so people within MPI out in the regions connecting with MSD, connecting with employers, making sure that we can bring people together, connect them up and get people into work.

There’s a fund available for skills and labour for Māori in particular and there's a piece of work being done which I'm quite closely involved with around upskilling employers because what we know around retaining employees, when everything else is even, for example, REM and work conditions, people want good communication. They want a good boss that they can talk to. They want leadership.

And so, everyone gets really, really busy in their day-to-day roles and so sometimes that stuff goes by the wayside. So, in conjunction with [the] Forest Industry Safety Council, we're looking to bring or expand on a leadership programme which helps people build their skills and become better employers because that way, people stay in their roles.

Alright, so direct investment into kickstarting tree planting; 39 joint ventures have been funded since the fund was first stood up so that’s unlocking capital to establish and integrate plantation forests on private and Māori-owned land. 566 grants have been awarded, I guess, for incentivising planting and native regeneration. So that's outstanding. 106 partnerships, because we’ve got grants and partnerships, 106 partnerships for activities to enable tree planting. So, some of you in this room may actually have some funding from 1BT as well. So, there's been some really, really good work done from 1BT.

[End of transcript]

Kal Marsden, Corporate Account Manager for Ministry of Social Development: Well good afternoon, everyone. My name is Kal Marsden. I'm a Corporate Account Manager with Work and Income’s Industry Partnerships Team. I’m here to talk to you about ways we can help your industry get the staff you need for the planting season ahead.

The Ministry of Social Development is pleased to have formed a partnership with the Forest Industry Contractors Association. MSD Industry Partnerships and FICA joined forces to support local silviculture contractors across the country to attract, employ and support 236 New Zealanders throughout the 2020 silviculture planting season.

Our industry partnership with FICA established a contract that enabled employment opportunities and upskilling for silviculture workers with the intention to provide the same level of support for the 2021 planting season.

This initiative provides assistance to help employ workers and for employment-related costs.
Employees are entitled to receive incentive payments when they meet employment duration milestones at 30 days, again at 91 days.

Employers are also incentivised to retain and support their workers for up to six months. The participants were required to enrol in the new Forestry Essentials micro-credential unit standards and undertake further Work Ready standards that Competenz, the industry ITO, launched. These NZQA training units are offered online and provide the employee with the opportunity to understand the career pathways available in the forestry sector.

MSD employer engagement between April and September encouraged employees to list vacancies through local Work Brokers, Job Connect, through the Work and Income website and on our Work the Seasons portal to attract job seekers for the 2020 planting season.

The industry estimated around 660 additional roles were needed for the 2020 planting season. However, the number, the planting season labour requirement is now believed to be, have been closer to around 400 workers.

MSD worked with 97 different employers nationally, referring 876 jobseekers to silviculture-related jobs and we filled 348 of those roles on offer. It is expected that the increased engagement is probably due to the impact of COVID-19 and the closed borders.

So there's the figures there and the Mana in Mahi and the Flexi-Wage contract figures are indicating permanent and not seasonal roles there.

Okay, Work and Income, we can connect you, employers, to New Zealanders, New Zealand's largest pool of job seekers. In addition to the targeted silviculture support, we design and deliver services to help employers recruit staff that help grow and develop your business. We offer help to recruit staff, financial support to take on new staff and training and work experience opportunities so staff have the necessary skills. Our specialist recruitment services operate in all areas of employment, helping to build sustainable businesses.

We have over 400 Work Brokers and employment-focussed staff supporting employers right across New Zealand. It's possible that you may, you may qualify for some financial support from the Flexi-Wage programme. Talk to one of our Work Brokers about the Flexi-Wage programme. Sometimes a new employee will require a little extra support to reach the entry skill level and this subsidy can be used for training and a contribution towards the employee’s wages. So, we understand that there's extra pressures because of COVID and closed borders so engage with us early so we can help you get your team in place.

We can provide support for your workforce too. There’s In-Work Support once your new staff member starts work. Work and Income can offer support to help your candidates successfully transition to your team. We want to ensure your worker has access to the support they need, for example, transport or childcare assistance, supporting them to stay in work and to support you as an employer.

There's also Working for Families. The support package is designed to make it easier to work and raise a family. It can include assistance with childcare costs, tax credits or perhaps an accommodation supplement.

With extra pressure to find staff as overseas workers can’t come to New Zealand, there's been some extra support introduced to get New Zealanders into seasonal jobs. $5K to Work is available for people on a benefit, who have a confirmed job offer and need to relocate to take up the job.

This assistant, assistance hasn't previously been available for seasonal work but due to COVID-19, there is more flexibility around the criteria for this assistance now. The employment offer must be at least 30 hours a week and needs to last longer than 91 days. So the application for the $5K to Work is on the Work and Income website, Workandincome.govt.nz.

Some other good places to list jobs. If you have, if you are listing job opportunities, you can use these sites here; so we've got Keep New Zealand Working, Jobs-during-covid.workandincome.govt[.nz], Worktheseasons.co.nz, Opportunitygrowshere.New Zealand.nz.
And there’s other job sites like Seek.co.nz and you've got TradeMe Jobs. All good places to list your vacancies. They're open to anyone.

We encourage you as employers to list seasonal vacancies on Work the Seasons. Work the Seasons is a free online recruitment tool connecting seasonal employers directly with job seekers. The website aims to help address the skills and labour shortages facing the seasonal work industry and connect employers with New Zealanders looking for work. Using Work the Seasons, employers can list jobs, identify job seekers who match their requirements, manage and the recruitment process, offer essential skills training to their employees and manage the recruitment of large numbers of staff.

Another feature of Work the Seasons, of the Work the Seasons website, sorry, is the training modules to help you, employers, to assess the aptitude of candidates. There’s a forest hazard detection learning module to help prepare employees for what the job entails. The hazard detection module and game-based learning tool is designed to introduce and prepare workers for the silviculture industry.

The course covers some of the health and safety training for the forestry industry and challenges users to demonstrate their ability to identify hazards and remedy, remedy them. Sorry, fix them. Silviculture employers can use this as an introduction tool to ensure staff are prepared for and understand what the role entails.

If you're looking beyond the next planting season to create longer-term employment opportunities, ask us about Mana in Mahi. The programme helps people who need extra support to start a meaningful career and earn a formal industry qualification by connecting them with employers who are keen to help them. The investment your business makes is recognised through a range of financial and pastoral support. If you’re keen to know more about the programme, talk to a local MSD Work Broker.

You might want to know more about the Limited Service Volunteer LSV course. It's a six-week training course for 18 to 24-year olds. It gives them confidence, life skills and a willingness to learn and grow in their future workplace. LSV is a live, sorry, LSV is a live-in course, run in partnership with the New Zealand Defence Force.

And I’d just like to play a very short, less than two-minute, video on the LSV course.

[Music]

LSV graduate 1: If you've been offered to go to LSV, then that's almost like a cheat code for life.
LSV graduate 2: The moment you arrive here, you just feel like you're about to change.

[Music]

LSV graduate 3: When I left school I, you know, really struggled to find the motivation. Yeah, every day that I spend here is building me. Get out there, let's go, let's do this. Come on, let's work together.
LSV graduate 4: I was into drugs and drinking. Everything sort of took a slope downhill. I've now put all that behind me and I'm now more focussed on the future.
LSV graduate 5: I was always doubting everything. I've learnt to push myself, give everything 100 percent with everything that I'm doing.

[Haka]

LSV graduate 6: I'm so proud to be me. I'm so proud to be who I am. Leading the Haka just with all my mates, it's just an absolute honour and privilege.
LSV graduate 7: There's always equality. Like, we're all the same. No one's different. That makes us a family.
LSV graduate 8: I'm not feeling lost, I feel like I've found who I am and that's probably one of the biggest things this course has taught me.
LSV graduate 9: When I leave here, I'll be getting a job. Everything that I've learnt here, I just want to take that with me out into the world and use it in a positive way.
LSV graduate 10: You can't lose anything by trying. It could change everything for you. I know it definitely has for me.

[Music]

What that showed us is that we have some amazing young people looking for an opportunity to work in the forestry sector. If you are interested in employing someone that's come off a six-week training programme, really keen and enthusiastic about working, they've come from all around the country, please contact us, your local Work and Income office or go to the Work and Income website so we can assist you with your recruitment needs.

[End of transcript]

Hiro Kuroki, Relationship Manager, Sectors and Skills for Immigration New Zealand: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Hiro. I'm from, I'm Relationship Manager from Immigration New Zealand. My role is to help employers navigate immigration system. So today I will talk about how you can recruit migrant workers under the current circumstances.

So currently, New Zealand border remains closed so New Zealand citizens and residents can still travel to New Zealand but apart from that, only a small number of people can travel to New Zealand. Often they are critical health workers, such as doctors or people deemed to be other critical workers. So other critical workers includes very high skilled specialist, such as specialist engineers or someone who brings significant benefit to New Zealand regional or national economy.

Alright, so currently for employers to bring migrant workers from overseas, the potential employees would need to meet the criteria for other critical workers. So here is the criteria for other critical workers. There are two different criteria, depending on how long they intend to stay in New Zealand. For someone who intend to stay in New Zealand for less than six months, their employer would need to demonstrate that they have unique experience and technical and specialist skills that cannot be found in New Zealand.

Or they are undertaking a time critical role for government approved project, event or programme. So, for example, the Government-approved projects are new Dunedin Hospital campus, Manawatu Road Maintenance Programme or Interislander Ferry Replacement Project. The list, the full list of government-approved project, event and programme are available on our website.

Also, a migrant worker who can bring significant benefit to New Zealand economy could potentially meet this criteria for other short-term critical workers.

The criteria for other long-term critical workers, long-term means more than six months, they would need to meet the criteria for short-term critical workers, which I just explained. In addition to that, their salary would need to be more than $106,000 or they have an essential role in government-funded science programme or government-approved event, project or programme.

So here's a current process of bringing overseas migrants under the, under other critical workers category. So first you, as an employer, would need to make a request for an exception to travel, for exception to travel ban, for your potential employee. If Immigration New Zealand approves your request, then we will invite your potential employee to apply for a Visitor Visa with work right. So this Visitor Visa is specifically designed for COVID-19 and is valid for six months and it includes work rights.

Once they have been granted a Visitor Visa with work right, they can travel to New Zealand, as long as they booked a managed isolation quarantine facility. If they want to stay more than six months, they could apply for further visa upon arrival. As you probably noticed, that criteria is, is strict to manage COVID-19 and also due to the limited capacity of managed isolation quarantine facilities.

Many employers may not be able to bring overseas migrants or overseas, sorry overseas workers to New Zealand, in the current environment. And so I will talk about how you can hire migrant workers who are already living in New Zealand.

So Essential Skills Work Visa is temporary work visa which is commonly used by migrant worker - migrant workers who have been offered employment in New Zealand. So the validity, validity period for this visa is between six months and three years, depending on their wage. So for most of the, for most of occupations, a labour market test is required. So labour market test is advertising job and doing interview. So labour market test is required for employers to support migrant workers visa applications. This is employer-specific work visa so they can only work for a specific employer in the specified role.

So this table highlights some of the recent changes to the Essential Skills Work Visa. So Immigration New Zealand used to use wage and Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupation, or ANZSCO, to determine skill level, whether it's high skill or mid skill or lower skill. Immigration New Zealand no longer use ANZSCO and we only look at wage.

So please look at the first line of the table. If migrant workers get paid more than medium wage, which is currently 25.5 dollars, then their visa can be valid up to three years. Employer would need to conduct a labour market test but Skills Match Report from MSD is not required.

Looking at the second line of the table, in the table, if their wage is below medium wage, then they can apply for a visa that is valid for six months. Previously, before July this year [2020], it was one-year visa, but due to COVID-19, this has been shortened as significant changes to the labour market test are expected.

So employers can apply for a new, sorry, employees can apply for a new Essential Skills Work Visa before their essential work, Essential Skills Work Visa expires. They can keep working in New Zealand on Essential Skills Work Visa but if they are, if they get if they get paid less than 25.5 dollars, they can only stay here in New Zealand for up to three years. And after three years, they would need to apply for another type of visa or they would need to leave the country for 12 months, we call it stand-down period.

Generally speaking, if employers want to support migrant workers whose wage is below median wage, they would need to engage Ministry of Social Development to obtain Skills Match Report before they, before their employee apply for a visa.

Right, so the key points today. So New Zealand border remains closed and we discussed the criteria and process for other critical workers. Essential Skills Work Visa is one of the available options if they want, if employer wants to, want to support employee’s work visa.

Essential Skills Work Visa requires a labour market test for most of, for most occupations. Additionally, Skills Match Report from MSD may be required for, if the workers get paid less than 25.5 dollars at the moment.

So there has been some changes to Essential Skills Work Visa, so I explained the visa validity period has been shortened. We no longer use ANZSCO for Essential Skills Work Visa and we only look at wage.

So this is my, this is the end of my presentation. Thank you for listening.

[End of transcript]

[Music]

Tēnā koe. I'm Deirdre Marshall. I am the Manager Delivery and Projects at TEC.

As a result of COVID-19, we know that many learners will be wanting to retrain and that employers in key sector areas will be needing more skilled people. In response to that, the Government has launched the Targeted Training and Apprenticeship Fund, also known as TTAF, which removes costs for many learners and employers for the next two years. TTAF pays for learners’ fees and compulsory course costs for a range of vocational qualifications and programmes and it continues until the end of 2022.

The fund is targeted to key areas so that skills shortages and workforce needs are addressed for employers and upskilling and employment opportunities are supported. The TTAF Fund will cover fees from 1 July 2020 to December 2022.

TTAF covers all TEC-approved apprenticeships and qualifications in targeted areas including forestry. For forestry, the examples include New Zealand Certificate in Forest Harvesting Operations,

New Zealand Diploma in Forest Management and the New Zealand Certificate in Forestry Operations.

For industry trainees and apprentices, TTAF covers the reasonable fees for training and assessment and eligible qualifications and programmes. Fees must relate to learners who are enrolled with an industry training organisation or an education provider. It includes fees paid to ITOs like Primary ITO or Competenz and fees for training and assessment, paid directly by employers and learners to training and assessment providers. The fund does not cover costs for in-house workplace assessors.

All domestic students who are eligible for government tuition subsidies are able to access TTAF. This means that people of all ages, regardless of their prior study, can access study or training

opportunities through the Targeted Training and Apprenticeship Fund.

Learners do not need to apply to access TTAF. If your employee enrols in an eligible programme, then TTAF will automatically cover their fee costs.

There is more information about the fees that are covered on the TEC website. There is also other government support available for businesses, people looking for jobs or those looking for training and education opportunities. You can find information about these by visiting the website; Connected.govt.nz.

Kia ora, I'm Jane Duncan from the Tertiary Education Commission. I've been working on the Apprenticeship Boost initiative that I’d like to tell you a bit more about.

As part of the Government's Apprenticeship Support Programme, the Apprenticeship Boost initiative has been rolled out to help employers and mitigate the effects of COVID-19.

The Apprenticeship Boost is a payment to employers, designed to help them keep and take on apprentices. This will help learners continue to train in their programmes and to complete their apprenticeships while the economy recovers from the effects of COVID-19.

As an employer, you can apply for the Apprenticeship Boost if your apprentice is actively training in their apprenticeship programme currently, if they are enrolled in an apprenticeship programme that is recognised by the Tertiary Education Commission and if they are in the first 24 months of their apprenticeship and this includes prior apprenticeship training with their current provider or transitional ITO.

As an employer, for an apprentice, in their first year, you'll receive 1,000 dollars a month. When your apprentice moves into their second year, the payment will be 500 dollars per month.

Applying is easy. Just visit the Ministry of Social Development's website. That’s at Workandincome.govt.nz and there'll be further information there.

[Music]

[End of transcript]

Fiona Ewing, National Safety Director for the Forest Industry Safety Council: Tēnā koutou katoa, thanks very much for coming along. It's great to have the support both for Te Uru Rākau but I see a lot of you with your yellows on so that means you're coming to the conference so that's great to have you all here. 

[Fiona holds up yellow lanyard].

I always start with this slide. I think it's actually quite good that I'm, it kind of helps with the fact that, you know, I'm a bit schizophrenic in my own life that I actually have a split personality of, I work for the Forest Industry Safety Council but we have the Safetree website. So that's our, the public-focused brand and website that where everything that we develop within the Council goes out onto the Safetree website and it's available for anyone to use. So it's there for forestry, but we do have other sectors actually picking things up as well.

Now it's getting a bit late in the day so thought I'd just give you a bit of a laugh. Some of you might have seen this picture before. There we go. So in a previous role, my team selected this avatar for me, which is Princess Fiona. Not in the posh green frock, but with a little kilt on, and I kind of thought, well, I might as well, you know, just take it on board and embrace it.

But it came about because I sort of said to them, why would you think a small Scottish person, you know, five foot nothing is a scary woman? And they went, “because that's what we see!”  So that's me, so I embrace that one.

But what's the Forest Industry Safety Council all about? So it's not just about safety. Fundamentally, what we want is a safe, sustainable and professional sector and that's actually going to help us from the point of view of being able to attract people, retain them and help with the, our social licence to operate, what the public thinks of forestry as a whole.

So as I say, we’re called the Safety Council but these are all the things that we're actually working together with all our stakeholders to do for the forestry sector. And in terms of stakeholders, it’s industry, WorkSafe, ACC work with us and the unions, so we’re a tripartite body.

So, Strategy on a Page, I do not expect you to be able to see all of that or read all of that but you'll get a copy of it. Really, the stylised tree in the middle talks about what we do. Three really key things - leadership, risk management and engagement.  It’s no real [surprise], so that's very deliberate from the point of view of that's what the legislation said in 2015 and today's actually the anniversary of the Pike River incident which led to the new, the new Act. And that Act focuses on those three principles so we deliberately focus on those, but also capability. And that's of people that work within forestry and also the businesses and the performance pieces, we look to see how well we're actually doing as a sector. So we're doing better in terms of serious harm, that's trending down.

Unfortunately, we still top the league in New Zealand for fatalities in a sector. So that's an area we still have to really focus on and improve on. But our overall approach to health and safety, so my background is, I actually spent 20 years in the UK as a frontline inspector. And you do get to the stage where you understand that, you know, the stick doesn't always work so my approach has changed as my career has moved through from the regulator to the private sector.

And really now, what we understand is, that good health and safety is an outcome of successful work.  How well do we plan our day, have people with the right skills, give them the right resources? So we talk a lot about successful work because that's actually what we ultimately want to see.

It's also a more positive way of looking at health and safety cause instead of always focusing on the negative and people saying, “oh you've come to tell us that we're doing it wrong, yet again”, we're helping them to build on that, having a good day.

So we've also got this approach that we use in FISC. [I was going to point my laser at that but that's not going to help you people, is it?] So this is a mindset model, so you will see along the bottom axis, it talks about practices. So that's the stuff you do on a day-to-day basis. So you get in your car and you put on your seatbelt.

Up the other axis is mindset, that's what you think about while you're putting on your seatbelt. You know, are you doing it because someone else has told you to do it, you've been reminded by someone or is it just something you do cause you know it's actually one of the really good rules that’s going to help you if someone else smacks into you?

So that's the kind of thinking and in the top, right, [is that same? It is, isn't it? Sorry.] So in the top right, you've got the people that I call ‘committed and engaged’. So they are the ones that their mindset is they ‘get it’. They understand what having good health and safety is all about it and they actually do it. And these are the people that have the successful work outcomes.

Unfortunately, a lot of what we see in New Zealand and forestry’s in this place as well is the mindset’s not there. They actually only do stuff because someone else has told them about it. And that makes them sit in the compliance space. And the problem with that is they very, very easily slip back into the non-compliant, so they stop doing it because nobody's watching.

And then your other piece is, you’ve got, I call them unsupported. So they've got the mindset, they want to be able to do the right thing, but they don't do it and that's generally the environment that they work in that doesn't support them to do it.

So the way that we work is we showcase the good stuff. So instead of focusing on the negative, it's actually capturing the stories of what's actually being done well in the sector. So if you're here thinking we’ve done something really, really good, and you'd like to share it, please speak to me about it because we have a shortage of those case studies and it's not because there's not good stuff being done in the sector, it's just because no one wants to put their hand up and say, actually, I think we've done something quite well.

So we showcase them and that helps us convince and change the mindset of the people that are only doing it because someone else is telling them to do it and it helps us support the others by giving them resources to say, actually, this is how you can do it.

And then the bottom part, where people often want us to start and say we should work on that, that area, that's for our WorkSafe colleagues, that's their stomping ground because they're the ones that have got the enforcement powers and can change things in that way. So that's the kind of way that we work. We want to showcase the good stuff which helps others learn.

I talk about the forest for the trees because often what we see is that, and I've seen it with the progression and the maturity of the sector as well, we focus on the individual, we focus on the worker. And not so many years ago, it was very much a case of, if you just, the workers, would all follow the rules that we give them, everything would be sweet. We'd be hunky dory. The Independent Forest Safety Review, which was how FISC came about, did focus on contractors so we're now working on contractor certification.

But in actual fact, there's others in the supply chain that make a huge difference to what happens on-site every day and the people on-site often don't have the wherewithal to be able to change those decisions that have been made. So think infrastructure, skid design, where things were planted in the first place, are we going to cable harvest or has someone decided we're going to ground base? All of those kinds of decisions are made by the forest owner, manager or even potentially the investor as well. So those are other areas that we look at.

It's good to get out and about and speak to people and this slide actually came from a series of regional workshops that we did and this was pretty much a consistent response from the attendees when we said to them, “what makes a good day?” Not one of them said filling in paperwork or having a health and safety folder but they talked about these things. 

So leadership, comms, having the right attitude and the culture within their team, having good people working beside them so people that knew what they were doing, but also they recognise the health and wellbeing piece, so rocking up to work fit to do the job and that's on the inside and on the outside, so physically and mentally ready to do the work.

And what's really good is these are things that we actually focus on in FISC so it was nice to get that verification that we were looking at the right kinds of things.

So what are we actually delivering? So contractor certification. A lot of people think this is just a      pre-qual system but in actual fact it's a foundation building block. It allows us to engage with the sector, it allows us to be able to recognise good contractor performance. It actually also allows us to access funding with ACC and WorkSafe to be able to develop further programmes.

So when you look at the leadership piece in the middle, that's something that ACC originally funded and we've still been able to access further funding from WorkSafe and we’re now actually with MPI doing some work in this space for other primary industries.

And the key thing with that leadership training is, it's been designed for kinaesthetic learners. So there is none of this sat on your bum listening to people speak at you, it's actually physically doing things and being part of a team, and it's gone down very well.

And I think along with Rayonier Matariki who’ve picked this up, thank you Fraser [Field] for the support, there's probably been four or 500 people in the sector who’ve gone through this now and we will continue this programme.

The other piece is worker certification. We have highly skilled people in forestry and often I hear the words “I’m just a bushman” and I hate that term “just a” and you'll hear people use it in lots of professions.

Our highly skilled people are professional at what they do and what we wanted to do is to be able to recognise those people for when we’re at the top of their game.

So worker certification is for people that have already got their level four quals and this is about continuing professional development and also demonstrating continued competency. And it is an issue that we have with manual tree falling, so we want to take people off the hill and use more mechanisation. How do we keep those manual tree fallers at the top of their game? So that's an issue that we're dealing with.

We're also working very much on health, so physical health and mental health. I think Dr. Tom [Mulholland] is going to be around at the conference. There's a KYND app that you can download for forestry, if you come and speak to me, I can give you the code for that, and the other piece is worker engagement.

Speaking to the people that do the job day in, day out is actually really important because we figure out then, what, why do things go well and that's one of the areas that we’re actually working on just now, it's going to be something that we hope to develop as a SafeStart resource and actually encourage people to do a debrief at the end of the day, very much based on what the frontline people have told us “what makes a good day”. So how much of that was actually around, so we can actually start to look at what health and safety geek-speak talks about is leading indicators, what's the positive stuff that we should be measuring instead of just the negative?

And then the other pieces are in terms of the supply chain and that's recognising again, it's not just the stuff that's on the site on a day to day basis, it's the planning that's done beforehand and the decisions that are made beforehand that really impact on what happens on-site. So these are projects that we have in train.

Just reminding you that there is a supply chain involved in this and it's not just frontline workers.

So this is just reminding people that we work in a high-risk industry. I mentioned that we still are top of the league, unfortunately, for fatalities in New Zealand, and you know, I think those, the things that kill us in the bush, I don't think that's going to be a surprise to anyone; tree felling, breaking out, driving, man-machine interaction, maintenance, but also the health, physical and mental health as well.

And these have actually been confirmed by frontline people and the statistics. These are what we've identified as real issues. So the areas that we continue to work on.

But equally, the things in the office. You know, who's decided on where trees are going to be planted, who's decided on the harvest methodology? The commercial terms, some of the work that we're doing in conjunction with FICA just now around contracts, so really looking at the other end of supply chain that can influence those things and economics. So fundamentally, we work in a commodity market where the amount of wood that’s exported, that's what we’re, drives a lot of the decisions that are made in the sector as well, and that's where we see the kind of boom and bust piece, so it has a significant impact.

But ultimately what we want to be able to do is to make it a good day and that's actually down all of us. So I've got some questions for you, even if you don't have any questions for me, and those things are; what can you do now, you know, literally today, this evening, tomorrow, when you get back to work on Monday?

Think about what else you can do, so you know you're in an environment where we've talked about connect for success. Hook up with other people, find out what's going on and learn from each other and ultimately what you're going to change because that's what's going to make the difference.

So thank you very much.

That's me.

[End of transcript]

Fraser Field, Quality Manager for Rayonier Matariki Forests and Chair of the Forestry and Wood Processing Workforce Council: I'm Fraser Field. I work for Rayonier Matariki as a day job where I'm Quality Manager so I do a fair bit of development of the workforce there.

The Action Plan is this document here and it's available on MPI’s website. I've got a few copies here if you want them.

[Fraser holds up a copy of the Action Plan].

The guts of the work plan is 16 objectives and I'm just going to give you a flavour of the objectives. They come in those four areas that Marion covered when she opened the afternoon: knowledge, attraction, education and training, and employment.

So just to give you a flavour of nice, simple objectives; forecast workforce demand. So that's an objective, forecast workforce demand. Another one is improve access to career pathways information, so that’s, that's a recruitment one.

Under education and training, a straightforward objective; evaluate and scale-up appropriate and regionally relevant on-job training programmes that support young people.

So all that you've heard this afternoon is sort of encapsulated in what we're trying to do. The last example of an objective I’ll give you is; achieve agreement to adopt standards that support fair pay and working conditions.

So we worked away on that. Really early on we worked on a workforce description and that work was started off with MPI's research team, which is led by Richard [Lynch].

The plan itself was adopted in February of this year [2020]. There was no formal launch because of COVID but it did get underway.

That council was created during lockdown. Its got 18 members, it’s got a pretty good coverage across the, across the industry. It's got members from FICA, it's got university people, it’s got representatives for workers, representative for young professionals, union, farm forestry, forest owners, MPI, MSD, Fiona’s on it.

So there are 18 of us. I haven't got everybody but there are 18 of us.

It's a good representation of the industry, except that it has one gap, it doesn't have anybody from, my preference would be Toi Ohomai, but it doesn't have anybody from training delivery to speak of. So that's something for the future.

We carried out a little bit of administration at the start but we got started on those projects, the projects that are described in the action plan.

So those projects are, I'll come back to the project manager. We have a project looking at employment contracts and that one meets one of the ones that I read out; achieve agreement to adopt standards that support fair pay. So that's being put together at the moment, it's underway, it looks at the requirements of the Act. So it's an employment conditions, it will be a template but it will also include, after some sampling of the industry, it will also include other conditions that the industry considers should be a minimum standard in an employment contract between a contractor and his, and his employees.

Another one is the leadership development one. I don't have to talk too much about that because Fiona covered that, she's managing that project. It looks at the soft skills, the soft leadership skills, looks at things like communication styles, how to give instructions and how to read the communication styles of your people.

And that development, which, as you said that has already been had already been started, is looking at the next steps and the next steps include the ability for contractors and leaders in the, in the forest industry, foremen, crew leaders could be able to teach the younger people to do similar sort of training. So in other words, mentoring the people who have gone through the training already so that they can deliver that training to other people in the crew and I think that's a pretty clever way of spreading the leadership techniques right across the industry.

There's a major project going on to review all qualification standards. So this is not only within the forest industry, it's also the wood processing and manufacturing sectors and I can't remember how many, Glen you might know, is it about 100 different qualifications I think, there are 50 and forestry or something like that? So that's an absolute poultice of qualifications that will be looked at. This work will morph a little bit as the Workforce Development Council and as CoVE get organised and, to some extent, the work may in fact be taken over by that Reform of Vocational Education, but we're getting it well underway.

The Career Structure General Capability is an effort to focus, to put a focus a little bit more on the capability of people as they come into the industry, rather than just on the task. So, take planting or something like that, it is critical that those people start planting properly straight away so that they can, they can meet the commercial requirements of their employer, which is obviously to make a dollar.

But they also need to know what we've called, for lack of a better term, general capabilities and those are things like why do we have tailgate meetings, for Pete's sake? Why am I a new employee and I'm being asked to go to a tailgate meeting? Why do I have to report incidents? And that started off with a question put to me by a young fella on a planting side; what is that truck doing going into the forest, he said to me, and I realised that he knew nothing about what happened commercially in a forest. So that project also looks at mentoring as well, it has an element of mentoring so that young people coming into the, into the industry get mentored properly and it also has a very strong element of recognition.

For some, some people it doesn't matter. But for most people starting off, especially in silviculture, to last a month and be successful is a major progress, is a major, is major progress for them. So if we can just give them recognition of a month, recognition after three months, six months and then you get to a point where a guy’s being recognised for being in the industry for three years and so forth.

The Thriving Remote Communities was, started off to look at communities that have a very strong asset, a valuable asset in the form of a forest up the back of their valley, up the back of their gully, up the back of their own community, and they know a little bit about it but someone else is managing it. Give them the chance to manage it themselves but also other skills, such as fencing and security and pest control and business management and all those sorts of things that that go with successful communities. And there's quite a bit of work being done as to how we attack that real need and that real need exists pretty much all over the country.

The Regional Coordinators project is one where there are eight Wood Councils around the country and those Wood Councils are very strongly tied up with recruitment at the moment and the project involves the use of recruitment coordinators, one to each Wood Council, to assist in the process of matching recruits through to employment, looking after them, looking after the relationship.

And workforce research is one of the, is the main project where we're tied up with other parts of the primary industry where we've said okay, fair enough, it's going to happen anyway, MPI is going to carry out major research into the workforce of the primary industry so tack forestry on. That's that project.

The Project Manager one is that, pretty much all of us who are on the Council have day jobs and we don't have enough time and we're finding it difficult to manage the other projects that are there. So we have funding applications in now to put together a project manager who will actually look after the Employment Contract project and the Career General Capability one and all the rest of it. Okay, so it's actually a coordination-type role for the Council.

So those are the primary projects that we’re involved in.

We have standing roles as well and those are looking at, in particular, the RoVE issues which are the Workforce Development Council, CoVE and Te Pūkunga. We, we need the ability to inform the Council, which means inform the industry, of what is going in those, in the Workforce Development Council, what's going on in the RoVE, in the CoVE etcetera, but also to bring industry's opinions so that, through one particular voice, we can have an influence on the, first of all, the structure of the Workforce Development Council, the work that CoVE is going to do and for Te Pūkunga because it has already been established and is getting underway, and impact on how Te Pūkunga is going to carry out its work.

We're also monitoring what's, obviously what goes on in FICA, I mean, three of the members of the Council are from FICA.We need to maintain real contact with what's going on with FISC and also with the forest owners, but in particular with SEG. Now SEG is the Skills Establishment Group and the Skills Establishment Group for the primary industry.

Okay, so they also have an action plan. We've got an action plan which is about the size of one of the chairs in this room. The primary industry has got an action plan which is about the size of this room. That's the difference in scale between us. So we have a Council looking after our action plan. And the primary industry is putting together a Council, call it that - they're not going to call it a Council, but call it a governance body to look after their own action plan which is not just, which is not dissimilar, it’s just larger in scale. So we need to maintain contact with those people.

So how are we, how are we going? This is pretty recent history now. We carried out a bit of a bit of a review of ourselves in, in October. Okay, we work well together. The administration is working, kudos to, to Marion and Olivia. We get a range of views. There's a lot of, there's a lot of good opinions and a lot of good angles within the Council as you would imagine with the wide range of, of views.

But all I wanted to do with that section was to sort of soften the negatives and the negatives are that we don't have any funding. All of those projects that I talked about before, they've got to be funded. So we really knew or we knew that we really had to put together a very strong programme of funding applications. And I don't know, I think there are about seven funding applications, I’ve lost track of them, but there's about five to seven funding applications on the go at the moment.

The other issue is time. Those of us with day jobs have great difficulty in getting away from those day jobs to deal with Council, with Council issues.

And the other thing is, can I soften this as well. I just wanted to put it in there, that we’re unheard of. But Marion said I had the soften, to say we have a visibility issue. Basically, ladies and gentlemen, because you have all been showing a great deal of attention to what I've said, that proves my point. We are unheard of. So this is one of the first, it’s not the first, but it's one of the first occasions when I'm actually going out to the industry and saying, this is what we're doing. And we've got a whole bunch of plans for talking to people until they're going to be heartily sick of me, which you probably are now.

So those are the issues that we've got. We need to find funding, we need to find time, which is one of the reasons for the project manager. Do you see the link? And we need to be more understood.

[End of transcript]