Te Mahere Ohumahi ā-Rohe o Te Tauihu o Te Waka-a-Māui | Nelson Tasman Regional Workforce Plan 2023 Summary

In June 2022 we launched the Nelson Tasman Regional Workforce Plan to help our region better understand, coordinate, and respond to our labour market challenges.

Our Regional Workforce Plan 2023 reviews and builds on this. It highlights some of our region’s achievements, the actions we will focus on over the next year, the advice we provided to the Tertiary Education Commission to help focus their funding decisions for 2024, and our progress against our year one priority actions. In addition, we report on the regional workforce challenges and opportunities of two new sectors important to our region’s growth – the visitor economy, and forestry and wood processing.

You can read the full plan at:

Te Mahere Ohumahi ā-Rohe o Te Tauihu Te Waka-a-Māui | Nelson Tasman Regional Workforce Plan 2023

Highlights from last year

• As a result of working collaboratively with a wide range of organisations, industry bodies, businesses and community leaders, we have accessed funding to implement a national workforce aquaculture plan, which includes a stocktake of the aquaculture workforce.
• Our work to coordinate information and lead discussion about the local labour market has made the front page of regional newspapers several times.
• We are shaping regional solutions to meet regional labour market needs, e.g., in addition to actions supporting our young people to transition from school to employment in our region, we have also identified and are now implementing actions to support employers to enable their older workers (50+) to continue in paid employment if they wish to do so.
• We are using our role to influence government decision makers, e.g., with the Nelson Regional Development Agency (NRDA), we have coordinated and delivered a regional response to national Industry Transformation Plans for the Tourism and the Forestry and Wood Processing sectors.

Our focus for the next year

Aquaculture

Support the implementation of the National Aquaculture Workforce Plan, including:

• Projection workstream: gathering current and future workforce data to inform our national and regional advice regarding future training and skills development
• Perceptions and Pathways workstreams: supporting the promotion of aquaculture related careers and training opportunities in our region.

Establish a regular national RSLG forum with a focus on aquaculture workforce development, to share information and collaborate in the provision of advice.

Visitor Sector

• Create a working group of regional stakeholders to support national leadership initiatives that focus on increasing the sustainability of the sector. The working group will facilitate and champion the following activities:
• Coordinate action to positively impact perceptions of a career in tourism where people can develop valuable transferable skills.
• Support the delivery of the new NCEA Tourism Achievement Standards at NCEA levels 2 and 3 at the region’s secondary schools.
• Stimulate action with employers to implement the Tourism and Hospitality Accord to foster staff retention. Showcase and promote best practice actions in staff management.
• Foster sector development events with the pipeline of events planned for the region.
• Target TEC, Ringa Hora and Te Pūkenga to ensure that events training is available for the region and awareness of training options is highlighted and promoted.

Construction

Advocate for and support the delivery of a regional construction coalition to establish construction skills pipelines. This includes continuing to strengthen access to allied trades training and promoting training and skills development in construction and infrastructure roles.

Forestry and Wood Processing

Acknowledge the partnership between NRDA and RSLG in working together to advance our respective objectives - economic development and workforce planning and development - for the forestry and wood processing sector.

With NRDA explore establishing a potential collaboration with two groups of key regional businesses:

• Forestry (including forestry management, silviculture and harvesting)
• Wood Processing (including solid wood manufacturing, and wood panel and plywood).

Inform both sector groups’ understanding of the workforce planning necessary to achieve their economic development objectives.

Provide support for regional applications for the government’s Wood Processing Growth Fund aiming to increase productivity and volume of domestic processing of wood, and boosting high value, high wage jobs.

Wood Processing Growth Fund(external link) — Ministry for Primary Industries

Rangatahi

Increase the awareness of training options and career paths for rangatahi that enable them to stay in or return to our region.

This includes improving the connections between our regional industries, employers and secondary schools.

Older Workers

Share data and insights regarding the region’s older workers, including regularly sharing the demographic related regional workforce data.

Showcase examples of employers supporting the attraction and retention of older workers within the region, with a spotlight on our focus sectors.