Author: NetSearch

Before the world had heard of COVID-19, PwC had begun a project looking at skills for the future. They found that at that time, 72% of Australian workers surveyed said their employers had not provided them skills training in the past 12 months.

In addition, only 28% said their employer was providing them with upskilling in areas relevant to their role. This is whilst 78% of Australian CEOs said that availability of key skills was a top threat to growth.

Now one year into the pandemic and whilst Australia might have been spared the worst of the health and economic impacts, the world, ways of working, and the national employment landscape have changed.

A National Skills Commission report into ‘the Shape of Australia’s Post-COVID Workforce’ found that education and training is key in helping to shape Australia’s post COVID-19 workforce.

In particular, it found that Vocational Education and Training (VET) short courses provide good opportunities for short term reskilling especially for those looking to retrain in a new occupation or upskill in their existing occupation.

This is important as job uncertainty continues, and for those who are made redundant or displaced from their jobs, the report notes that a ‘VET qualification can provide the pathway … to either move into higher skilled roles in the same industry or transition to new jobs in sectors with stronger growth potential’.

VET has been designed with specific job roles and industries in mind, with practical short courses enabling participants to apply learnings immediately in their current roles, or upskill quickly to get back to work.

Employers benefit from these courses as they can build team capability in a short space of time, develop workforces to achieve specific goals, or redeploy staff by retraining and retaining, using an agile approach to save jobs and improve efficiencies in uncertain times.

Upskilling and employee development needs to be a priority within Australian workplaces now more than ever. Back before the pandemic, Australia already had a skills development problem. In 2021, we are in need of more than just skills development for the unknown future, we need skills development and training to help support national employment and individual careers today.

If you are in need of training and development for your team, contact us today at [email protected] or on +61 8 9379 9999.

As the New Year begins, annual planning for a ‘new you’ and all the improvements you’re going to make, rises to the top of everyone’s minds.

Career goals are one of the most common New Years’ Resolution topics, but we often start with big goals like ‘I want my dream job this year!’ and forget the little steps needed to get there and end up giving up all too soon.

A good first step is to identify where you want to be in the future. This often isn’t a one year goal, but what you do now can work towards it. You can work backwards from that goal and identify clear, realistic and achievable steps to get you there. Talking to a professional can help guide you in the right direction.

Ask yourself the important questions like: Do I have the skills needed? Do I need to gain more experience in a certain area? Could a course help boost my knowledge in an area I am lacking? These questions can help you devise a plan to reach your goal.

You could start with asking for more responsibility or gaining new experience at your current job. Often a short course can help give you some fast knowledge on a particular topic, or let you know if it is even a topic you are interested in before jumping in to a bigger qualification, or trying to move to another role or industry. It can also show would-be employers that you’re keen on continuous professional development.

Making progress in your New Year’s career resolution all comes down to the way you approach it. Research shows between 80-92% of new years’ resolutions fail, but if you develop a plan and break it down into achievable steps, 2021 could be the year you start your new career journey. After all…

“A goal without a plan is just a wish”, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Whatever your goals, we wish you the best in achieving them this year. Make sure you check out AVELING’s courses to help you get started on your future career, today.

Picture this: you diligently undertook all of your required induction training courses when you began your new role, learning all about fire safety, first aid and health and safety risks in your workplace. You’ve performed well in your job, and thankfully never had to use any of your health and safety knowledge, but you feel like you remember most of what you learned. It’s now 3 years later and you’re being asked to do it all again – what a waste of time, right?

You might be thinking, ‘I have no time for this – I’ve done it all before!’ or ‘I’ve been in the industry for 20 years and know all there is to know about my job.’

A number of courses, particularly those with practical skills that may not be used often such as work health and safety training, need to be refreshed regularly for a number of reasons – and it’s not just to spend more money or ‘tick a box’.

Studies have shown that the longer you go after learning something without reinforcing it or applying the knowledge, the less information you remember. This is called the ‘forgetting curve’ and as German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus who discovered it showed, regularly repeating or using information after learning it reduces your chances of forgetting.

If you haven’t been to site in a while, or had to use the skills you learned in a course, you may not realise what you have forgotten until it’s too late. You also won’t be aware of the latest industry standards, legislative requirements or organisational procedures that help everyone work together in an emergency. It’s certainly better to be prepared rather than wait until an accident happens to find out everyone’s not on the same page.

Regular training and refreshers ensure everyone in a workplace or industry has the same up to date industry standard information. It helps organisations to ensure everyone is at the same level of understanding, and up to date on the latest technology or changes in the working environment. Investing in training also shows that your employer values you and your contribution to the organisation.

So how often should training be repeated? Well, it really depends on the course and your employer’s requirements. Organisations tend to have their own standards based on the activities they conduct and the risks involved within a specific workplace. Qualifications may also need to be upgraded when new requirements come in or certificates expire.

Another important factor, as Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting curve highlights, is that you should be undertaking training right before you need it – refreshing your health and safety training right before you head up to a mine site for example is the perfect time, as it means you will be using your knowledge right away, and reducing the risk of forgetting.

It is certainly important – as a study by ECU shows, compulsory training introduced by WorkSafe WA in 2006 has resulted in a reduction in injury and fatality rates in the construction industry and prompted calls for even more, repeated training.

So the next time you’re asked to sacrifice another morning to go over the basics of fire prevention or CPR, remember that there are many important reasons for you to get that refresher – and hey, you might even learn something new!

Work Health and Safety (WHS) policy and law is a relatively recent focus for the world’s workplaces. Led by union action for a century and developed through state legislature, policies and standards began in industrial and construction industries in the late 1800s, but a national approach to workplace health and safety wasn’t achieved until 1985.¹

The current Australian model Work Health and Safety laws² were established in 2011 by Safe Work Australia, detailing the specific training, policies and frameworks required to help minimise risks to Australian workers. This includes requirements for workers to complete specified training and assessment before they can undertake certain work or roles.

At the time of writing, a modernised Work Health and Safety Act for Western Australia³ is still in the process of being confirmed through Parliament. This will supersede the current 1996 regulations, modelled on the thirty-six-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Act 1984, and bring WA into the present, and in line with the national model Work Health and Safety laws.

The slow-moving century-long struggle to implement national WHS laws has come to a head in 2020 with the global shock of COVID and its impact on the modern workplace.

Along with increasing globalisation of industries, organisations and workforces, COVID has posed huge challenges for workplaces in keeping their employees and customers safe, changing the way businesses run and how and where workers can safely work. Recent estimates have put nearly a third of Australian workers working from home during the pandemic⁴, leading to a variety of new health and safety risks from ergonomics to mental health and infection susceptibility.

It has also impacted the ability of training organisations to deliver regular face-to-face WHS training. Due to the highly contagious nature of COVID, bespoke training needed to be quickly developed to ensure workers, particularly in the services industries, had up to date knowledge of both infection control measures and Coronavirus. Between March and July over a million Australians had undertaken the Government’s bespoke module⁵, allowing Australia’s service industry in particular to recover and keep going during very uncertain times.

This has highlighted the importance of training and the need for it to respond to health, environmental and societal changes in order for workplaces to remain as safe as possible. In the case of COVID, a rapid uptake in training and updating of WHS policies and procedures not only helped employee and customer health and safety, but helped reduce the impacts on the wider society and the economy as a whole.

Beyond legal requirements, the main objective of WHS training is of course to reduce workplace injuries and fatalities, but it does have wider organisational impacts too. A comprehensive WHS policy that incorporates training can help the bottom line by not only avoiding penalties, fines, compensation and other legal expenses, but it can also improve productivity with fewer injury-related absences. A focus on WHS and its direct benefits can also improve worker morale and retention, as well as reputation.

COVID has forced workplaces and training providers to act swiftly and embed the latest in infection prevention, ergonomics, mental health and more into workplace culture. The implications of COVID on all workplaces is still continually evolving. It is likely WHS needs in all industries will continue to change over the next year and beyond, and policies and training will need to respond.

Refreshing training regularly for all workers has added overall benefits, reducing complacency and reinforces key best practice information retention. The need to complete updated training due to COVID can only have a positive effect on workplaces, encouraging all employees to gain the latest knowledge to keep themselves, their colleagues and customers safe.

As Australia’s WHS agenda moves further into the 21^st century, the lessons learned from 2020 will no doubt only add to the incentive of continual improvement based on the latest knowledge of the time, and the need for a consistent approach.

1. Workplace Health and Safety in Australia, Australian Council of Trade Unions
2. Model WHS Laws, Safe Work Australia
3. Modernising work health and safety laws in Western Australia, Government of Western Australia, 2018
4. Nearly a third of Australian workers have been ‘#WFH’, Roy Morgan, 2020
5. COVID-19: over 1 million online training completions, Australian Department of Health, 2020

If you or your team needs training in the latest in WHS practices, see the courses available on our Workplace Health and Safety courses page.