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Employer newsletter | September 2023
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- Upskill your staff with Winter Booster, but you'll need to hurry.
- Enabling Pasifika success through Ako Aotearoa.
- Drop-in sessions to help your learners progress their learning.
- Mental health apprenticeships helping to support a sector in need.
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Welcome to Careerforce's September update
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Tēnā koutou
This month sees the end of our Winter Booster enrolment offer, and we have seen a pleasing uplift in enrolments. The focus now shifts to ensuring that these newly enrolled learners become active in their training programmes - we know that if we can get our learners active within their first three months, their likelihood of successfully completing their qualification is significantly higher. I encourage you to keep a close eye on your monthly Careerforce training reports to ensure that your staff are progressing their learning, particularly your
recently enrolled staff.
In this issue, we provide some detail about this week’s launch of our Te Pūkenga employer campaign, and which affirms Te Pūkenga’s commitment to growing work-based learning. A further commitment for Te Pūkenga, and indeed a continued commitment from Careerforce, is around equity and supporting equitable outcomes amongst our learners. Check out the story about our partnership with Ako Aotearoa, which is aimed at allowing us to better support our Pasifika learners.
Ngā mihi nui
Rod Bentham Executive Director Te Pūkenga, trading as Careerforce
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As you may have read about in the media, Te Pūkenga released its decision document on its new national structures last week. This followed 5 weeks of consultation on its proposed organisational structure that received over 8,000 feedback submissions, and that contributed to a number of changes to the final organisational structure. Amongst these changes was the recognition of the k aiāwhina workforce via the creation of a focused kaiāwhina domain within the new structure. This is a great outcome as it ensures a continued dedicated focus on this critical workforce. The focus now shifts to transition planning as we move from 25 individual divisions into a single organisation and which will progressively happen across 2024. You can read more about the new structure here.
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Upskill your staff with Winter Booster, but you’ll have to hurry...
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We'd like to remind you that the Winter Booster promotion closes this Friday 29 September 2023.
To help address workforce development challenges and financial pressures that many in our health and wellbeing sectors continue to face, we're offering:
- Free enrolment on all New Zealand Certificate in Health & Wellbeing Level 2 & 3 programmes – Employer-Led Enrolments
- Half-price enrolment on all New Zealand Certificate in Health & Wellbeing
Level 2 & 3 programmes – Full-Service Enrolments
This is for domestic enrolments only. For employer-led enrolments, the employer assigns one of their own workplace-based staff members (registered assessor) to provide assessment support to the learner. For full-service enrolments, learners are assigned an assessor by Careerforce.
Hurry, the offer is only available until 5pm, Friday 29 September 2023.
Important - to be eligible, all Winter Booster Training Agreements must be received by 29 September 2023 and must be complete and accurate, or they risk delays or being declined. For any training agreements that get returned for whatever reason (e.g. incomplete information), they must be fully completed and loaded by 31 October to remain eligible for the Winter Booster offer.
For more information including terms and conditions, visit our website here, download the flyer or contact your Careerforce Workplace Advisor.
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Enabling Pasifika success through Ako Aotearoa
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Last year, Careerforce | Te Pūkenga collaborated with Ako Aotearoa to host a series of workshops for our kaimahi (staff), to learn more about Pacific cultures and values.
Ako Aotearoa is a government-funded organisation supporting tertiary educators and organisations to enable the best possible educational outcomes for all learners. In 2022, they designed their ‘Introduction to the Pacific Cultural Centredness Pathway’ workshops to align with our Pacific Workforce Development Strategy: Ala Moni ‘The True Pathway’.
Careerforce | Te Pūkenga Pacific Lead, Laloifi Ripley said, “We have a strategic plan as an organisation but incorporating the Ala Moni strategic plan just enables our kaimahi to understand better our engagement with Pacific people.”
Over 170 kaimahi across all departments participated in the interactive online workshops to gain a deeper understanding of the Pacific learners we support, and how we can better serve their needs. Everyone from Workplace Advisors to the Information Systems team gained new knowledge from the course.
“Product teams are also thinking about what our resources look like for our Pacific people, and ensuring that our Pacific people can see themselves within our learning material,” Laloifi said.
Careerforce Apprenticeship Advisor, Jemma Low, really enjoyed the experience with Ako Aotearoa: “It was really insightful, and I got lots of useful tools out of it. It inspired a journey [for me] to engage more with the Pacific team because I felt more confident.”
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Introducing Te Pae Ora - our wellbeing hub for your learners
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We're excited to unveil Te Pae Ora, an online hub developed by Te Pūkenga. The hub is dedicated to support your ākonga (learners) on their learning journey with Careerforce | Te Pūkenga.
It contains information, advice and resources about wellbeing drawn on best practice and lived experience, and was co-designed with ākonga from across Aotearoa. Please feel free to share this with your staff.
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Te Pūkenga employer campaign
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This week sees the launch of our national Te Pūkenga advertising campaign targeted exclusively at you, our employers! The continued media rhetoric around Te Pūkenga as a ‘mega-polytech’ fails to recognise the fact that work-based learners account for over 140,000 of Te Pūkenga’s learner base, and that Te Pūkenga partners with over 35,000 employers across Aotearoa. These are the learners and employers that transitioned across into Te Pūkenga from the 9 industry training organisations, including Careerforce.
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As part of the Reforms of Vocational Education (RoVE) that led to the formation of Te Pūkenga, there has been very clear recognition of the importance and role of work-based learning within the new organisation, and a very clear intent to grow the levels of work-based learnings.
This campaign recognises you, as current employers, are an extremely important part of Te Pūkenga’s future.
It also seeks to highlight to prospective employers that Te Pūkenga is New Zealand’s largest on-job training provider.
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Fees Free Remember that some of your learners may be eligible for the Government’s Fees Free scheme. For more information on what Careerforce programmes are covered by Fees Free and to watch a simple video to determine learner Fees Free eligibility, >>Read More
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Apprenticeship Boost Eligible employers can receive $500/mth Apprenticeship Boost payments for apprentices within their first 24 months.
Apprenticeship Boost was earlier extended to December 2024. >>Read More
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Drop-in sessions to help your learners progress their learning
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Here's a chance for your staff to chat with Careerforce advisors and get some help to progress their programme. We're running face to face sessions across the country to help support them with their learning. The sessions in the table below are
currently scheduled, but we will be adding more over time. Learners can drop in either for the whole time or as long as they are able. We're happy to support them.
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We know that learners benefit from the opportunity for face to face engagement, and have had great feedback from the sessions to date.
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Support for Pasifika and Māori learners
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We provide a number of resources and supports for learners who identify as Māori or Pasifika. This support also includes face to face learner sessions. Please check out these pages for Māori learners and Pasifika learners and to see which face to face sessions are planned in your area.
If you have learners that identify as Māori or Pasifika, and don’t receive our dedicated Maori or Pasifika newsletters, and would like to, they can email amio.mobile@careerforce.org.nz or pacific.support@careerforce.org.nz.
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Aka Toi is now more accessible
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Earlier this year, we completed a site accessibility audit to get a better understanding of where we could make improvements and ensure that our site is user friendly for all.
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As part of this ongoing work, we have now introduced the UserWay Accessibility widget on the Aka Toi Learning and Assessment platform. This widget has a range of tools to help better support our users with digital accessibility needs. The functionality includes easily increasing font sizes, activating dyslexia friendly fonts, adding contrast to the page and more!
You will find this widget on the middle right-hand side of all Aka Toi pages. To
access this, click on the icon shown above in Aka Toi and see what the tool can provide. Feel free to promote it who any learners who you think may benefit from it.
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Reminder about the discontinution of graduation badges and honours boards
We'd like to remind you that we are discontinuing graduation badges from 1 October 2023. Our graduates will still
continue to receive formal qualification certificates in presentation folders.
At the same time, we will also discontinue the supply of Honours Boards and qualification tags from 1 October. We absolutely still encourage our employers to publicly recognise their staff’s professional development via whatever means and channels you have available.
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Mental health apprenticeships helping to support a sector in need
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“The worse experience I’ve ever had in losing my son has probably given me the most,” says Richard.
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The apprenticeship was a chance to study and work in a job with purpose for Willie.
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Vincent abandoned a budding culinary career to support people in the community.
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“Our sector continues to be challenged by significant workforce shortages,” says Fiona Hamilton, Chief Executive at LinkPeople. LinkPeople is a Community Housing Provider that helps people find permanent, stable housing and works with them to ensure they can access the health, social and wellbeing support they need to stay there. “The Apprenticeship in Mental Health and Addiction
Support is a great way to attract and then upskill new staff. They learn on the job, and can forge rewarding career pathways supported by their qualifications," says Fiona.
According to Careerforce, employers are keen to employ a diverse range of people who may have particular qualities. They may have lived experience of mental illness or a particular awareness of Māori and Pasifika culture and may not necessarily have a degree level qualification. Read more about Richard's, Willie's, and Vincent's stories.
Left to right: Richard MacDonald from Te Oranganui, Willie Tuli from LinkPeople, Vincent Brown from Arataki Ministries.
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Programme updates and
reminders
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New last date of assessment for version 1 programmes NZQA has recently extended the last date of assessment for a number of our programmes that award version 1 of the qualification. This means Careerforce | Te Pūkenga will now be closing the following programmes on 31 May 2024.
Version 1 apprenticeship programmes:
- NZ Apprenticeship in Community Facilitation
- NZ Apprenticeship in Community Facilitation – Disability Support
- NZ Apprenticeship in Community
Facilitation – Diversional Therapy
- NZ Apprenticeship in Community Facilitation – Youth Work
- NZ Apprenticeship in Community Facilitation – Teacher Aide
- NZ Apprenticeship in Community
Health Work (version 1)
- NZ Apprenticeship in Mental Health and Addiction Services (version 1)
- NZ Apprenticeship in Social Services
- NZ Apprenticeship in Peer Support Work (version 1)
Version 1 NZ Certificate in Health and Wellbeing (Level 3), with strands in:
- Health Assistance
- Support Work
- Orderly Services
- Newborn Hearing Screening
- Dental Assistance
- Vision Hearing Screening (version 1 and version 2)
Until these extensions were approved, our teams had been working hard to motivate ākonga (learners) to complete their assessments by 1 November 2023. We continue to encourage ākonga to aim to complete their assessments by 1 November 2023, to allow time for marking and any resubmissions.
There are still several modules or unit standards expiring on 31 December 2023. We are encouraging ākonga who are yet to complete these, to do so by 1 November 2023.
Expiring programmes – 31 December 2023 We’d like to remind you that the following programmes still expire on 31 December 2023:
- New Zealand Certificate in Health and Wellbeing (Advanced Support) (Level 4)
- Dementia LCP (Level 4) (version 1)
- NZ Apprenticeship in Healthcare Assistance for Aged Care – complex
- NZ Apprenticeship in Brain Injury Rehabilitation Support (version 1)
Please encourage your ākonga to complete their assessments by 1 November 2023 to allow time for marking and reporting results. We are sending further communications to these ākonga and their employers.
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Find out more about:
- Apprenticeship Boost >>More
- 2023 Prospectus >>More
- Jobs for Good - you can list your vacancy for free >>More
- Free Counselling for all Careerforce | Te Pūkenga learners >>More
- Careerforce Qualification Programmes >> More
- Gateway and Vocational Pathways >>More
- How to contact your local Careerforce Workplace Advisor >>More
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