Skills for Good - September 2021: Mental Health Awareness, changes to the Library and iportal, RoVE updates and more

Kia ora

Welcome to the September edition of Skills for Good.

In this month’s edition we spotlight the wonderful mahi of Kramer Hoeflich. Kramer is a recent graduate of our Health and Wellbeing Community Facilitation apprenticeship programme. You can read more about Kramer and his learning journey in the article below.
We are grateful for the large number of graduates who are taking the time to complete our inaugural graduate survey. The thoughts and feedback we are continuing to receive from this survey are very important to us and assist us to focus on the areas of support that make the greatest difference to learners.

Finally, there is an opportunity to go into the draw to win a $50 grocery voucher, by completing a survey on workforce diversity. We would love your feedback.

Ngā mihi nui

Andrew Saunders
General Manager, Employer Services

Passionate about advocating for people with disabilities and improving their overall wellbeing, Kramer has also been involved with the Human Rights Commission to promote Youth with Disabilities.

Impressively, Kramer also sits on the Auckland Disability Panel for Auckland Council and is Co-Chair for the Ministry of Health’s Faiva Ora national leadership group. He is also the Chair for the I-Lead youth collective, where he advocates for youth with disabilities. Read more about Kramer's amazing journey..

On behalf of the sectors we work with, Careerforce developed and launched the Life Changing Careers campaign and website, the objective of which is to build more diversity into the care and support workforce. This includes attracting more younger people, males, Māori, Pasifika and people with lived experience e.g. of disability. We'd like to know if you've noticed enquiries or applications from more diverse job seekers, and if you've been able to actually place any of these job seekers into actual roles.

We'd really appreciate it if you could take a few moments to answer some questions for us, via the survey link below. The survey should take no more than 5 minutes to complete and we would appreciate it if you could provide your feedback before 5pm on 14 October

As a thank you for completing the survey, all completed entries will go in the draw to win one of three $50 grocery vouchers. Simply answer three questions. Use the button below or follow the link: https://careerforce.research.net/r/DiversitySept

Just in case you missed our earlier update, the Careerforce Board recently made the decision that Careerforce’s ‘arranging training’ responsibilities will transition via ‘lift and shift’ to Te Pūkenga, but not until late 2022. You can read more about the decision here. We are now developing a transition plan, which does require approval by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) Board.

Throughout 2022, and even post-transition, we do not expect that you will notice much difference for some time, if any. All Careerforce staff, systems and processes will simply transition across, and work will continue as it does today.

4 October marks a major milestone in the implementation of the Reforms of Vocational Education (RoVE), with the official handover of standard setting responsibilities from Industry Training Organisations to one of 6 Workforce Development Councils (WDCs). From this date, WDCs will be responsible for developing and maintaining qualifications, and developing, setting, and maintaining unit standards for the industries in their coverage area. As part of this, WDCs will assume responsibility for external moderation (which ensures the quality of assessment carried out by organisations with consent to assess), and will support consent to assess applications where they are the standard setting body.

Careerforce standard setting responsibilities will be transitioned to either:

Toitū te Waiora – the WDC for Community, Health, Education and Social Services
Ringa Hora – the WDC for Service industries, including cleaning

The websites for these WDCs are not scheduled to go live until Monday 4 October, but will be www.toitutewaiora.nz and www.ringahora.nz respectively.

For any WDC related enquiries prior to 4 October, you can email info@wdc.nz.

Today, Donovan Clarke has been appointed as Toitū Te Waiora’s inaugural Chief Executive, and will commence his new role in early November. Donovan is currently Chief Executive Officer of Central Kids Early Education, and brings executive Primary and Secondary health experience to the role, having led significant change projects across primary care, mental health and addictions and the disability sector. Careerforce congratulates Donovan on his appointment, and looks forward to collaborating closely with Toitū Te Waiora as they build their organisational capability and resourcing.
Download Media Release here.

Kara Scrimshaw was earlier announced as the inaugural Chief Executive for the Ringa Hora Services WDC, and which has responsibility for the cleaning sector.

September 27 - 3 October is Mental Health Awareness Week and it's a great reminder that we should try to support people with mental distress and to learn how to look after our own mental wellbeing. Check out the Mental Healrth Awareness week website for some great resources, tips, stories and to learn more about how you can promote Mental Health Awareness Week in your workplace.

Download the MHAW guide here for daily inspiration and activities to help bring MHAW to life in your workplace.

Stigma and discrimination against people with mental distress or illness is still very much a problem and people’s negative views of those with a mental illness often come from a lack of understanding.

People with a mental health problem often avoid seeking help or treatment because of this stigma and concerns about being treated differently. Taranaki consumer advocate, Nicola Clarke, is passionate about addressing these issues and making a stand against mental illness discrimination.

From 1 December 2021 access to the Library will only be via a secure login on the Careerforce iportal site. The Library will look and feel the same and contain the same resources, but simply transitioned to iportal.

In the coming weeks, we‘ll be contacting all our trainees, to ensure they understand how to continue to access our library of resources. Trainees will be able to use their new iportal login access to the Library.

We’ll keep you updated and be in touch over the coming weeks with more information. Watch this space!

Many of you will presently use iportal to view and submit trainee information. Assessors use it to manage their trainees and submit results, and employers can download reports and track their staff's training progress.

We're excited to now announce that from 18 October, trainees will also have access to our online iportal.

Trainees access to iportal will allow them to view and download their own training progress reports. They’ll be able to see which unit standards they have completed, and which are yet to be completed. Until this point, trainees have not been able to personally track their own training progress, and we believe this will give trainees a greater sense of empowerment and self-responsibility through their training journey.

Trainees will also be able to login to iportal to access learning resources which are being transitioned from the Careerforce Library to Careerforce's iportal.

We'll be contacting trainees over the coming weeks to advise them how to set up their secure login to iportal.

Our graduates are generally very satisfied with their training journey with Careerforce, with an overall satisfaction score of 8 (with 10 being extremely satisfied) – this compares favourably with the overall employer satisfaction score of 7.5
94% of graduates say they can use their learning at work
93% say they gained new skills and knowledge
89% believe their work has improved because of what they learnt
88% feel it has given them more confidence to do their work

The top three ‘enablers’ to successfully completing their training journey include:

The top three barriers they encountered include:

Lack of time inside or outside of work to study – TIP: have you considered providing some regular work time for your staff to progress their training?
Difficulty with English language, literacy or assessment comprehension – TIP: resources are available to support these trainees, contact Cushla Wilson for more information.
Lack of access to technology – TIP: off the back of TEC funding, Careerforce does have some Chrome laptops available to lend to trainees and apprentices. Discuss this with your Careerforce advisor.

From this survey, we have developed a series of recommendations for potential improvements that we are presently working through.

Earlier this month, we celebrated our 2000th survey completion, an outstanding response in just 6 months. The next step for us is the launch of a ‘withdrawal’ survey, that will allow us to build a deeper understanding of our trainees and apprentices who have not successfully navigated their training journey, and allow us to consider further improvements.

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