VET News

Employer Engagement is The Key to Developing Workforce Skills

The national vocational education and training (VET) system are best placed to support employers to meet skills shortages brought about by lower migration and up-turns in economic prosperity involving ongoing technological change. However, data from the Survey of Employers’ Use and Views of the VET System show that, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers’ engagement with the VET system had trended downward over the last 14 years up until 2019.

This research examined the factors in the current VET environment that influence whether an employer chooses to engage with the national VET system, in particular, with nationally recognised training.

The report Engaging more employers in nationally recognised training to develop their workforce explores employer approaches to training their workforce through the use of nationally recognised vocational education and training (VET) as opposed to other forms of training to identify strategies that encourage more employers to use nationally recognised training.

This objective is in response to what was, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a downward trend in employer engagement with the national VET system, including employers with jobs that require vocational qualifications, those with apprentices and trainees, and those who use nationally recognised training other than through apprenticeships and traineeships; a trend that had occurred in the previous 14 years up until 2019.

The latest Survey of Employer Use and Views of the VET System shows a break in that trend, with a higher proportion of employers having new training requirements in 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key messages from the Report:

• Employers train their workforces to improve their businesses. They use both nationally and non-nationally recognised training and view these two forms of training as complementary. The training is judged by its relevance to the skills needs of their workers, its flexibility in fitting in with their business cycles; the expertise of its provider; and its cost. These factors are more important to employers than its recognition status, that is, whether it is nationally recognised or non-nationally recognised training.
• Employers who use nationally recognised training highlight its quality and the ability of registered training organisations (RTOs) to make assessments against the industry-developed national performance standards in training packages and accredited courses. It is mandated in some instances.
• Nationally recognised training is seen as the logical fit for initial training for entry into the workforce and for upskilling in critical new technical skills, those that need to be formally acknowledged or recorded for certification purposes. The challenge is for RTOs to form closer partnerships with employers to understand their needs more fully and customise the curriculum and training delivery accordingly, including complementing other forms of training.

Further information:

• Access NCVER's full media release here.
• Download the full report here.

Date posted Dec 16, 2021