A new, tailored piece of research aimed at identifying aviation workforce trends creates foundations that will also be applied to other service industries in Aotearoa.
The Aviation Workforce Insights research, commissioned by Ringa Hora Services Workforce Development Council and the Aviation Industry Association of New Zealand (AIANZ), found a significant shortage of pilots and engineers was holding back the industry, and that it will only get worse if the status quo remains in aviation training.
The research, conducted by management consultancy firm Scarlatti, was well received in the aviation industry, with some describing it as among the most robust pieces of research based on official information that’s been seen in a long time.
Scarlatti’s work has provided concrete numbers for people in the aviation industry to make informed decisions on changes required to ensure New Zealand has an adequate pilot and engineer workforce.
The collaborative approach, which included a Ringa Hora staff member being seconded to the AIANZ office to help manage the project, is one which Ringa Hora is looking to repeat with other industries.
Among the key statutory responsibilities that Ringa Hora and other Workforce Development Councils have is to lead and coordinate industry efforts to identify their workforce needs, and to support the vocational education system and employers to meet those needs.
Gaining in-depth insights into the future needs of service industries is very much part of that mission, and Ringa Hora Strategy and Advice general manager Leo Shen says the success of this research – done in a much more tailored and collaborative way than in the past – will be a template for similar projects in the future.
“This work shows what we can achieve working together with our industry partners,” he says.
“We will be doing similar forecasting work for retail, tourism, hospitality, finance, cleaning, and security industries in the near future, and this will help us to gain similar insights into those industries.”
The research was commissioned by Ringa Hora and AIANZ to get some hard data on what the two parties believed were shortages in the numbers of graduates that aviation pilot and engineer training programmes were producing.
“One of the things that the WDC model has enabled, through our close work with the aviation industry, is to finally give industry the tool they needed to produce the evidence they required,” Ringa Hora policy analyst Jeff Abbot says.
“We’ve been able to come in and provide that in the way that hasn’t been available to industry previously.”
The partnership between Ringa Hora and AIANZ extended to Abbot being seconded to the AIANZ office in Wellington two days a week over a six-month period to carry out vital project management work to ensure the project remained on track.
“We ended up with an output that has been well received by the steering group members, including some people with a great deal of experience in the sector,” he says.
“That’s a pat on the back for all of us. There’s a lot of relationship work across agencies that we have been providing.”
“This is the type of work that industry wants to see from us, and that we are committed to producing. When we are joined at the hip with industry, we can be awesome together in delivering for them and the future workforce.”
The project’s working model is already being used again for a similar piece of work being carried out by Business Events Industry Aotearoa (BEIA), with another Ringa Hora staff member currently seconded there part-time.
“This project has provided great lessons for us,” Leo Shen says. “This helped us develop new connections with others in aviation industry, and we are now working with industry partners and other government agencies to put action in place to address these challenges.
