Mature Age Project

Retrenchments, an aging population and critical skills shortages mean there is a need for effective strategies to attract, retain and upskill mature age workers.  Many organisations are struggling with attracting employees, retaining older workers, capturing and managing knowledge, upskilling existing workers for new job roles and sustaining new work practices.

Options will be explored for mature workers to be retained in their current organisation, attracted back to their sector or related industry area in a training role or to move into the VTE sector.

Where the physical demands of a trade/technical role cannot be met, this project allows for individuals who may be at a loss to manage within their current role, to be retained within their organisation or sector in a training role.

In past years there has been a shift in schools away from technical training leaving many educators without recent industry knowledge, experience and exposure – these educators do not necessarily have the skills to deliver and may not be interested to return to these technical areas.

This project is expected to be a pilot that would underpin efforts within the education and training sector of the Business Services Industry Skills Board to work with DFEEST, DECS, schools and industry to provide a qualification and career pathway for mature age workers suited to upskilling into a education role that will lead to a university qualification in education, increasing suitability for delivery to school students.

There is an emerging demand for trainers/assessors/teacher within technical colleges and trades schools.  A number of new VET/VTE practitioners will be identified as a result of this project that can be engaged in the ways described above to support less experienced workers and dissemination of corporate/industry knowledge.

This project will support these new VET/VTE practitioners to transfer their industry and organisational experience through knowledge creation and workforce development activities underpinned by the competencies from the Training and Assessment (TAA04) Training Package.  As recent “industry” members the new VET/VTE practitioners can bring relevant and current knowledge to their training and development roles – an issue which is often identified as a criticism of VET practitioners that are a long time out of industry.
 
The key outcomes of this project include:

• Delivery of  training;
  
• Mentoring and linking with schools and technical colleges;
  
• Building skills and knowledge to support trainees and apprentices – keep mature aged in industry sector by transitioning to training role and use this as a model for retention to:
  
  • keep corporate and industry knowledge
    
  • maintain people within the industry sectors with genuine experience – mentors and guides for new apprentices and trainees
    
  • provide a pool of people available who will have the qualifications and experience to support other initiatives at a federal and state level i.e. technical colleagues and trades schools.  This would otherwise be drawing on existing the school and VTE workforce who are also ageing – we need to increase pool to support sector to continue to deliver across sector.

The intended benefits to employees include:

• Flexible work arrangements
• New roles that build upon their expertise and skills
• Maintenance of links with organisation/industry
• Training and Assessment TAA04 competencies
• Ongoing employment

The intended benefits to organisations include:

• Retention of mature aged workers
• Active transference of corporate/industry knowledge
• New model of working
• Knowledge of key attraction and retention factors
• Networks with other organisations interested in retention and attraction issues

Other benefits and improvements include:

• Working environment that values mature aged workers
• Retention of industry/trade based skills and knowledge
• Investment in next generation of workers through learning and development

The intended benefits to the state include:

• Provision of potential workforce for the 3 technical colleges
• Provision of potential workforce for the 10 trades schools
• Provision of potential workforce for TAFE and Registered Training Organisations