Hello again,

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Australia Association of Career Counsellors (AACC) national conference in Hobart. The conference was exceptionally well attended and certainly helped me gain a greater understanding of the challenges faced by career counselors across the country.

Several things struck me – firstly, the professionalism, determination and persistence of all the career counsellors to help students in making the right career choice. In particular the career advisors are committed to understanding and matching the aspirations and talents of their students with the many opportunities that exist.

That said it was also very evident that vocational education providers generally need to work harder at being more accessible to career counsellors. It is clearly imperative that in order to attract students to the numerous vocational careers available that they need to educate and inform career advisros on what options there are out there. After all, trade skills are continually evolving.

At the AACC conference SkillsOne had an information stand and the response was overwhelmingly positive, with a great deal of interest in both SkillsOne Television and skillsone.com.au

Many of the career counsellors told us that they are already using SkillsOne as a resource for providing advice to students and their parents, directing them to the website to learn more about the career opportunities within trades and skills.

Those that were learning about SkillsOne for the first time were impressed and said they would definitely use our site in the future. This reinforces what we are regularly hearing about SkillsOne and it’s a testament to the entire team who work tirelessly to pull all the amazing content together.

Last week I also spoke at the National Meat Industry Training Advisory Council Limited (MINTRAC) conference. The theme of that conference was 'Training and the Bottom Line'. In other words, encouraging employers to understand the value of training not only in terms of developing skills but also the very positive effect it has on developing the culture within a company.

At the conference the value of training was highlighted by several of the speakers. In particular in New Zealand the Dairy Council had undertaken some research which showed that employee training led to a 30% increase in productivity. I was also very interested in some qualitative research undertaken by Sydney University that demonstrated a direct relationship between the financial performance of companies and their employee morale – with the companies people were happiest outperforming the competition.

Like many industries, the food processing industry are experiencing difficulty in attracting employees and have developed some creative ways of getting youth involved in the workforce. There are good career paths and as with many trades - there are misperceptions. Getting the positive opportunities is always a struggle but absolutely necessary if we’re to succeed in attracting workers, be they mature, re-skilled or students seeking a career path.

Both of these conferences that I attended last week reinforced in my mind that there are a lot of positive steps being taken out there to help reduce our skills gap and that the content on SkillsOne.com.au is truly an invaluable resource to everyone involved in trade skills.

Last but not least, I am please to announce that Marion Fitzpatrick, National Trade Teacher of the Year 2007, has been selected to attend the Australia 2020 Summit. Congratulations Marion! You can read more about her involvement on this site.