9.2.What general and specific foundation learning skills needs were identified in the one to three enterprises? To what extent are skills needs generic to the industry, the sub-sector or firm specific? Are these skills future focused for new processes and enhanced productivity?

Speaking and listening in English and critical thinking skills are central to most tasks that seasonal workers undertake and generic to seasonal workers in the horticulture and viticulture industries as a whole.

Oral communication

The skill profiles show significant similarities in the oral comprehension demands of roles across the three enterprises

Reading skills

Reading demands on seasonal workers are likely to vary across enterprises, and therefore across the sector. Each enterprise will provide employees with different information to read. Some will provide more written information than others, and the complexity of the reading material will vary depending on who wrote it.

In Workbase's experience, supervisors often take on the responsibility of reading material and providing verbal explanations of the material to their employees. This is likely to be a feature of many enterprises across the horticulture and viticulture sector.

Critical thinking/decision-making skills

The profiles show that all roles require critical thinking/decision making-skills, but these vary depending on the technical knowledge required for each role. Each sector - viticulture, pipfruit and kiwifruit - requires seasonal workers to have some generic technical knowledge of plants and fruit.

Seasonal workers apply their technical knowledge (often newly acquired) to make decisions in their workplace. The apple picker decides which fruit to pick based on their knowledge of the ripening patterns and colour of the variety, and the instructions given to them by the grower. The kiwifruit grader looks for signs of imperfection in fruit that will cause it to deteriorate in storage. The tree or vine pruner must select which wood to remove to promote optimum fruiting.

The critical thinking and decisions seasonal workers make are highly specific to the role they carry out, and are guided by enterprise specific procedures that relate to varietal and market difference.

Writing skills

Seasonal workers in the three enterprises were only asked to complete relatively simple employment related forms, sign checklists and in some cases complete timesheets. The low level of writing demand is likely to be generic to seasonal roles across horticulture sectors.

Numeracy skills

In all three enterprises, seasonal workers needed numeracy skills to understand their pay rates and be able to calculate if they had the correct pay. These skills are required across all sectors.

All three enterprises have numerical targets to guide speed and quality of work. Seasonal workers need numeracy skills to be able to understand and work to targets. The concept of pay tied to targets is generic across the sectors, especially for orchard and vineyard work. However, the actual targets and the way they are set up will vary in each sector and enterprise, so elements of understanding targets will be sector- and enterprise-specific.

The numeracy skills required for specific tasks vary. A kiwifruit packer needs to be able to work out the number of boxes on a half-filled pallet by adding, subtracting and multiplying. A grapevine pruner needs to estimate length of canes, and cut to these lengths with a degree of accuracy. An apple picker uses concepts of ratio or percentage to decide if an apple is red enough to be picked. Many of the concepts (e.g. addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, using units of measure, understanding percentage) are generic. However many numeracy demands are specific to jobs or tasks, so cannot be regarded as generic to the industry.

Future focused

The skills listed in the profiles are not future focused per se. People in these industries tend to focus on immediate goals - what needs to be done today, what is happening with this harvest, what needs to happen after this harvest.

Industry people were concerned about the future supply and training of their workforce - both seasonal and permanent. If seasonal workers do not come to the industry with well developed foundation skills, they cannot access current training pathways. If they do not have opportunities to develop their skills, they will be unable to move from seasonal to permanent work. As new training pathways are put in place, foundation skills will need to be developed alongside technical skills. People who have no experience of training will need extra support to achieve training outcomes.

9.2.What are the different roles, functions and responsibilities that are fulfilled by workers in these enterprises? What foundation learning skills come into play in performing these roles functions and responsibilities? Is there a gap between the foundation skills workers have and what they need to perform their roles?

Employers have traditionally structured seasonal work to be as simple as possible. However, new compliance requirements and customer demands have made the information that seasonal workers need to know and respond to more complex. The traditional approach is proving less effective as the make up of the workforce changes; it does not develop seasonal workers' potential to be more productive.

The most significant skill gaps reported by employers and industry associations relate to:

• English language for NESB employees
• lack of background technical knowledge to make good decisions
• lack of experience - people with more experience apply their technical knowledge of work processes to make better decisions.

Other gaps related to matters that are not specifically related to foundation skills:

• Motivation and attitude of seasonal workers - Many seasonal workers are detached from the job and only work a few days out of the working week. This may be related to their skills but may also relate to systemic issues that the worker has little control over (e.g. access to reliable transport).
• "Life skills", which include ability to get themselves organised and get to work, lack of money management skills and lack of skills to plan ahead, for example, by arranging food or transport for themselves.

9.2.What are the perceived benefits and opportunities of undertaking a foundation learning skills needs analysis within the workplace? How can the knowledge be leveraged to develop a foundation learning programme within the workplace?

Employers in the pipfruit, kiwifruit and viticulture industries do not currently know a great deal about the foundation skill demands of seasonal work, or the benefits of improving workers' skills. A concerted effort is needed to educate employers in this sector about the relationship between skill development (including literacy, language and numeracy) and improved employee productivity.

Employers recognise issues with the English language skills of people from non-English speaking backgrounds. They tend to attribute many other issues to a lack of "life skills" in their workforce.

The structure of work in these industries compounds issues further. Seasonal work is characterised by employers and seasonal workers as low wage, low skill, short-term, and undertaken in a highly pressured, urgent environment.

In fact, some of the seasonal roles require considerable skills but it is difficult to identify arguments that would convince employers to develop the skills of the seasonal workforce beyond the simple training required to "get the job done by tomorrow".

Employers rely on supervisors and managers to provide face-to-face training through verbal explanations of technical information and practical demonstrations of work processes. In recent years, the requirements for employing seasonal workers have changed (e.g. written employment agreements and written health and safety requirements now exist) and the seasonal workers themselves have become more diverse (e.g. from non-English speaking backgrounds). These factors have increased the demand on seasonal workers' oral comprehension and English language skills. They also increase demands on supervisors and managers who are generally not trained in how to give oral instructions, including sometimes complex technical information, to a workforce with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

A range of existing education and training programmes aimed at employers and supervisors could be used to promote good practice in oral instruction techniques and raise employer, manager and supervisor awareness of these issues. The information gained from this project could be used to develop training and communication materials to improve the sectors' understanding of foundation skills demands, and demonstrate simple things they can do to improve foundation skills in their workplaces.

Contractors are a critical part of the employment landscape for all three industry sectors. Some excellent regional initiatives to develop contractors' capability and skills are already under way. Examples include the KGI training package to help contractors develop supervisory skills, and the work that the Department of Labour has done in Marlborough to upskill contractors. Learning and information from these initiatives should be shared to increase the impact.

Opportunities do exist to develop the skills of supervisors and managers but as yet they do not include addressing how supervisors and managers adapt to working with a diverse workforce. Industry representatives identified the need to develop supervisors and managers, providing a further opportunity to address recruitment among seasonal workers as a pathway to longer term or permanent employment.

9.2.What contextual issues in the horticulture and viticulture seasonal industries are relevant to the content and the delivery of a foundation skills training programme?

Learners involved in conventional workplace literacy programmes are usually tutored one-on-one or in small groups in a training room during work time. Programmes are run over a period of time, with learners attending on a regular basis. These types of programmes are unlikely to be effective with a seasonal workforce due to:

• pressure of work - any training would have to occur in the off season, when people are not being paid, may have other jobs, or may not be in the region
• concerns from employers who are unable to pay people in the off season: "If we train them, they will expect a job."
• access to suitable training spaces
• workers not attending unless they are paid
• workers not being motivated to attend training to improve their prospects for employment in a short-term, low paid role
• workers not seeing the need for or benefit of improving their foundation skills
• high staff turnover in seasonal workforces.

Packhouses could be an exception. Because people work in the same environment on an ongoing basis, a training routine could be established to fit with staff rosters. The packhouse has a range of seasonal roles, some of which require higher levels of foundation skills. This provides more opportunity to develop workers' specific skills and show business benefits for employers. Packhouses are also likely to have a space where training could occur.

Other options for developing critical thinking and decision-making skills and oral communication in the workplace include developing more accessible training resources and developing the skills of on-job trainers.

9.2.What types of foundation learning programmes have been piloted or trialled in this workplace and how successful were they? What were the factors that helped or hindered their success?

None of the three workplaces visited had trialled foundation learning programmes, nor did industry association personnel know of any foundation learning programmes that had been trialled in the three regions (Marlborough vineyards, BOP kiwifruit, Hawke's Bay pipfruit).

One education provider in Hawke's Bay reported having a small number of seasonal workers attend Foundation Learning Pool funded programmes in their own time to improve their English skills. These workers had previously attended a targeted training course run by the same training provider, before being employed as seasonal workers. Learners attend classes for approximately three hours per week to work on personal goals e.g. obtain a driver's licence.

The KGI has worked closely with Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, growers and contractors to develop the Kiwifruit Orchard Skills Certificate. This certificate is beginning to be taken up by seasonal employees as well as permanent workers. The learning process follows the flow of seasonal work. For example, if a learner starts the certificate during the pruning season, then they work through the modules on pruning.

While very few seasonal workers are engaged in formal training courses, some excellent training and education initiatives are happening in the industry, including in individual workplaces, but information about them cannot be easily accessed or shared. People also identified the need for resources, including bilingual resources. Some already exist, particularly among larger employers, and there is potential to share these within the industry.

9.2.What are the barriers for firms and employees to participate in foundation learning programmes in the horticulture and viticulture seasonal industries? What are the opportunities for developing foundation learning programmes in these industries?

Time and work pressure were the main barriers to participating in foundation learning programmes or other developmental training initiatives. Employers were concerned about who would pay for programmes and what job outcomes seasonal workers might expect as a result of attending.

Some seasonal workers may see the wider opportunities a foundation skills programme might bring (such as achieving a permanent better paid job) and attend voluntarily. Others might wonder why they should attend a foundation skills training programme to help them secure and keep a temporary job.

Other barriers include access to suitable training spaces, high turnover of staff and the need to pay staff to attend.

9.2.How can a skills needs analysis be most effectively and efficiently conducted in the horticulture and viticulture seasonal industries? Is it possible or desirable for the skills needs analysis and the learning needs analysis to be conducted by separate organisations?

Skills profiles could be reviewed more widely and adjusted to have industry application. They could be issued in industry publications, supported by key messages:

• How you give oral instructions and check for understanding is important.
• Theory is critical to good decision making.
• Supporting oral instructions with appropriate training material is important.

Publication could include examples of good instructional techniques and how to use them.

At this stage, Workbase does not recommend that a comprehensive skill gap analysis be done for this industry. A number of other industry issues need to be addressed before this kind of detailed information would be useful. These issues include:

• providing the industry with evidence of the benefits of investing in workforce development
• improving the training and education culture
• dealing with infrastructure issues such as transport and accommodation
• continuing to improve compliance with legal requirements
• improving the capability of contractors to address training and compliance issues.

9.2.How should skills training be targeted to ensure that investment is retained to increase productivity of the industry?

This is covered in the recommendations in the following section.