MaintainNZ: Investing in People and Skills

Industry Training Beats Skills Shortages

The company

MaintainNZ is a non-profit charitable trust based in Kawerau, Eastern Bay of Plenty. The trust works with industry, unions and education providers to invest in people and skills and drive productivity within New Zealand's primary dairy and wood-processing industries. The partners are Norske-Skog Tasman (NST), the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), Fonterra, Kawerau College, Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE). MaintainNZ employs five staff under the Chief Executive.

We must have lifelong learning throughout our working lives to keep our skills current and to keep up with technology. This is the only way we can keep the focus on improving productivity. Peter Chrisp, Norske-Skog Tasman

Productivity challenge

In the 1990s, EPMU carried out skills analysis research with staff working in NST sites in Kawerau. They found that due to the average age of workers (47) and the limited apprenticeship training occurring, a future skills shortage looked likely. Fonterra in Edgecombe made similar findings after a job modelling exercise.

There was general concern across New Zealand industry about an increasing shortage of competent qualified maintenance personnel. The current education and training framework in New Zealand did not seem to meet modern maintenance requirements.

"The industry was characterised by old-fashioned methods of training," says Perry Foreman, Chief Executive of MaintainNZ. "You didn't learn a lot about maintenance unless you went to work in maintenance and even then there was inconsistent work practices."

The challenge for the industries was how to address skill shortages and get productivity up to an international level.

Meeting the productivity challenge

MaintainNZ was established in 2004 by local partners NST, EPMU, Fonterra and Kawerau College, with the aim of improving industry-based education, training and employment opportunities, specifically in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. MaintainNZ wanted to facilitate relevant, industry-driven training to enable upskilling and improve business productivity across its industries.

The MaintainNZ partnership was extended to include Auckland University of Technology (AUT), which had the expertise to introduce new approaches to industry-driven training, and industry training organisations, to ensure all training courses were linked to nationally recognised qualifications. Care was taken to ensure course content was directly relevant to the particular industry in which the student worked and training focused strongly on problem-solving and preventative action.

"MaintainNZ trains the students to become highly skilled technicians, rather than trades people," says Perry Foreman. "When they get back to their production sites, they are sowing the seeds for maintenance best practice and maintenance reliability among workers who have old-school habits."

"It's not the machines that make a difference. It's what people do with their skills and how they apply their skills to the machinery - that's where you get productivity," says Peter Chrisp, NST Senior Vice President, Profitability Improvement.

In the past, Kawerau College relied on the big industries to employ its students. "But the reality was that it was no longer happening as our students didn't have the required skills," says principal Steve Hocking. "So we partnered industry and the EPMU to develop a model that allowed our students a structured career pathway and an excellent chance of getting good jobs in the local industry." Since 2004, approximately 80% of the graduating students from Kawerau College have picked up engineering-related apprenticeships.

With the support of MaintainNZ, Fonterra developed an ambitious apprenticeship programme to enable career development and improve staff retention.

"Our goal was to retain at least 75% of the apprenticeship trainees in the dairy industry. This would enable us to keep those skills in the organisation that we needed to maintain the productivity and reliability of our plant," says Rob Probst, Fonterra's National Maintenance Manager.

MaintainNZ has a strong focus on best practice maintenance improvements. As a result, NST calculates a 2% reduction in plant downtime equating to approximately $4 million per annum additional turnover. Fonterra has targeted gains in plant availability from 95% to 99%, which will contribute $25 million per annum to the Edgecombe site.

MaintainNZ partner and EPMU National Secretary Andrew Little says the MaintainNZ training model could be recreated elsewhere where there are similar labour issues.

"The type of workforce we are all interested in developing is a workforce that is not just thinking about the business of that day but thinking about what improvements can be made and thinking about the business of the future. This is what MaintainNZ is all about."

Key learnings

• To stay competitive, industry must invest in training and skills.
• Success is possible through shared agenda and joint commitment from partners.
• Targeted training produces people with skills and talent relevant to the needs of industry.
• Succession planning can counter an ageing workforce and improve staff retention.
• Professional development enables employees to cope with new technology or new training, and helps prevent unplanned downtime.
• Evaluation keeps programme relevant to industry needs.
  

Table 1: Return on investment

Target group	Benefit	Value to the company
Employees	Better training and lifelong learning leads to more highly skilled jobs Able to problem solve and prevent machine breakdowns before they occur Improved health and safety	Having a workforce that can cope with new and changing technology and machinery Less machinery downtime means increased production Higher staff retention, fewer accidents
Managers	Demonstrate industry leadership	Focus on best practice maintenance improvements improves productivity
Kawerau College	Students have a career path and can stay in small town	An incentive for new business and/or investment attraction
EPMU	Working in new ways	Developing programmes to meet industry needs
AUT	Sees employees get better training for better jobs	Good working relations with union partner
Eastern Bay of Plenty	Benefits from influx of students from outside the region	Supportive partner to industry An incentive for new business and/or investment Potential to diversify the regional economic base

Becoming more productive

Lifting productivity involves exploring all the ways that your workplace could do things better and smarter. No matter what your business does, or how big or small it is, there are a range of ways you can improve its productivity:

1. Building Leadership and Management Capability
2. Creating Productive Workplace Cultures
3. Encouraging Innovation and the Use of Technology (Organisation's drivers)
4. Investing in People and Skills (Organisation's drivers)
5. Organising Work
6. Networking and Collaboration
7. Measuring What Matters

The MaintainNZ: Investing in People and Skills case study is also available as a pdf [PDF, 2 Pages, 800kB]