With a labour shortage and limited skilled personnel, industry stakeholders are placing greater importance on quality, real-time and relevant industry intelligence.
In response to this escalating problem, SkillsDMC consulted with industry sectors, resulting in the development of the Future Workforce Manager program.
The IT-based free planning tool, researched and developed in 2006, aims to provide workforce planning at enterprise level for the enterprise’s operations.
It also determines and provides indicators of the future requirements directly related to business demands based on the existing workforce.
SkillsDMC has implemented the Future Workforce Manager program on the Coal Workforce Planning Project.
The Coal Workforce Planning Project was set up to pilot the workforce planning tool. It resulted in a system providing industry with up-to-date empirical data used to forecast current and future workforce demographics.
The tool enables industry and human resources services to intervene in a timely manner on the basis of their respective roles, responsibilities and commercial interests to attract and retain an appropriate workforce, SkillsDMC said.
The outcome of this exercise resulted in a coal workforce planning tool to anticipate the demand for labour by occupation, state and type of mine in the coal mining sector annually to 2015-16, as well as establishing a model for use in other industry sectors.
In developing and piloting the workforce planning tool, SkillsDMC undertook primary market research involving a sample survey of existing mine operations, as well as interviews and informal discussions with mining personnel.
Information gathered from this exercise was then compiled and compared to existing, known data to derive model coefficients and demand drivers.
As a result of applying the workforce planning tool SkillsDMC was able to estimate demand for labour, broken down into occupation, type of mine and state.
The tool also determines the impact of workforce ageing on the existing workforce profile, and the total additional labour requirement directly related to means of production.
Overall, the model estimated that the coal industry will need to find around 2270 new employees per annum over the next 10 years to meet growing demand for labour and to cover loss of employees through natural attrition.
“While the industry has been able to absorb a greater number than this in recent years, the key issue looking forward is whether such strong rates of employment growth can be sustained in the medium to long term," SkillsDMC said.
“Meeting this challenge may require not only a renewed emphasis on recruitment and attracting new employees, but also developing policies that will retain existing employees in the coal workforce."
SkillsDMC has also developed the trademarked Skills Maximiser, a system specifically designed to identify enterprise and individual training needs.
The system uses industry derived and owned units of competency. Each of the SkillsDMC training packages has been loaded onto this specially designed IT platform to complete the task of identifying and quantifying the skills needs.
The program allows an organisation to develop workplace competency profiles; customise units with site information and performance standards; complete a thorough training needs analysis and determine the skill gaps; and develop practical training and assessment strategies to satisfy their needs.
The system has been developed and trialled over the past two years and through information sessions conducted in Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.
SkillsDMC’s Skills Maximiser established a national implementation plan to systematically install industry responsive training to improve individual and enterprise performance.
