Upskilling the industry
14 Mar 2016, Builders business, Featured
Q: How can the industry help increase the number of skilled builders in New Zealand?
Firm: O’Leary Homes
Principal: Greg O’Leary
Location: Hawke’s Bay
Staff: 3
I think someone needs to start offering financial incentives to builders taking on apprenticeships. It costs a lot to train someone up – both in time and money – and often they leave within a year of being qualified.
Every apprentice I’ve trained, I’ve paid for the fees of their theory courses. If the government bought in some cash incentives for builders to train apprentices, I think a lot more people would be willing to do it. For smaller companies in particular, taking on an apprentice is a big deal.
Health and safety training is another big cost too. You’re responsible for their safety on site, and it can involve a lot of babysitting in the early days, because if they have an accident it’s your responsibility.
As far as recruitment goes, I don’t think anything else needs to be done there. People tend to find the industry themselves. It’s not a career you can really talk people into – either they’re interested or not.
Firm: Turnkey Homes Ltd
Principal: Phil Smith
Location: Wanaka/Central Otago
Staff: 10
As a business, Turnkey Homes runs five to six building teams with ten or so houses under construction at any one time. All of these teams are experiencing difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff in what is one of the busiest and most expensive towns in New Zealand.
In my opinion, skilled builders are only going to come through great education and on-site training programmes. We need to educate our youth about the opportunities that are available in the trades and encourage them to aspire to be great in their chosen field.
We also need to encourage employers via incentive programmes to hire more apprentices. This will lead to qualified builders putting in the time and effort to provide great on-site education and training.
It’s a process but I believe that, if we can implement those programmes, the industry will not only have more skilled builders, we will also be better positioned to cope with the unique challenges present in the New Zealand market.
Firm: Bruce Horrox Builders Ltd
Principal: Bruce Horrox
Location: Huntly and districts
Staff: 2
We need to make sure the people training apprentices are competent. The only way to increase skills is to pair the young people coming through with knowledgeable people within the industry – not just the builders they’re working for, but also the people within the organisations recruiting them.
Incentives are a good idea as well, because it’s a lot of responsibility to take on. WINZ used to subsidise a worker’s wages for 12 months when they were going through training; reintroducing a scheme like that might help.
I also think that all of the regulations scare people away from taking on trainees. Health and safety has a huge bearing on it, because you’re responsible for their welfare. If something goes wrong, it can end up costing a lot. It seems like employment law is stacked in the employee’s favour. If it isn’t working out, it can get quite messy to get rid of an apprenticeship.
Finally, we need to make sure we attract good people into the industry. It’s hard to train someone properly if they aren’t prepared to work hard and learn.
How are you managing the introduction of the new Health and Safety At Work Act? What can Worksafe do to better inform builders about what the changes mean for them?
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All responses must be submitted by 25 April 2016. The answers to this question will be published in Under Construction June 2016.
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