Talberg, Anita - Clean Energy Council

Response:

Industry engagement involves two-way communication and requires collaboration. Current engagement of the clean energy industry with the VET sector is limited for historical and structural reasons. Although, the VET sector exists to serve the needs of industry, employers in the clean energy sector often rely on in-house and vendor training, or internationally recognised certification and training. A key barrier to improved engagement is poor mutual understanding of systems and processes. 

The VET sector must recognise that the clean energy sector is not a homogenous group. The various technologies of wind, solar, hydro and batteries existing in small scale (at the household level) and at utility scale are each supported by dissimilar workforces and skills profiles. Even within some technologies there are different work and recruitment practices among employers, that result in different skills and qualification requirements. What unites the sector is that it operates on tight margins – this is true for small family-run rooftop solar businesses and large-scale wind operators, for example. Tight margins make it difficult for those employers to dedicate time and resources to better understanding the VET sector, and then to engage in how it shapes and delivers education and training.

To strengthen the potential for collaboration and build momentum for genuine engagement, at least in the beginning, it would be helpful if the VET sector could demonstrate its value to clean energy employers. In this, there are four areas that the VET sector could focus on: attending to a broader definition of each ‘industry’; inviting input at an earlier stage; integrating a level of translation into processes; and partnering with industry players on niche projects. The second and third points are addressed in the responses to Question (2).

•	Broader definition of each ‘industry’: Reducing an industry group—such as the clean energy sector—to one stakeholder simplifies engagement. However, it does not allow a representative contribution that incorporates the views of a large group of employers with different needs. As Australia decarbonises and increases its share of renewable energy, businesses continually innovate and adapt in seeking profitable but sustainable methods and operations. It is no longer acceptable to treat clean energy as a single entity with uniform skilling needs.

•	Partnering with industry players on niche projects: Given the regional locations of most clean energy projects, the heterogeneity of the sector, and its highly dynamic nature, a stronger level of partnership in niche projects at the RTO level would strengthen the role of industry in VET. In these types of partnerships employers can work with RTOs to tailor training to specific contexts and can build bridges, break down language barriers, and connect with communities with lasting results. These types of projects do occur but systems and funding that support them should be increased and used to harness the collective benefits for VET and industry.

This final point highlights an important role of both industry in VET and VET in industry that the case for change fails to recognise. Both VET and industry, working together, contribute to social and economic development at the regional level. VET is an avenue for employers in regional locations to give back to communities. It can be a key element to granting an industry sector, such as clean energy, a social license to operate. 

Response:

Yes

Response:

Whether this reflects governance systems or is an artefact of particular institutions’ practices, in the Clean Energy Council’s interaction with SSOs and their processes over the last 12 months, it has seemed that SSOs are heavily defined and constrained by administrative and bureaucratic processes. A lack of flexibility in timeframes and ways of operating has restricted the sector’s ability to contribute effectively. A more proactive, more imaginative, and less rigid approach from SSOs in their engagement with industry would better meet the needs of the clean energy sector. 

Drawing on and adding to the response to the previous question there are at least three areas where current engagement processes could be improved: inviting input at an earlier stage; integrating a level of translation into processes; and greater flexibility in managing different stakeholder types:

•	Inviting input at an earlier stage: Input from industry is sought in the form of the Industry Reference Committees (IRCs), Technical Advisory Committees (TACs), and project public consultation and review processes. As noted in the above point, the IRC cannot represent the views of most stakeholders as it reduces these to a dozen select participants that meet only biannually. The TACs are instituted around a particular issue for review after this issue has been identified and scoped. The roles of the TAC and the public consultation processes thereafter are focussed on resolving the difficulties within that pre-defined scope. As such, industry has only limited opportunity to question that framing of the skilling problem and potentially redefine the problem. Essentially, input from industry is currently emphasised for shaping and validating the deliverables of a project rather than in defining the scope of the project in the first place. 

•	Integrating a level of translation into processes: There is an expectation that industry will have some level of fluency in VET sector terminology and practices. This may be justified to some extent within the TACs. However, even outside of the TACs communication with industry is not tailored to the intended audience/s. To better communicate with relevant industry stakeholders, SSOs should have a much stronger role in translating the needs of the VET sector to the language and methods of employers to ensure that they ask the right questions and solicit useful feedback. In the training areas relevant to clean energy, employers are not provided with plain language explanations of projects or summaries of relevant discussions. There are at least 12 training packages that are likely to interact at time with the clean energy sector, yet the relevant IRCs and SSOs do not proactively seek to engage with clean energy industry groups or employers through any avenues outside of the formal IRC and TAC settings. 

•	Greater flexibility in managing different stakeholder types: As noted previously, there are many different workforce and employment practices across clean energy. Collating these views in the timeframes and manners dictated by current systems is not practical and does result in outcomes that meet the needs of clean energy employers broadly. Further, given the voluntary time commitment expected from industry to engage in VET review processes, greater flexibility and timeframes would allow better coordination for the load to be shared among organisations.

Response:

Whatever the categorisation by training packages, sectors, or clusters, there will never be a set of groupings that is correct all of the time, this is the nature of a highly interconnected society. To reflect this and to allow easy collaboration across industry sectors, it would be useful to have regular briefings from relevant other groupings; make it normal practice to invite participants from different sectors (IRCs etc); and reduce barriers to establishing short-term Working Groups to cut across industry sectors in reviewing a particular workforce area/topic/emerging skilling need.

To identify overlaps in skills across sectors and to define career pathways that are not limited to one industry, a broad mapping activity is needed to establish the common skills and training across different types of careers and where relevant, within geographical regions. Industry would not welcome a heavily standardised and rigid set of training requisites, but it would benefit from understanding:

•	How it can enlarge its pool of potential employees by looking to other sectors;
•	How short-term roles can be offered as part of more sustainable employment by partnering with other sectors;
•	How it can reduce re- or up-skilling costs by considering prior leaning in other sectors;
•	How, and the extent to which, workers from dwindling sectors can contribute their experience and expertise to help build emerging sectors; and 
•	How the skills of a workforce in a regional area may impact on decision-making at an operational and contractual level.

Breaking down silos and improving collaboration across industry groups will always be difficult. However, the first step is building the evidence base that this is needed and demonstrating that this can be beneficial to businesses and society. Within clean energy there is a clear call for trades and technicians to be skilled to work across the various technologies rather than specialised within one. Government funding would help individual sectors to map their own skills needs and these could then be viewed holistically from a VET perspective to understand and highlight the commonalities and various potential career pathways.

Response:

Given the heterogeneous nature of clean energy employers there is no single answer to this question. Particularly in the case of the electrician qualification there is the challenge of not overloading the qualification while seeking to ensure that all electricians are trained and competent to work safely and effectively within the electricity system of the future. Currently this is not the case; there is a shortage of electricians able to work in renewable energy. 

Employers need access to a pool of appropriately knowledgeable and skilled workers, that is sufficiently large to allow healthy competition and avoid delaying projects through a lack of workforce. Learners need to be able to step into the workforce with knowledge and skills that are valued by employers, while balancing the length of time needed in education and training. In both instances there is a tension between the supply of skills and the time investment required for this. A more specialised workforce calls for more investment in education and training. The clean energy sector employs a range of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers. The local supply of skilled workers often does not meet the needs of employers. The heavy focus on skills sets and micro-credentialing adopted by the VET sector does not always align with the needs of the clean energy sector where a base trade is often required as a matter of regulation or simply for reasons of productivity and safety.

Addressing this issue is not straight-forward but can be achieved in various ways by combining efforts outlined in previous questions around (1) stronger and more bespoke engagement with industry; and (2) seeking to understand the overlaps between skilling needs of different employer types. 

Response:

The Clean Energy Council’s membership has a strong focus on improving equity, inclusion and diversity across its employment practices and outcomes. This can only be partially effective unless the same type of commitment is embraced by the VET sector. This should be a concerted effort from all branches of governance of the VET sector. Particularly at the level of implementation – SSOs, IRCs and TACs – there should be a stronger presence from underrepresented labour groups.