Kia ora everyone,

I hope you’re all enjoying the pace that the end of 2024 seems to be bringing us.

As we head into the end of the year, it’s time for a quick update on the Learn Queenstown Lakes programme.

Employee voice – Actvo

Firstly, we’re pleased to have the Actvo component of this project underway with all participating employers onboarded, and the majority of users up and running already. Actvo will provide us with the employee voice in this project, including a sample of skills mapping data. The intent is that this will give us a fuller picture of learning needs and skills gaps across the district, when matched against our feedback and input from businesses.

We have 7 employers and over 100 users participating in this pilot programme, across a range of industries from hospitality to professional services.

Employer survey

In October we had the opportunity to share our employer survey results through a series of workshops where we tested & validated the results in order to land on some agreed areas of focus. If you didn’t get a chance to attend any of the workshops, a copy of the survey results is attached for your reference. For those who are interested, the summary slides from the October workshops are available here:

Actions from here

There are four key workstreams that were generally agreed through October’s workshops, as areas of focus for the Learn Queenstown Lake programme going forward.

Those are:

1. Delivery of the agreed Learning Supplier Schedule
   Visibility for employers on learning providers already delivering quality offerings in the district
2. Establishment of an Employer Forum to bring employers together, for purpose, on workforce issues
3. Tertiary education sector engagement
4. Joined up learning programmes – identifying core topics that employers can come together on.
   Management skills development is the topic that has the most traction at this point.

These will all require a collective effort in order to gain some traction. So, in the new year (2025) we will be looking for expressions of interest from those of you who would like to get involved in one or more of these topics. Feel free to let me know before the new year if you have a particular interest in any of the above areas.

Updated timeline

You may recall from earlier in the year that we were looking to have a Supplier Schedule delivered by end November. Given the number of parties involved in this mahi, we have extended that timeline to end January 2025.

Thanks all for your contributions to this project so far, and I look forward to being in touch again in January.

Meri Kirihimete

Meghan