These roles, when advertised, tended to have underqualified and/or unsuitable applicants apply, the report found.
The Greater Western Sydney Skills Audit was commissioned by TAFE Western Sydney and Western Sydney Business Connection.
More than 450 business managers and executives in GWS were included in the research project which aimed to gain an understanding of employment pressures in the region.
Of the nearly 860,000 filled roles in the region, the report found a fairly even spread between sales workers (18%), clerical and administrative workers (18%), managers (17%) and professionals (17%). Coming in with proportionately less positions were technicians and trades workers (12%), labourers (9%) and machinery operators and drivers (7%).
The least significant group of workers were in service industries such as hospitality and community services (3%).
Categorising these roles into the ‘collars’, it was found that 64% of workers in GWS fell into the white collar category, 27% blue collar and a further 9% fell into a third category which has been coined the ‘grey collar’.
Craig McCallum, Director Strategic Marketing and Media Relations at TAFE Western Sydney explained that the grey collar category described workers who with extra training could transition to other roles.
“Experienced in either technical, trades or service roles, grey collar workers are aspirational, wishing to progress their careers by building on their existing skills and experience,” Mr McCallum said.
“Unfortunately grey collar workers often experience a block to their careers in moving to supervisory or managerial roles due to a need for formal qualifications or transferrable soft skills such as project management, leadership, communication and IT. Historically it has been difficult for these workers to gain these qualifications and skills due to the nature of their work schedules and the cost of full qualifications.”
This has prompted discussion between employers, industry and TAFE Western Sydney as to what could be done to break through these blocks.
“One of the possible ways of supporting grey collar workers is breaking up qualifications into relevant chunks. These part-qualifications are designed to be affordable and allow employees to quickly fill up the gaps in their knowledge or skills to make them employable. These could be ‘skill sets’ pulling together units from an existing qualification which, if desired, could be later built on to achieve the full qualification,” Mr McCallum said.
“We are in discussions with employers and industry to find out exactly what it is that they are looking for in their employees so that we can adapt training to suit.
“The great news in the short term is that the NSW Government has listened to these concerns and has opened up a way for workers to access free training in part-qualifications in what they term ‘targeted priority’ subject areas for the remainder of 2015.
“Additionally, from 2016, eligibility criteria for accessing government funding for vocational education and training has been opened up so that it does not exclude those who have qualifications equivalent to a Certificate IV or higher.
“We are also able to work with employers to customise training which meets the specific needs of their business. Upskilling your staff and offering opportunities for progression is a great way to improve the productivity and the loyalty of your employees. It can also be a way of making the training more efficient as we can deliver the training onsite and use examples from your workplace.”
