doaldchun: Work Experience The Missing Link In SME Youth Employment

শুক্রবার, ১২ অক্টোবর, ২০১২

Work Experience The Missing Link In SME Youth Employment - Stuff

Work experience is the missing link in any current plans to entice small to medium businesses to employ youth workers and help address the soaring youth unemployment figures.

The number of youth not in education, employment or training (the NEET rate) is sitting at around 13.1 per cent (of New Zealanders aged between 15 to 24). SME leaders say with SMEs making up 97 per cent of New Zealand businesses, ways must be found to bring the two together, in an economic environment in which the costs and time involved in training inexperienced workers is a big ask for small businesses.

Head of the SME Business Network Tenby Powell says with so many youth on benefits "it begs the question why you would pay them to do nothing" when the money could be given to employers to train young workers. "It would be easy to administer and not unlike an apprenticeship."

He adds that practical work experience in core skills should be a part of industry and technical training courses.

The government this week announced a starting out wage of 80 per cent of the minimum adult wage for workers aged 16-19 who are in their first job, who have been on a benefit for more than six months, or who have completed a recognised industry training course.

Business NZ chief executive Phil O'Reilly says while the new wage for youth workers goes some way to addressing the problem, more needs to be done.

"The starting out wage is a start but it's important to stress it's no good on its own. But in conjunction with the 90-day trial probation period already in place, it will make some difference," he says.

"The biggest hurdle facing youth looking for work is building a CV - getting some runs on the board, and the new wage with the probation period should help that happen."

In difficult economic times apprenticeships inevitably always fall away as businesses look to control costs. "Ideally we'd be able to encourage businesses to keep taking on apprentices in all economic climates so we could avoid creating a glut when things improve and instead have a steady supply of workers."

They key to doing that is providing small businesses with youth workers who have some level of skill and experience under their belt so the time and cost of training seems not so daunting for employers.

It all comes back to education, he says. "ITOs don't go far enough. It needs to kick in before that, at schools. We need to make sure kids are learning the skills that businesses value at that is STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) skills."

Crucially, he says, young students need accurate and detailed information to guide their career paths, even more so if they are looking at careers that don't necessarily require tertiary academic study.

"If you want to be a vet your path is fairly straightforward. You go to Massey, study vet science and become a vet. If, however, you are 'interested in cars' or 'like building things' where do you start? There are a huge number of different paths you could choose. They key to picking one you like and which there is a demand for is information on what skills you should be developing at high school."

And then, as part of that young people need to have work experience so their qualifications become more relevant and of interest to small business employers, he says.

Powell agrees saying we need to address basic education levels before we will make any impact on youth unemployment.

"Without education there is no ability to train.

"I used to be in the army and I couldn't put a soldier on the field with less than the equivalent of University Entrance. They need to be able to work on their own, make independent decisions, think things through, education helps give you those abilities."

The same is true for most civilian jobs, Powell says. "You might be a drainlayer, you're still going to have to work a GPS."

While the National government is doing is good things to address youth unemployment and entice businesses to employ young people, "unless we address and lift our basic education levels nothing is going to really change".

- ? Fairfax NZ News