Ngā aronga matua me ngā whakamārama | Key focus areas and rationale

In the course of our stakeholder engagement we identified some key challenges that affect every sector in Marlborough’s ability to attract and retain staff. These areas also limit the career opportunities for people in Marlborough. We have summarised these into six focus areas:

• Marlborough as an attractive place to live and work
• Career and education pathways
• Perceptions of industries and careers
• Connections between schools and industry
• Everyone in the region is aware of career and training opportunities
• Enabling equitable outcomes for Māori through education and work

For the 2022 RWP we have also identified five focus sectors to work with to support the development and implementation of workforce plans for Marlborough. We want to move with industry, in a collaborative and joined up manner to ensure that the work we are doing has maximum effect and outcomes.

We chose our focus sectors by considering where there is already action underway, where there is a labour or skills need, whether it helps people get more engaged with the labour market and whether the opportunity is time critical (such as the schools rebuild – Te Tātoru o Wairau). These focus sectors are:

• Aged care (action already underway, labour and skills shortages, underemployment, time critical)
• Aquaculture (action already underway, labour and skills shortages)
• Aviation (skills needs and time critical)
• Building and construction (action already underway, labour and skills shortages, time critical)
• Wine (labour and skills shortages and time critical)

We also acknowledge that underpinning our focus sectors is a platform of expert manufacturing. Manufacturing has helped us add value to our primary products and will be of ongoing importance with the growing uptake of technology and as we look to export our intellectual property.

This RWP is not meant to be an exhaustive list of sectors in Marlborough or those with labour and skills challenges. All sectors and businesses play an important part in Marlborough’s economy, including forestry, the wider health care sector, forestry, tourism and professional services. We heard from many of these sectors during consultation and they face the challenges listed in our six focus areas. In our 2023 update of the RWP we will look to reassess our focus sectors.

By co-ordinating our effort around the six focus areas and by supporting our focus sectors to develop and implement their workforce plans, we can achieve coordinated change across the region. This will see collaboration across a number of sectors and groups in our community and should bring benefits for all sectors and all people.

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