Specialist Trades Team Update

Newly appointed Head of Learning – Derek Liefting and Head of Field Services – Bronwyn Stephens have been busy getting around the country to meet with their local teams and to source feedback on what is working well and also learn more about areas for development.

Highlights have included seeing the commitment and passion of Skills Specialist Tradespeople and the expertise and support being provided to you. There are areas where we can also take learnings to share with other areas and gain efficiencies.

Bronwyn is working with her leadership team to review a realignment of learners across the team while Derek is meeting with teams and working with Skills People and Culture to ensure we have the right learning structure to support our campus teams with optimum apprentice learning. As we embed our new leadership team we will also be talking with apprentices and employers and look forward to building our products and services with our wider teams.

Mentor-to-apprentice ratios have been a key feedback area received over the past months. As part of the new Specialist Trades business set-up, this ratio has been redefined to ensure we can still support our apprentices nationally. New ratios, vary based on geographic spread around the country and include our new virtual mentors. The ratios fall within the range of 1 to 80 through to 1 to 120 and represent some of the lowest ratios in the trades training industry.

We’ve been aware of feedback around ratios being too high historically and would like to assure you that it is not our intention to return to levels that historically resulted in a degradation of service levels.

If you feel service levels, especially from our Training Advisors (i.e. mentors) is degrading, please don’t hesitate to reach out to [email protected].