In their recent paper The employer of choice or a sector without a workforce? Pratley et al listed 27 barriers and challenges agriculture needs to address including:
Many employers over a long period of time, both on-farm and off-farm, have had an expectation that it is the government’s role to provide appropriately trained labour to their industries free of charge. That is flawed thinking: other sectors seem to engage at all levels of education.
They recommend greater industry investment in education.
At Action4Agriculture we have a secret weapon – our Young Farming Champions. Everyone who meets them wants to work in agriculture
As impressive as our Young Farming Champions are at raising AWARENESS in careers in agriculture, as McDonald, N et al. (2022), point out in their paper Career development and agriculture: we don’t need a marketing campaign the challenge is to translate AWARENESS into
… initiatives that influence people‘s career explorations, decision-making, choices and actions. Generating public awareness and knowledge about agriculture is one thing but affecting individuals career decisions is an entirely different matter. To design effective interventions to attract and retain staff requires a thorough understanding of how individuals build their careers and the different factors that influence people‘s careers decisions, choices and actions and their job satisfaction and intentions to remain in a job or industry. We need to move beyond simply campaigning for a greater public awareness of an appreciation for the types of work in agriculture.
The Action4Agriculture team are super excited to be given the opportunity through National Careers Institute funding to see what steps are required to turn AWARENESS into ATTRACTION. Visit our website here
And we all know ATTRACTION in one thing RETENTION is another.
This is where our SUPPORT package comes in for EVERYONE involved including careers advisors, students, mentors and employers
Supporting the students ( NextGen Employees ) and careers advisors will be Liv Pennie and team from Become Education
Our Young Farming Champions will play a pivotal role in every phase and this week we are supporting them with a workshop with Annie Simpson from Modern People
In this workshop Annie will explore
● The power of Values & what matters most
● Exploring leading Values frameworks in positive psychology
● Understanding your own Values, and connecting them to your work and life
● Values at work, and finding the role, industry and culture for YOU
● Australia’s topic values, and values through the COVID pandemic
● 7 Traits of Change Readiness & how they show up
● How to embrace change, and grow for the better
We look forward to sharing with you the package we have put together for employers.
#CreatingABetterWorldTogether