Skill ecosystems – a new approach to skill formation in an era of shortages
PROJECT UPDATE | Caroline Alcorso and Jeremy
Gilling, Project Managers, NSW DET for the Skill Ecosystem national
project
Vigorous debate over skills policy in Australia is nothing new – it has raged within VET circles and different levels of government for much of the past two decades. But now, with skill shortages, new industrial arrangements and the challenges of globalisation very much in the news, the debate has gone public.
While there are many views on where we should be heading, most people agree that the approach we have adopted in the past isn’t working well today. The simple model where industry demands and the system supplies is a formula for long response times, wasted skills, critical shortages, and frustrations at both the employer and provider levels.
It was in this context that the NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training (BVET) initiated a major research project to examine the links between work and skills, how this linkage is likely to change, and the options for policy makers to shape the linkage in the future. The result was a pathbreaking report, Beyond flexibility: Skills and work in the future, released in October 2001.
The skill ecosystem networks… often involved people from organisations with different, even opposed, interests.
This report in turn inspired the Skill Ecosystem national project – a Commonwealth-funded and NSW DET-administered project that aims to develop and trial a model of skill formation that is guided by the workplace context, and which addresses the many factors behind skill usage at the workplace. Nine demonstration projects have been conducted across Australia over a three-year period to explore different aspects of this model. Details (including a series of downloadable information sheets) are available on the website, (see link below). Two studies of the national project – one by ICVET looking at the model’s professional development implications for VET; one by Kim Windsor that examines the project outcomes in detail and its lessons for future policy – have been conducted. The projects themselves and the two reports (soon to be published) offer valuable insights into how the VET sector, and the people who work within it, can best respond to the skill formation challenges we face today.
The best results were obtained when the skill ecosystem network members took initiatives themselves, rather than outsourcing project activities to consultants. This applied especially at the ‘diagnosis’ phase…
The evaluation revealed some of the complexities associated with the project leaders’ roles. The skill ecosystem networks which they coordinated often involved people from organisations with different, even opposed, interests. For example, small suppliers did not wish to share information with their large clients; organisations representing professionals and non-professionals in the same industry viewed issues of job design differently; and sometimes people involved in the network did not carry the full weight of commitment from their organisation behind them.
Project leaders in skill ecosystem projects had, above all, to be good negotiators and able to work towards compromises when conflict emerged. They did not need to be an expert on every aspect of employment and skills in the industry – but projects worked best when they could draw on experts to overcome problems that the network identified.
Embedding skill ecosystem work into standard VET practice proved a challenge in many projects, and hindered the sustainability of their results.
As a result, we have learnt that initiatives based on a skill ecosystem approach are likely to succeed when the partners – VET professionals, as well as industry participants and intermediaries – embody certain qualities:
- knowledge about their industry and its culture
- an understanding of organisational entry points (especially important in large organisations and rapidly changing industries)
- good at information sharing
- work well in multi-disciplinary teams
- flexibility and willingness to adapt to changing roles and requirements
- future-oriented, with a long-term perspective.
The best results were obtained when the skill ecosystem network members took initiatives themselves, rather than outsourcing project activities to consultants. This applied especially at the ‘diagnosis’ phase of consultation and information-gathering – it is important for network members to work through issues first hand, and in some projects this phase involved crystallising or making explicit what many people already knew.
Finally, our state and national VET funding and accountability systems should be re-examined. Embedding skill ecosystem work into standard VET practice proved a challenge in many projects, and hindered the sustainability of their results.
Key questions to carry forward
Should we provide greater scope for VET practitioners to engage more intensively with industry and other skill ecosystem partners? Should some percentage of VET funds be allocated explicitly for these sorts of initiatives? Is a resource allocation and performance evaluation formula so closely tied to student contact hours and enrolments the most appropriate for addressing the skill challenges we face today? These sorts of questions are being asked in many forums, and are accentuated by the lessons from the skill ecosystem project.
See also
BVET Conference: Skills and innovation: Putting ideas to work
For more about the project, and for downloadable information sheets.
Skill Ecosystems/Industry Partnerships | A-Z Resources
Contact
NSW DET Project Managers for the Skill Ecosystem national project, Caroline Alcorso and Jeremy Gilling on skill.ecosystem@det.nsw.edu.au
