The Industry Transformation Plan as a whole looks at what we need to do to scale up and transform our sector to lead New Zealand’s economic development. This work is being lead by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) alongside NZTech.
The Skills Workstream assembled a Steering Group who oversaw the compilation of significant research and data to test assumptions we all make about skills in our sector. The group then undertook a number of hui and other consultation to figure out what we can do about it.
The report is a significant step forward and has found that:
- The tech industry’s “Skills Shortage” is actually more a “Skills Mismatch“, in that there’s a significant mismatch between the skills available and the skills needed by our industry. It’s not just about more people.
- Our domestic skills pipeline is broken. There are lots of points of failure and no one silver bullet will fix it. But we have a plan.
- We have an over-reliance on immigration and it’s not sustainable. Immigration is extremely important for our industry and for New Zealand, however the current levels – with around 55% of new roles being filled through immigration rather than domestic talent development – is simply unsustainable.
- Our industry needs to step up. Compared with other industries, we do a very poor job of developing our people. We don’t give enough students a good start into our industry, don’t invest sufficiently in developing talent, and have a tendency to only focus on the short-term when it comes to skills.
- Industry, Government and the Education Sector have to work together if we want to solve the skills challenges in our sector. All play a crucial role and the level of engagement and investment needs to increase significantly.