With educational institutes and polytechnics across the country considering no longer providing their tourism offerings, the Government must urgently prioritise educational initiatives aimed at filling skills gaps and promoting hospitality as a life-long career path.
We have been working to create programmes to fill the gaps left by tertiary training institutes, but to continue doing so alone is unsustainable.
For years, immigration and education policies have been viewed as separate issues. However, in order to ensure the Hospitality sector’s long-term sustainability, it is essential that both immigration and education policies are aligned to ensure that skills gaps are being filled locally.
Priority 1: investing in industry-led training opportunities
On-the-job training programmes such as those developed by the Restaurant Association go some way to filling the skills gaps, however these programmes must be scaled up to ensure domestic hospitality workers are equipped with the skills they need to succeed in our industry.
Our programmes developed in partnership with the Ministry of Social Development (HospoStart, Springboard) are some of the most successful programmes the Ministry has deployed, and our culinary traineeship programme with NorthTec, Te Tupu Tahi, has already seen a number of tertiary training institutions reach out to seek a similar partnership.
Co-investment with the government in on-the-job training programmes to help grow our domestically trained hospitality workforce. This could include investment to help scale up and expand programmes (Te Tupu Tahi) or a simple commitment to long-term funding of viable and successful initiatives (HospoStart, Springboard).
Priority 2: Recognising overseas training and skills
Our immigration system needs to recognise that an individual can still be highly qualified and skilled without a doctoral degree.
Immigration and education policies are regularly treated as separate topics, however a common issue in our industry is the inability for the government to determine a visa applicant’s level of skill and often making incorrect assumptions based on formal qualifications.
This strict interpretation of the rules without any knowledge of the context of our industry has led to both a shortage of appropriately skilled staff, and a bottleneck in visa processing, which must be addressed.
A priority for the Restaurant Association is the development of frameworks against which overseas registrations, certifications and training can be measured against domestic qualifications and standards.
Get involved
If you’d like to get involved in our advocacy work, one of the best things you can do is to reach out to your local Member of Parliament or councilor to help bolster our efforts.
We’ve created a template here that you can use to get in touch with your local politicians, which includes space for you to personalise and include your own story. Tailor it as you’d like, then address and email it to your local MP.
You can find out who your local MP is here, or get in touch with our team at info@restaurantnz.co.nz if you’d like some help!