Hard Kills

Soft Skills

Digital Sills

Business Skills

·         Airline Pilot: Aviation skills

·         Beauty Therapy: Skills for performing different types of beauty treatments

·         Chef: for technical cooking skills

·         Sommelier skills: for wine tasting and mixing s

1. Statement of the Need

The initiative to address labor shortage and skill gap within the tourism sector will be a significant move. This is because, it will have the capacity to adequately address the numerous challenges facing the industry and which limits its capacity to attract and maintain qualified workforce by offering techniques for attracting and managing the general workforce. According to Ladkin and Kichuk, (2017), the capacity of a tourism industry to attract, grow and maintain a skillful workforce heavily depends on not only managing the workforce but also availing career pathways as well as ensuring appropriate working conditions.  The policies in the proposed plan will aim at promoting the general attractiveness of the tourism sector to both existing and potential employees with the sole purpose of curbing future labor shortage and skill gap.  As indicated earlier, there are vacancies within the Australian tourism industry that remains unfilled making the sector face a lot of difficulties in ensuring profitability.

Some of the factors attributed to the inadequate number of skilled workers in the sector that the plan will effectively address include the challenges arising from lack of satisfying work conditions. This has been compounded by the high amount of wages currently offered by other industries such as mining as a result of the growing demand for the natural resources in Australia. Similarly, Ferguson, Megehee, and Woodside (2017) observe, as opposed to other countries, the tipping culture which is known to supplement wages is lacking in Australia making the tourism industry to become less attractive and consequently deterred potential employees from joining the industry. The plan aims at addressing this challenge by collaborating with both education and training providers as well as regional tourism board in coming out with informative ways of promoting tourism as a career of choice.  This will result in an increase in the supply of labor to the industry both within Sydney and Australia at large.

HOW TOURISM WILL BE MADE CAREER OF CHOICE

Failure to showcase or map the various employment and career paths available within the sector has also been identified as one of the major contributors to the skill gap (Chai, Eccleston, Hardy and Tinch, 2017). According to the scholars, this has made most of the employees especially the youth to believe that the only way to progress in a career is to leave the industry. The proposed policy will, therefore, aim at providing the regional tourism boards and other stakeholders in the industry with guidelines with the capacity to initiate public awareness programs that would provide the workforce with respect, sense of belonging and adequate knowledge regarding the career paths available within the sector to enable promote workforce retention.

The implementation of the plan to the completion will require government intervention in order to succeed. For instance, each territorial state in Australia has its government tourism agency, also known as State Tourism Organizations (STOs) (Lennon, Smith, Cockerell and Trew, 2006). According to the scholars, the mandate of STOs is to work in collaboration with the industry in supporting various development agendas and enhancing marketing of the various tourism destinations within the state so as to promote awareness and attract more visitors. In collaboration with the STOs, therefore, the employment agency will be able to find platforms for the promotion of tourism as a career of choice.

 The plan will benefit the tourism sector and the community at large in a variety of ways, first, it will enable the sector to provide a conducive working environment and wages which will not only attract new employees but also inspire them to view the sector as a long-term career prospect.  This will promote the success of the sector by enabling it to retain a multi-skilled workforce which in turn will heighten quality tourism experiences and attract more visitors.  Additionally, the policy will open opportunities for developing internal labor market within tourism and hospitality sector so as to allow for skill and career development of its workforce. This will not only allow for the retention of the high-performing workforce but also attract potential workers. Similarly, for a considerable length of time, there has been lack of management expertise among tourism business owners (Jaafar and Rasoolimanesh, 2015). According to the scholars, such a condition has facilitated a poor culture in the industry in regard to investing in staff development programs and training.  Moreover, many tourism operators often have the perception that business development tools which include training programs and Australia Tourism Awards are difficult to access. The proposed plan will take initiative to improve professionalism among tourism operators by advocating for performance management systems as well as career mapping in addition to giving strategies on developing and retaining staff. This will enable the manager to focus on offering business services of superior quality that meets the need and expectations of visitors.

Other benefits that would result from the implementation of the plan include employee satisfaction and improved productivity. For example, skilled workforce will maintain quality standards that would help in building the reputation of various tourist destinations. Eventually, this will translate into high visitor turn up and subsequently promote the business. Similarly, an improved business capacity will help a great deal in managing the seasonal nature of the sector. That is, the resources of the business will be well spread even during off-peak periods to foster the capacity of the sector to retain its skilled workforce.

2. Scope of the Proposed Plan

Some of the approaches that will be adopted to ensure the plan succeeds include training and skilling the workforce. This will target the cooks, baristas, service staff and supervisors as well as kitchen hands. As Boella, (2017), observes, the tourism and hospitality sector continues to lack chefs and cooks and other service staff personnel. Besides, accommodation sector is still in need of adequate customer service, motel operators, and marketing personnel.  The plan will, therefore, work to ensure that courses are not only made accessible but also relevant to the needs of the businesses and the industry. In collaboration with STOs and various educational facilities within Sydney, the plan will ensure that the given courses equip the learners with practical experiences relevant to the business. Language skills will also be incorporated in the training sessions since a majority of visitors come from non-English speaking regions. This will help in meeting the growing demand from international consumers.

In regard to promoting tourism as a career of choice, the plan through collaboration with STOs and relevant learning institutions will organize a variety of forums, networks and television programs to highlight the various careers and career paths within the tourism and hospitality sector. According to Tuclea and Nistoreanu (2011), movies and television series have the capacity to influence a great deal since they emphasize a number of details regarding the tourist destinations and the services offered. Similarly, Rajaguru (2014), indicate that television and motion picture may alter a reality of a place to make it even more interesting, therefore attracting more visitors. In addition to television programs and films, the employment agency intends to take part in road shows which will be organized after consulting with the local governments and regional tourism boards. During the road shows, education and training providers will have the opportunity to inform the public on a variety of career opportunity available in the tourism sector.

Other actions tailored towards growing workforce in the region include initiating a pilot program that would place students both at secondary and tertiary level are placed in workplaces through regional work placement programs. This will be facilitated by registered training and educational providers through partnering with the employers as well as the institutions of higher learning. The pilot program will provide the students with a deeper insight and necessary skills regarding what the job actually entails prior to graduation so as to become more competent. The full implementation of the plan, however, is not without a share of challenges and downturns.  Some of this includes lack of adequate data regarding the analysis of tourism workforce trends. This makes it specifically difficult to develop a plan that would adequately address all the issues pertaining staff recruitment and training. Similarly, a number of approaches to be employed in the implementation process of the plan is financially intensive. For instance, creating films and television programs as well as organizing workshops and road shows demands for heavy financial investments. 

5. Proposed Process

The planning process basically entails ensuring engaging in activities that will promote not only tourism business awareness but also to organize work placement programs to allow potential employees to gain necessary skills required in the industry. Similarly, initiating measures of harnessing tourism employment and career prospects will also be integral processes that the plan will invest in as a way of increasing workforce retention level. The plan will be implemented by a special Implementation Group (IG) that will be led by Sydney Tourism Employment Agency in collaboration with stakeholders such as regional tourism boards, state tourism organizations, employee and employer groups as well as registered training and education providers. 

            The IG will be solely responsible for the annual reviewing of the effectiveness of proposed acts so as to ensure every aspect the plan remains relevant and impacts positively in influencing tourism workforce. Additionally, delivery of an annual report card that outlines the whole process will be a key element that would be employed in ensuring effective monitoring process so as to achieve the key objectives contained in the plan. All stakeholders within the sector will be equally given access to the report card as a way of ensuring effective reviewing. The success or lack of success by the plan will be determined by assessing all the key areas outlined in the plan so as to establish the area that may not be working according to the expectation and adjusting accordingly.

kills

·         Language Skill: includes skills in foreign language as well as literacy on numeracy skills

·         Customer service skills: Skills on customer relations practices

·         Personal presentation: skills on the promotion of personal hygiene

·         Accounts clerks: for accounting and management of accounting software

·         Passenger check-in staff: skills on airline software systems.

·         Systems administrator:  skills for the administrative software

·         Marketing Executive:  knowledge and skills in social media communications and marketing skills

·         Networking skills

·         Financial management skills

·         Managerial skills

·         Decision making and problem solving skills

·         Planning and organizing skills