New Zealand's Infrastructure - how best to retain skills and attract global talent.
The world continues to build and renew infrastructure with a limited talent pool in global demand. What capacity and capabilities does New Zealand have to deliver on our own infrastructure pipeline? And how do we best retain skills and attract global talent are fair and reasonable questions right about now. Because with the plans in place and in the pipeline - we’ll need our fair share of this talent!
With insights from Nick Leggett - CEO Infrastructure New Zealand.
A vital piece in New Zealand Inc.’s recovery and future performance is our infrastructure. The deficit is enormous – estimated by ASB to be $1 trillion just to bring our existing kit up to scratch. If you’ve read the last series of our articles you’ll know there’s simply more of us, and we’re only going to grow.
So, we started out with the question do we have the capacity and capabilities for building the infrastructure pipeline?
If you talk to Infrastructure NZ CEO Nick Leggett, he will tell you the ambitious $32.9 billion programme of works announced by the Government will impose significant recruitment issues on the sector. A lot of the talent needed to build this stuff can’t be found in New Zealand and we’ll need to look overseas.
As he says, some of this stuff has not have been done in New Zealand before and we’ll need to attract the world’s best and brightest skills to help us achieve these ambitions.
Look at the City Rail Link, which will be a game-changer for Auckland. Its combined workforce was a veritable United Nations. They even had a guy who managed the decommissioning of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Which is a New Zealand story in itself! He, was working on integrating the new computer system into AT and KiwiRail’s ageing rail computer network. You’ll be surprised at who we have here.
The main thing, according to Leggett, is securing certainty on projects that have been priced, and with delivery times and funding clearly allocated for the work.
With that in hand, the private sector can properly plan for its future recruitment needs to ensure we have the right skills in place, at the right time, to deliver. But we do need to be thinking ahead.
International recruitment is a complex, competitive and difficult challenge. New Zealand has many natural advantages for skilled employees and our own data shows it still has considerable cachet as a place to live and work. ?Those candidates who are desirable from a comparable skills and experience perspective will consider New Zealand, but as aligned to the global economic environment the sentiment has shifted towards prioritising financial security over lifestyle. Many candidates, while attracted to the New Zealand lifestyle, are unwilling to take a significant financial hit.
Later this week, we will explore what’s happening in the global competition for talent and what work’s underway to ensure ?the New Zealand story stands out in the international labour market.
Helping employers recruit from offshore is something we know well at HainesAttract. From our Looksee programmes (that may not be over yet) to how we partner and coach our clients. And the advice we have is:
We're excited about New Zealand’s future. But there is serious planning work to be done to properly prepare for the delivery of infrastructure that is going to reduce transport times and costs, and increase productivity. The sooner this workflows at scale to the talented teams that can design and deliver it, the better.
Having the right people, in the right places will be key to the success of the ambitious plans ahead.
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