Kia ora koutou,
It is a pleasure to be able to send this to most of you directly for the first time. Thank you to the Information Technology teams across our network for enabling this connection. I appreciate the time and effort to do this alongside your other projects.
I know many of you want more information about what is happening in Te Pūkenga – and that you are also managing high workloads and other pressures. The intention of enabling pānui such as this to be sent directly to you is not to add to your workload, but to provide you with regular, simple to understand information. These newsletters will come to you each fortnight – usually on a Thursday or Friday and on rare occasions, I may send something outside of this cycle if there is something particularly important.
I hope that by being able to send these to you directly, we can make it easier for you to be informed about the mahi underway and to contribute where you can. This does not replace the communications from your leadership teams or the tools and channels you currently use, but works alongside them. We have a big year ahead and we will keep communicating with you in a range of ways. We are doing some work to update the format of these to make them easier for you to read – keep an eye out over the next few editions.
With the current COVID-19 outbreak growing, I also want to thank you all for the work you are doing to support our learners and each other at this time. We are being kept up to date on the great work you are doing through various channels, including our fortnightly Network Ākonga Wellbeing hui where kaimahi and learners are sharing what is working well. I have heard about food and care package deliveries and Zoom sessions for ākonga in isolation, and the efforts to make the beginning of the semester as ‘normal’ and welcoming as possible. Issues are also being escalated where appropriate.
We have also heard that some kaimahi are also being affected with COVID-19. For our part, we will only send requests for information to the subsidiaries if it is necessary and we aim to provide you with reasonable time to respond.
Continue taking care and looking out for one another – particularly those of you in learner-facing roles and those volunteering to support isolating ākonga and support your colleagues.
Kia kaha,
Stephen Town
Chief Executive
Our Updates
Collaboration across the network aims to enable good lives for disabled people
Careerforce, Te Pūkenga and the disability sector have come together to create three new micro credentials for disability support workers.
This project was kicked off because the Tertiary Education Commission made funding available for industry training organisations to respond to the effects of COVID-19. The aim of the funds was to look at gaps in the field and create opportunities for people who have lost their jobs and now need to upskill or retrain.
Project Manager Steve Fisher says their focus is to put the disabled community right in charge and central to the support they receive. To do this, he’s joined Karen Harvey and other passionate people to create a team that’s driven to enable better lives for disabled people and their support workers.
They’ve spent the past six months creating these three micro credentials. The qualifications are made of existing resources across the network and the team’s job is to fill in the gaps to create something that’s helpful and enduring.
Steve says the team have adopted an agile approach to working together, something Careerforce has moved to. He says this project management style focuses on the final product, rather than getting caught up in administration. Steve has the overall responsibility and says less time writing reports means more time for him to be in the action.
The group is not only spread out over organisations but geographically too. Steve says people like Karen have brought a different perspective to their work and so far, it’s been successful. He says this work is a good opportunity to know more people in the network and work with each other, not against each other.
Karen says she’s enjoyed looking at different approaches to education delivery and this project has given her confidence that vocational opportunities are going in the right direction.
Steve says the help of everyone involved, especially the Careerforce Disability Advisory Group has been invaluable.
The micro credentials are to be submitted to NZQA in about a month, from there the approval process will take three weeks.
Te Turuturu provides opportunity to connect with ADI mahi
The Academic Delivery and Innovation team is keen to provide regular opportunities for the network to connect and discuss mahi underway across the motu. A series of online hui, Te Turuturu, is open for all network members to join.
Operating Model: Design workshops and timelines
In late December, the Operating Model was split into four workstreams: Delivery, Accelerating Enabling Functions, early mover ITPs and Work Based Learning (WBL) Transition. This month, the Operating Model Programme Team working on the four workstreams are holding small design hui with groups of people across Te Pūkenga.
These hui are how we will design and develop options that Te Pūkenga can choose to implement for our new vocational education network. This mahi includes developing organisational models, regional networks and ako networks.
These hui are a part of the broader Operating Model design process. They help gather information and test concepts. These hui are not consultation. Consultation is a formal type of feedback process that will happen mid-year.
This week, Te Pūkenga Executive Leadership Team met with the Operating Model Team for a four-day design sprint focused primarily on the Delivery workstream. Four days is a significant investment of time, which is a signal of how important this mahi is and reflects ELT’s commitment to getting this right.
The other design hui are scheduled over the next few weeks. Some scheduled hui include the regular monthly subsidiary Chief Executives meetings, and the Operating Model Working Group on 11 and 18 March.
Operating Model: Timelines
The Operating Model Team are also revising timelines, and confirming what is being consulted on, with who and when. There are a lot of options to work through and we are committed to being clear on who will be involved at each step.
This is a change to the way things worked last year when there was engagement on high-level concepts. Stephen Town mentioned this in the last edition of Ngā Taipitopito.
“Moving to a more practical phase means that we will be having conversations with smaller groups of people across the organisation and subsidiaries to inform the practical design and delivery of each workstream. These conversations will be more targeted than last year’s engagement.”
The work on timelines is informed by last year’s engagement and the commitments we made, along with the decision to adapt how we deliver the Operating Model through the four workstreams in December.
We will share these timelines that will include consultation dates as soon as possible.