Skills Active Aotearoa National Snowsports Certificate

Skills Active Aotearoa, the industry training organisation for the Sport, Fitness, Community Recreation, Snowsport, Outdoor Recreation and Nga Mahi a te Rehia sectors worked with NZSki to develop a nationally-recognised level 3 certificate for the snowsport sector. Skills Active Aotearoa went on to collaborate with the Aviation, Tourism and Travel ITO to develop a National Certificate in Tourism with Strands in Snowsports in 2009.

NZSki has a proactive attitude towards staff development and wanted to make it possible for their workforce to have the opportunity for on-the-job learning in customer service and leadership development recognised by a qualification. The certificate is proving extremely popular with NZSki employees and is useful as a base qualification from which to investigate future snowsport training needs.

The seasonal nature of the snowsport sector means that NZSki, with a small permanent staff of 40, need to recruit and train nearly 1000 seasonal employees for 16 departments at three south island ski fields each year. Up until recently, their annual retention rate was only 30 per cent, with few ongoing job opportunities for career development.

The philosophy of NZSki is to create a high performing, values-driven culture and is leading the way in snowsport career development. In 2009, after researching employees to discover their career aspirations, the company embarked on a project to attract and retain staff, featuring various career development initiatives and support for staff to gain nationally recognised qualifications.

As well as the training initiative with Skills Active Aotearoa, NZSki initially worked with a private training provider to design and deliver leadership, induction and training events.

This led to the creation of the NZSki-U programme, an umbrella for a range of development, coaching, training and mentoring initiatives to shape snowsports leaders of the future. More recently, the company created a dedicated, 21-month Diploma in Snowsports Adventure Tourism with another private training provider. Company leaders are also being offered formal qualifications via a mentoring course to develop their skills in all areas. The company has also been piloting a programme with Otago Polytechnic which recognises leaders' prior learning.

The benefits of NZSki's new approach to training and developing their workforce are already apparent in its soaring staff retention and engagement rates. At the beginning of this year's season, the retention rate had nearly doubled from the traditional 30 per cent to nearly 60 per cent. The workforce is now 64 per cent New Zealanders, compared to 34 per cent in previous years. Despite the threat to tourism brought by international recession, NZSki has seen revenue increase by 169% this season and package sales jump by 304%.

In 2009 NZSki received the Supreme Award in the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust Work & Life Awards in honour of their outstanding success in training and developing their workforce.