skills acTion Plan for The food and Beverage secTor - Department of ...

Workplace Productivity Working Group (ie. the seven
drivers of workplace productivity). This industry has
characteristics that will enable the research findings
to be generalised across manufacturing/processing
parts of the food and beverage sector.
• Provide suggestions on how productivity in the sector
could be improved and how government, training
organisations and sector groups can better assist
workplaces to improve their productivity.
• Identify what workplace practices are working well and
conversely not so well in the confectionery and snack
food sector.
• Identify impediments to lifting productivity
performance of businesses in the confectionery and
snack food sector.
• Provide methodological insight to inform future
research.
Early observations from the Deloitte team undertaking the
study, indicate that investment in production technology
has a discernable correlation with:
• The requirement for upskilling and commensurate
investment in people and human resource programmes.
• The organisation’s ability to compete in more than
just national niche markets and therefore to achieve
real production and productivity growth.
Investment in infrastructure and technology often
prompts investment in upskilling. Alternatively, it is also
known that investments in upskilling can drive increased
investments in technology to complement a new skill set.
Within the confectionery and snack food sector there
is a proven ability to innovate with some very successful
high value niche products being developed by both large
and small organisations. This sub sector has a strong
entrepreneurial spirit and a flexible workforce able to
be deployed in a manner that supports highly productive
organisations.
Issues that impact on the confectionery and snack
food sector’s ability to be productive include:
• The need for more effective deployment of support
mechanisms for New Zealand owned organisations to
achieve increased productivity through export growth.
• Market drive to invest in machinery, technology and
innovation, leading to training for higher level skill needs
and ultimately to higher productivity performance.
• A shift from applying the seven drivers of productivity
to reduce costs per unit of production, to applying the
seven drivers to create an environment that supports
successful research and innovation, therefore calling
on a more significant investment in skills.
• The need to focus on developing specific technological
expertise that could advance the confectionery and
snack food sector.
• The need to develop catalysts and sustained support
to improve networking and collaboration in the sector.
• Access to affordable capital.
B. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
The Skills Working Group, in collaboration with the
Innovation Working Group, identified the need to conduct
a research study to better understand constraints to
science and technology adoption (focusing on the attitudes,
skills and behaviours of owners, managers and staff). The
study investigated how more active interactions across
the supply and value chains could be encouraged to
increase adoptive capacity: Why it is that some companies
adopt science and technology innovations and others, who
know about their potential benefits, choose not to?
The vegetable and savoury foods sub-sector was selected
for this research because of this sub-sector’s potential
for sustainable growth (i.e. the convergence between
market demand for healthier, stylish and convenient foods
29