Taking charge of leadership
THE FORESTRY AND WOOD PROCESSING Workforce Council’s first project focusing on leadership capability has shown promising results. The Council was established in April 2020 to take the lead in the sector’s workforce development challenges.
“It will oversee the actions specific to developing workforce capability and capacity for forestry and wood processing,” says the Deputy Chair of the Council, Fiona Ewing. The Council is made up of representatives nominated by their industry body to represent the wide range of skills required in a thriving forestry sector, she adds.
Several projects are currently underway, the first of which is the Leadership Capability initiative. This project encourages excellent work practices and leadership capability which will raise professionalism and result in safer work practices and outcomes, says Fiona.
“FISC has been working to develop and deliver frontline leadership throughout our Frontline Leadership and Team Up training. These training courses have been developed by The Learning Wave in conjunction with FISC and have been successfully delivered to almost 500 forestry workers to date including Generation Programme cohorts in Gisborne,” she explains.
The leadership courses have been so successful that FISC has secured funding to deliver additional courses and to develop Phase 2 and 3 courses. Phase 2 will further coach and mentor individuals who have participated in the Phase 1 courses. Phase 3 supports participants from Phase 2 to coach and mentor others in the industry and communities. Twelve of these frontline leadership courses, originally developed by The Learning Wave, have been run since July 2020, involving more than 120 workers.
These courses encourage people to look at communication and leadership as a way to improve work and health and safety outcomes in their crews, says Fiona. They were developed specifically for the forestry industry.
The courses are very hands-on and help attendees learn how to:
• Lead a high-performance team – focussed
on key results (including safety). • Effectively communicate to people who are
different from themselves.
• Get workers involved in solving problems
and making good safety decisions.
• Hold people accountable without bullying. • Focus their teams on learning from things going right… not just waiting for things to go wrong.
Feedback from the 2020 courses has been positive:
• 88% of participants rated the learning
experience highly.
• 79% of participants thought the training
improved their ability to perform their job. • 89% of participants thought the training improved their confidence in leading a high-performance team.
• 94% of participants said the course improved their ability to communicate more effectively with people who are different from themselves.
• 91% of participants said the course would let them get workers more involved in making good health and safety decisions. • 77% thought the course would help them hold people more accountable without bullying.
• 82% thought the course gave them confidence to improve leading the team to learn from things going right.
Course dates are set for Q1 2021 and details will be available on the Safetree website. Locations will be confirmed based on expressions of interest from the sector. Based on the success of this programme further funding has been sought for both forestry and other primary industries, Fiona says.
NZL