There’s top growth in rural work
Di Falconer is helping lead the charge promoting agriculture as a great career option.
DI FALCONER is on a mission to attract young people into the agricultural sector.
She has been helping set up a school programme for primary and secondary schools to help students see the opportunities open to them by showing them the career choices that are available.
‘‘The Ministry for Primary Industies (MPI) delivered a report in 2014 that identified the red meat sector would need more than 11,000 more qualified people by 2025,’’ says Falconer.
Seventy five percent of farmers also agree not enough young people are coming into the industry, she says.
A key part of the programme is that the sector needs to address the perception that farming is for secondary school students who are struggling.
In reality, Falconer – the project manager of people capability for the Red Meat Profit Partnership – says agriculture offers exciting and rewarding career opportunities using smart agribusiness technology to meet the growing world demand for New Zealand’s outstanding red meat products.
‘‘We need great farmers but we also need people who are into science, we need great agribusiness people, we need people who are great at robotics, we need people with great IT skills, we need accountants – and these are just a few options.’’
The programme for year 9-12 students was successfully trialled in 20 schools last year and this year it’s being rolled out into more schools, Falconer says proudly.
‘‘We weren’t sure what the uptake would be, but about 80 schools have signed up to get the resources, and the NCEA resources are NZQAaccredited.’’
It’s part of her job to oversee the programme, manage the milestones, budgets and contracts with the likes of professional and learning development organisation Core Education, which wrote the schools programme, and New Zealand Young Farmers, which is managing it.
She’s been involved from the beginning, initially writing the business case for the programme in order to obtain funding from her board.
Her organisation, RMPP, is a Primary Growth Partnership programme that is working to help the red meat sector increase productivity and profitability. Funded by 10 partners – Government and private sector – it works with farmers and sector businesses to develop, test and introduce new ideas, new technology solutions and new ways of working.
Falconer’s brief for the schools programme successfully fitted those goals and funding was approved.
‘‘It is really exciting, this is a great opportunity but there’s also a big weight on my shoulders – it’s hugely important that this works and we get results because we’re spending money from our partner groups and Government, it’s a big responsibility.’’
Falconer is well used to responsibility with her other main job being to develop the capability in the sector by working with farmers offering programmes to further develop their skills.
‘‘I work with a whole bunch of people . . . I could be liaising with Young Farmers to make sure they are meeting the milestones we’ve set, I could be speaking with someone about a new piece of work we’re developing, or I could be writing a contract for a new workstream.
Falconer has worked for RMPP for three-and-a-half years, initially parttime while also working for one of the industry partners, Beef + Lamb New Zealand. It’s an area she knows a bit about. Growing up in the Wairarapa she was familiar with farm life, having grandparents who were dairy farmers.
‘‘I can’t say I understood the complexities of farming, but it was definitely on my radar.’’
However she started her working life in the hotel industry, lured to Wellington to be a trainee manager at the then Parkroyal Hotel on Oriental Parade.
She wound up spending a decade working in hotels throughout New Zealand and Australia, mainly in Wellington, Christchurch and later on in Melbourne.
Seeing a lack of support and training for newly inducted employees in the hotels she worked in prompted an interest to develop her own skills to help them and that drew her into HR.
‘‘Being able to have conversations with people and help them work out where they wanted to go and then seeing them progress and develop was hugely rewarding – often they would start in a duty manager type role, then grow into their next role and specialise in an area, and there are many areas in specialise in within the hotel industry.’’
In her last hotel role based in Melbourne, Falconer was an area HR manager looking after her company’s hotels in Canberra, Perth and Adelaide.
‘‘I worked with them and the senior management teams in order to develop people we moved through our hotel chain, not just in my area but throughout Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.
‘‘It was succession planning really. We had a lot of apprentice chefs, for example, who we’d help upskill and enter in competitions, but there would also be other development programmes. I would run lots of different training, customer service, supervisory – a real broad spectrum.’’
Keen to come back to New Zealand, Falconer went to Wellington wanting to explore new avenues.
She joined what was then a new company, called Treehouse Training, which had a contract with Work and Income to help train long-term unemployed in hospitality and retail in preparation to enter the workforce.
‘‘We started in Wellington and grew into Auckland and Christchurch – it was a massive learning curve, and quite hard work because you have to approach every individual differently.’’
Two years down the track she decided to fulfil a lifelong dream to run her own business when the opportunity to become a partner in Smith The Grocer cafe came up.
‘‘I helped to open and run a branch at Greta Point when the new apartments were built there. Geez it was hard work but I wanted to learn how all the accounting functions worked in business.
‘‘In hotels we used to be given all the financial information, so part of the attraction of this opportunity for me was the education of understanding everything you need to know about running a business.’’
Two years later the three partners sold off that cafe to focus solely on the one in the Old Bank Arcade, where Falconer helped to develop the catering arm.
Keen to return to HR, she eventually opted out altogether and took on the HR manager’s role at Beef + Lamb New Zealand.
‘‘That involved the end-to-end recruitment function, being a part of the organisation’s senior leadership team, and helping to support and develop personnel if that was needed.’’
Despite a restructure, she found a new opportunity, this time in the form of Beef and Lamb’s education portfolio, on top of her HR responsibilities.
‘‘We worked externally with farmers. We looked after and put funds into different initiatives like the Kellogs Rural Leadership Programme, and that’s when I realised just how much I liked this area of work.
Falconer’s Beef and Lamb role eventually morphed into her current position and she says she couldn’t be happier.
‘‘I like being part of helping farmers and professionals to develop, and to help young people better understand our sector.
‘‘I like being the behind-the-scenes person who helps to make that happen by making sure the right people are out there telling the stories and developing the programmes of work.’’
Ironically, Falconer never carved out her own career path, she’s just taken whatever opportunities have presented themselves.
‘‘As a kid I was going to be a school teacher, but my mother was a school teacher and my sisters trained as school teachers so I thought I better try something different.
‘‘But this career path has come from opportunities, and not being afraid of giving them a crack.’’