Downer NZ

Learning pathways

CONNEXIS AWARD: Turnover of $100m and over COMPANY: Downer NZ

Downer New Zealand has committed to “grow our own” as the civil infrastructure business in NZ struggles to fill jobs with skilled candidates.

From bringing in unemployed and vulnerable people through our ‘Road Ready’ and ‘Water Ready’ programmes we are able to provide a credible learning pathway into apprenticeships, cadetships and further civil qualifications. Over the past 2 years our training numbers have increased 40% from 485 to 643, and after establishing a training support network, our completions rose 60%.

In the past 10 years we have been able to qualify annually, 150 people, in First Line Management levels 3 and 4, and 50 annually in project Management level 4.

Growing our own will also grow our business to be a stronger contributor to New Zealand society.

The judges comment

Dedicated to developing their people and maintaining a high standard of industry skills and knowledge is demonstrated with significant investment in the creation of a new Technical Training team and Corporate Social Outcomes team. These initiatives provide wrap-around pastoral care resulting in a high level of staff engagement.

Downer have instigated programmes to recruit people from all sections of society including; school leavers, career changers from other industries and all ethnicities who thus have vastly varied backgrounds and skills. They understand and have proactively met the obligation they have to provide the workplace environment for these new staff to succeed.

This approach means a focus on the person as a whole not simply providing technical skills training.

Their focus on team culture and inclusion is underpinned with their various in-house programmes for youth, Maori, Pacifica, women and leadership.