Matrix > Toolkit: Training and Development > Where Has Inequity Broken Your In-house Training Pipeline for Māori and Pasifika?
Where Has Inequity Broken Your In-house Training Pipeline for Māori and Pasifika?
Employers often talk about low take up of training by Māori and Pasifika employees, but the key to fixing an in-house training pipeline is understanding what is broken. Socioeconomic inequity creates powerful barriers to engagement in training and progression. Here, we look more closely at how to overcome this with financial support, digital access, and more equitable outreach to employees. This section includes Uptempo insights into adult learning for Pasifika workers - however, much of this is also relevant to Māori. See the Uptempo Digital Tech Pathways case study (Pipeline fix 1) for good examples of how to address financial barriers. Click here for more on boosting the cultural competency of your training pipeline.
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Understanding what Māori and Pasifika workers are dealing with: the opportunity-cost of training and juggling multiple responsibilities
The primary recommendation to support Pasifika upskilling is to remove financial barriers and stress associated with the upfront cost and the opportunity-cost of training while working. Many Pasifika families work very long hours on top of family and cultural responsibilities. Taking time outside of working hours to train or study is often not feasible for Pasifika employees, even before we consider the confidence to put themselves forward and the cost of training, transport, materials and equipment. Uptempo has found that funded training within working hours, provision of laptops, subsidised data connections, and other financial supports for families help create bandwidth for Pasifika workers to focus on long-term career planning and allow for big shifts in aspirations.
Click here to read the full Uptempo Report on Pasifika-Centred Adult Education (page 7).
Case study: Vinnie’s story of upskilling with Mission Ready HQ and pastoral support
“Being able to shower our kids with what we didn’t get, because of the work that we have put in… He is now doing something he is passionate about”. When Vinnie’s aiga came to Uptempo he was working long hours in the warehouse industry for low pay. He didn’t see his five young children much which was hard on the family and made him unhappy. Uptempo discovered that Vinnie loved tech and put him onto Mission Ready HQ. He left his job to do full-time study, supported by the Discretionary Fund and an Uptempo learning scholarship. On completion of his training, he moved to more advanced training and now has a better-paid job he is passionate about that allows him to spend more time with his family.
Financial support and digital access is needed to break the vicious cycle of disengagement from training
GEM Insights Snapshot: Digital inequities impact access to and engagement in training
It is important to resource relational work alongside digital platforms when offering workforce training. Many big employers offer standard in-house training that is part of their workforce and progression strategy. Employers are finding that Māori and Pasifika blue-collar frontline employees may not realise that in-house training pathways are available, or have good knowledge about them, due to low engagement with digital communications from the organisation. This can be due to a combination of:
Digital inequities in access to online devices at home;
Not working in digital/computer-based jobs where computers and tablets are provided as part of work equipment;
Lower digital literacy for some; and/or
more trust in and reliance on personal relationships than other methods, e.g. mass emails.
Large organisations set up these platforms for the efficiency of training reach and delivery across their workforce. However, frontline manual workers who most benefit from in-house training pathways into more technically skilled and leadership roles are the least likely to be passively exposed to those training options, and the least likely to be able to access them digitally. Like what was required with good ethnic data collection coverage – those with the most to gain are the least likely to participate.
DEI leaders are plugging gaps with old-fashioned legwork, personal outreach, and special initiatives to engage workers who should be the primary target of in-house upskilling and workforce development that is ‘technically’ available to all online. What are ways to institutionalise this kind of outreach?