Greening of Industry Skills Studied
Companies in Australia appear to be relatively confident that they possess the green skills needed to handle climate change. This from Aaron Johnstone of the Australian Industry Group, who spoke at the Climate Change@Work conference in Brisbane on 29 October.
Companies in Australia appear to be relatively confident that they possess the green skills needed to handle climate change. This from Aaron Johnstone, of the Australian Industry Group, who spoke at the Climate Change@Work conference in Brisbane on 29 October and gave insight into the findings of the latest research on skills in Australia and in particular reference to green jobs.

The Australian Industry Group/Deloitte CEO survey just released, Skilling Business in Tough Times, has highlighted the strong pressures on employment and training during the downturn and the efforts by companies to retain and up-skill their staff.

The survey of 500 CEOs in businesses of all sizes, found that as a consequence of the 2008/09 downturn the overall expenditure on training by business will be reduced by 4.1% in 2009/10. A third of businesses reported plans to reduce training expenditure and four out of five of those companies are reducing their training budgets by more than 20%.
Green skills
Confidence in current green skills of business
Overall companies appear to be relatively confident that they possess the green skills needed to handle climate change. 64.0% of firms indicated that they are either very confident (11.9% of firms) or moderately confident (52.1% of firms) of having the necessary skills.
Occupations in which green skills need improvement
Those occupations with closest engagement with the production process and those involved in directing operations, managers, were identified as being most in need of green skills improvement.
24.9% of respondents identified labourers and process workers as needing green skills improvement along with 23.7% identifying managers and 17.9% identifying technicians and trades workers.
Technical areas in which green skills need to be improved
The key technical areas where the workforce’s green skills are perceived as in need of improvement are waste management (cited by 26.9% of firms); energy and/or water usage (20.9%); working better with current technologies (14.4%); improvement of business practices (13.4%); and new environmental technologies (10.1%).
Frequency of green skills training
53% of firms don’t know how often they will need to train staff to deal with climate change. In part, this may reflect that, to date, the implications of climate change remain uncertain.
Source: www.aigroup.com.au
At the Climate Change @ Work Conference, Greg Withers, Assistant Director-General, Office of Climate Change set out Queensland’s policies and action to deal with climate change and gave reference to key opportunities regarding green jobs. For more information www.climatechange.qld.gov.au
Rohan Anderson of Energy Skills Queensland – www.energyskillsqld.com.au – and Alex Scott of the Queensland Public Sector Union – www.qpsu.org.au – both set out green job opportunities and skill development needs in Queensland.
For more information on the conference programme and presentations contact Workplace Research centre. www.wrc.org.au