Initiative to strengthen local employment underway

LocalWorkers.com.au is the online face of an employment strategy that has been designed to support long-term employment outcomes for the Toowoomba and Surat Basin region with the aim to create opportunities for local employment engagement.

The website, which is the first step of the ongoing project, has been designed to collect data on some targeted priorities for employment, training and liveability in the region.

These priorities include linking local businesses with students interested in work experience, developing strategies to support the health, community and volunteering sectors, and bringing awareness to employers of the skilled and capable and safe non-skilled workers living in the region.

Local content advisor and co-founder, Ben Hughes, said the project had been in the pipeline for a number of years.

“The CSG boom was always going to create fantastic future employment opportunities for the region and so we designed a strategy that could take advantage of the end of the boom and strengthen local employment outcomes,” Mr Hughes said.

“Over the last few years we’ve been piloting critical parts of the Local Workers strategy and listening to the market. In April we assessed the skills market as part of our EconomX Roadtrip and felt the time was right to launch the Local Workers skills brand.

“Given the right strategy, we know that the CSG industry has the potential to offer long-term and technically interesting local jobs and that’s an exciting prospect, but the real legacy of the boom should be about leveraging the last five years of skills development into the traditional industries especially the exciting agricultural industry."

Mr Hughes said the Local Workers site provides a platform for businesses, industry leaders and the community to have their say allowing for the data collected to remain market-led, which in turn will mean greater long-term outcomes for the region.

While attracting families to live and work in the region continues to be a focus, Mr Hughes said in order to achieve long-term sustainable employment outcomes for the region, employing and retaining people who already live in the region is a must.

“We know that the region wants to attract families to live and work, that has been the case for a long time and we certainly intend to help support that need in the future,” Mr Hughes said.

“However, we feel we need to start off by employing and retaining the people who already live in the region.”

Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise (TSBE) chief executive officer Dr Ben Lyons welcomed news of the project saying the initiative would be transformative and keep the focus on ensuring jobs stayed local.

“As a region, we are rich in terms of our skills base with a reputation of excellence for our education and training facilities in the University of Southern Queensland and TAFE Queensland South West,” Dr Lyons said.

“However, we need more information to better understand the challenges and opportunities we face now and in the future when looking at local skills.

“This is an important piece of work and is long overdue for the region.”

The project has already attracted corporate support with an announcement due in a fortnight.

The first key area of focus for the project will be to identify businesses in the region interested in connecting with work experience students.

“We know that if you want to keep kids in the region, you need to provide visibility for their careers,” Mr Hughes said.

“Our research has identified that while there are a number of students in the region looking for work experience, there are not enough available employers to place them with.

“We acknowledge that there are a number of businesses already providing work experience opportunities in the region, however the feedback we have received suggests there is a need for more.

“I strongly encourage businesses interested in connecting with work experience students to head to www.localworkers.com.au to find out more about becoming involved.”