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Workforce planning and development is a relatively new concept for the sports industry.
Workforce planning enables organisations to review their current and future staff capacity
against strategic and operational goals and forms the basis for workforce development
strategies, such as recruitment, improved management, training and retention.
While these activities have happened informally in sport, a more formal approach to workforce
planning and development has been facilitated by the Australian Sports Commission and Service
Skills Australia, implementing workforce projects with sporting organisations.
Netball Australia and our member organisations during our last planning cycle identified
having a capable workforce as a strategic priority.
From a reputational perspective it was really great to be in a leadership position saying
�we care about our workforce�, we want people to come and contribute and feel like
they are part of an organisation that cares about its people, because that�s what we
are in, the people industry.
The sporting workforce is made up of people that are in paid and unpaid roles. These people
are responsible for delivering success at the elite level and to increase participation
in sport and the Australian Sports Commission supports organisations to develop their workforce.
Each sport has to have sufficient numbers of the right people with the right mix of
skills and experience to get the job done. And so the Sports Commission is helping sports
to understand and to develop their workforce. The Sports Commission�s role in this project
was to facilitate the engagement of all netball organisations across the country and to bring
on board the experience and expertise of Service Skills Australia and Workforce Development
to help out. And the involvement of these two independent organisations, the Commission
and Service Skills Australia, enabled the national body Netball Australia to be a participant
in, rather than direct the process, and this led to a much more collaborative approach
amongst all parties.
Vital to the project was the resourcing to support it, and Netball Australia�s appointment
of a Sport Development Manager was timely.
My role in the project was to really be the champion for the project and take a lead on
behalf of Netball Australia. To have someone as the central point of contact for the stakeholders
is really important, especially if they have concerns in terms of implementation within
their own States or Territories, it really is important to have that central person there
driving the project making sure we�re meeting deadlines and making sure that we�re all
accountable for the work that we�ve said we would do.
Significant milestones achieved in this project included stakeholder meetings, a survey of
all paid staff in all member organisations, a national competency framework called Netball
Advantage, consultations nationally and an overall strategy with key areas for action.
My project highlight was seeing the national implementation of our performance management
framework. Seeing that being recommended at one of the first stakeholder meetings as being
something that was needed by the member organisations. For us to actually drive that as an outcome
through the end of the strategy and to engage a consultant, go through the process of developing
the framework and actually delivering it and seeing it work in the smallest of our member
organisations right through to the national body was amazing.
It was really, really valuable having both the Sports Commission and Service Skills Australia
on board.
Service Skills Australia is an independent organisation that is one of 11 Industry Skills
Councils funded by the Australian Government. Sport is one of the many industries they represent
and they focus on workforce development and skill needs for industry.
Service Skills Australia partnered with the Sports Commission to work on raising awareness
of workforce development and planning across the sports industry and this was a great opportunity
for us to work with a specific sport to help them realise the benefits as well.
From this project we have learnt that sport face a lot of issues with workforce development
as many other industries and what we�ve learnt from here will hopefully help us provide
support to the rest of the sports industry moving forward.
For me the project highlights was the collaboration and communication between the different netball
organisations and the deeper understanding of their workforce that they got from the
project.
Learning about workforce planning and development by going through the process has resulted
in increased capacity for sport development staff within netball .
It was fantastic being part of the National Workforce Planning project. It was really
great to be able to work with the other sports development managers across Australia, find
out what was happening in other states and collaborate together to put the project in
place and move forward. I think for netball it�s a really big step
forward for us. We�re continually growing as a sport, we want to continue to increase
our participation and for that we need to have the right jobs and the right people with
the right skills in those jobs. So being able to work together and being able to look at
what�s happening in the other MOs, find out and instead of reinventing the wheel take
ideas from each other and share ideas, has been a really positive thing.
We�re actually looking to the future now about what could our volunteer workforce look
like, how far could we extend the project and invest more in our people. . . . I think
this sets an example that any sporting industry can use and hopefully that will help strengthen
the industry overall.