Helping Kiwis build skills, careers and businesses
Competenz is a multi-sector industry training organisation (ITO). Our industries include engineering, manufacturing, forestry, food and beverage, printing, transport and textiles. Our purpose is to help Kiwi industry grow skills, careers and businesses. We do this by delivering effective on-the-job training and designing workforce development solutions. Owned by our industries, we are responsible for setting the standards for qualifications in 36 sectors and we support learners, employers and industry to achieve their goals. We’re proud to support more than 26,000 learners and 3,500 businesses nationwide.
2017 was a difficult year for the New Zealand industry training sector and Competenz was no exception. In a booming national economy employers consistently rated the lack of skilled workers as their biggest challenge, often looking to their ITO for guidance on their recruitment issues.
Other challenges in the form of new technologies and new regulations meant that qualification content was always under pressure to remain current, so employees are equipped with skills relevant to the new requirements of their employers. The perceived lack of work readiness of school leavers continues to challenge employers, and with many complex and intertwined aspects at play no easy fix has yet been identified.
Mike Simm
Chairman
Business owner and professional director. Has a special interest in youth development and transitions from school to work.
John Blakey
Chairman of the ATNZ Trust and former CEO of Competenz with more than 20 years’ experience in vocational education and training.
Tupara Morrison
Business studies graduate, Chartered Accountant and member of the New Zealand Institute of Directors with extensive governance experience in tertiary education and iwi development.
Judy Newcombe
Extensive experience in leading and managing change in a number of senior management roles in some of New Zealand’s largest corporates. Currently working as a consultant in the not-for-profit sector.
Kelly Smith
Strong commercial background in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, including food and beverage. Extensive experience in sales, marketing, business planning and development.
Bryn Thompson
Business owner, exporter and director with significant engineering and manufacturing experience. Qualified fitter/welder.
Anita Rosentreter
Industry Co-ordinator for Manufacturing with E tū with extensive experience representing members in manufacturing, engineering, service stations, call centres, printing, media and journalism.
In 2017 we made significant progress on our 2020 strategy towards becoming a truly customer centric organisation, guided by our employers and learners and what they need to succeed.
2017 was a year of action to embed our acceleration plan which involved extensive work across five core workstreams: easy to understand pricing, new products and services, efficient digital systems, matching customers to the right service, and increasing learner success.
Fiona Kingsford
Chief Executive
Competenz CEO since January 2016. Has held portfolios that cover operations, strategy, innovation, business transformation and Māori and Pasifika development.
Sandy Botterill
General Manager
Learning Design and Innovation
Product, qualification development, resource development, quality assurance and commercial development.
Nick Thomson
General Manager
Industry Training
Apprentice and learner service delivery, workforce development, operations and literacy and numeracy support.
Yvonne Lim
General Manager
Stakeholder Engagement
Customer and learner support, marketing and communications, brand, customer satisfaction, digital experience, careers promotion, research, Māori and Pasifika participation, sector engagement, strategic stakeholder engagement and lobbying.
Kirsten Jones
General Manager
People and Culture
Human resources, recruitment and retention, health and safety, organisational development and training, change management.
Sean Kirk
Chief Financial Officer
Finance, ICT, legal, procurement, office management, business insights, compliance and risk.
Toni Christie
General Manager
ATNZ
ATNZ service delivery, business development, product development, learner support.
Accelerate 2020 is the collective name for the projects we want to progress in order to deliver the vision for Competenz, and there are five key objectives.
See our completion rates and learner numbers broken down into sector, level, ethnicity, age and gender.
The number of learners and employers willing to recommend working with Competenz increased significantly in 2017, indicating a growing loyalty to our qualifications and service.
The Sector Engagement team was formed in 2017 and a comprehensive new strategy developed to work with key influencers across all of our industries.
Learners and employers have told us that they find huge value in our resources and would like to access them outside of formal qualifications. In 2017 we started to make that easy for them. By increasing our non-funded revenue through offering products of value to learners, employers and providers, we can remain the trusted skills partner for our employers and help more learners succeed throughout the life of their careers. While meeting the changing needs of our learners and satisfying our customers, we can remain true to our mission: Transforming lives, every learner, every time.
A modern learning management system (LMS) is a key enabler for our 2020 strategy to be a skills innovator and have 100% of learning content online.
In May 2017 we launched Canvas, an LMS used by more than 3,000 schools, universities and institutions and 18 million learners around the world. Canvas is a modern, easy-to-use system built on the premise that nothing is ever more than two clicks away, both for the learner as well as the content developer. In New Zealand, Canvas is also used by the University of Auckland and Manukau Institute of Technology.
Learners using Canvas
Unit standards online
(910 published and live)
Credits reported to NZQA
Unit standards/courses with competent learners
Competenz ran a successful Gateway pilot programme for secondary school students in 2017 in three industries – engineering, furniture and butchery.
The pilot was developed in response to a survey conducted with schools on how we could help them to expose students to careers in trades.
An increase in dedicated staff has enabled us to reinvigorate our approach to Māori and Pasifika engagement in 2017.
In 2017 the national Got a Trade? Got it Made! campaign ran for the third year. Once again Competenz delivered its own campaign alongside the national campaign targeting both influencers and young people.
We hand-picked eight apprentices and trainees to represent Competenz in this campaign and at the Got a Trade? Got it Made! Industry Training Awards at parliament in August.
Myra Anderson
Hilary Faul
Baking
Joji Chute
Engineering
Jaz Kuru
Forestry
Mike O'Callaghan
Engineering
Kayla Scott
Butchery
Paul Taurima
Engineering
Frank Uati
Peter Pooran
Stainless Design
"Competenz supports our apprenticeship programme and ensures the qualifications stay up-to-date with our business needs.”
Melissa Muirhead
DB Breweries
“It’s great to have equipment and machines and technology, but if you don’t invest in your people, it’s a lost opportunity.”
Anthony Quinn
Pernod Ricard
“Competenz has delivered significant value to more than 250 staff from our operations teams over the last ten years and the partnership continues to grow.”
Simon Ellis
PMP
“As a cadet I was taught to be resilient, innovative and a risk-taker, and that’s the attitude you need in our business today."