Alan Montague

Attracting and retaining Australia’s aged care workers: developing policy and organisational responses

By the year 2060 Australians aged 65 and over will account for one quarter of the population, one in six Australians will be aged 75 or more, and the ‘very old’ (over 80 years of age) will also become more numerous. These statistics indicate that there will be increased demands on the residential aged care workforce in the future and associated labour shortages given the consequent increases in demand for personal care worker services. Moreover, personal care workers (PCWs) are reportedly older than the average age of workers in other fields, further exacerbating these problems. Consequently, this study focuses on both the policy and human resource changes required in the residential aged care sector related to both current and future challenges experienced in attracting and retaining Australia’s ageing aged care workforce. Proposed changes include far-reaching policy development required to underpin improved employment conditions, salaries, training and career pathways as an imperative to care for elderly Australian citizens.

Adult learning and the compilation and retrieval of data

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline a process to assist adult learners and researchers to capture, streamline and retrieve data for the analysis of content from various resources of information encountered in research.Design/methodology/approach – The system is described, including a rationale for its benefit to qualitative researchers utilising multiple sources of data.Findings – The system is designed mainly to assist the academic expedition of postgraduate students predominantly engaged in qualitative research. It covers theoretical aspects of adult learning principles combined with a systematic method for managing qualitative data.Originality/value – Working from the assumption that adult learners are time‐poor and likely to be working full‐time, the paper discusses these learners’ need for an efficient method of recording and retrieving information and provides a straightforward, cataloguing process which the author developed when conducting postgraduate research.

Graduate employability in Australia: Time for a VET and HE overhaul?

This chapter explores the complexities Australia faces in sustaining its international influence and position as a competitive nation in numerous areas, such as exports and trade, as well as its stable political system and the overall wellbeing of its citizens. It provides an outline of the Australian labour market and demographics, government education policies and the structure of the education system. The chapter discusses some of the current problems and challenges evident in the contemporary Australian vocational education and training (VET) and higher education (HE) sectors. The Australian education system is referred to as the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF). Under the AQF, students who successfully prove that they are competent within a group of competencies can be awarded a VET qualification such as Certificate I; Certificate II; Certificate III; Certificate IV; Diploma and Advanced Diploma. VET is an integral feature of Australian education system and is specifically designed to deliver workplace explicit skills and knowledge-based competencies that are predominantly practical.

Developing leadership curriculum for business education program in Asia

With the strong demands and challenges in the leadership components in the curriculum of management education, most transnational business education programs need to ensure the quality of learning and teaching, materials and resources, assessment strategy and content is at an optimal level. The importance of leadership training, beginning at the undergraduate level, has been recognized by many business schools worldwide. The focus on leadership knowledge, skills and action requires special understanding of both local and international contexts in each program. In many transnational education programs the understanding and implementation of various local cultural contexts that influence various aspects of leadership are not taken seriously by the providers of international business education programs. Hence, in this study, we question what should be done to improve the quality of leadership education in the transnational education program. In order to comprehend this complex business education question, a questionnaire survey was conducted with students, who enrolled in the leadership course in an Australian transnational program in Hong Kong and Singapore. In total, 582 students from Singapore and 282 students from Hong Kong participated in this study. Questionnaires were developed by research team members and pilot tested in Australia prior to the fieldwork in Hong Kong and Singapore. Eight curriculum components and outcomes were focused in this study. They included learning objectives; activities, resources, assessment, teaching and learning strategy/approaches, content, internationalisation, and educational technologies. The results from 271 respondents showed numerous differences that were significant in terms of student’s perceptions toward the curriculum between students from Singapore and Hong Kong. When it the generic descriptive statistics were analysed, the results showed that there was no consistency of a statistical mean position among students from Hong Kong and Singapore. The scores of standard deviation among Singaporean students were, in general, larger than those from Hong Kong. The larger standard deviations suggested that there were greater differences in participants’ perception towards curriculum components. The key differences among students in terms of quality were within leadership education include teaching strategy, technology in learning and teaching, assessment, learning activity, and learning resources. This study confirms that practical learning is important in leadership education. In the transnational education context, there is a profound need to integrate the local and international practical aspects into leadership education. More importantly, students’ diversity plays pivotal roles in the effectiveness of leadership education.

Review of Australian Higher Education: An Australian Policy Perspective

Higher education is one of the key foundations that economic prosperity is founded upon. Government policies, funding and strategic planning require a fine balance to stimulate growth, prosperity health and well-being. The key Australian government policies influenced by a Review of Australian Higher Education report include attracting many more Australian citizens from disadvantaged backgrounds to higher education and increasing to 40% by 2020 the number of Australian people aged 25 to 34 years attaining at least a bachelor-level qualification — a challenge, given that the current level is 29%. An added key policy is the move to a student entitlement funding model that Australia introduced from 2012, with around half of the 46 recommendations being implemented by early 2013. This article undertakes research based on secondary data from extensive literature reviews to comment critically on the efficacy of the policy approached recommended by the Review of Australian Higher Education in 2008, and now being gradually implemented. Australia faces significant challenges in higher education to rebuild, redevelop, sustain and progress higher education. The domestic and global competition for talented and skilled people is becoming more crucial. Ageing populations combined with a decreasing proportion of young people, particularly within OECD countries, exacerbates the problem. Australia, among most, if not all nations, must develop many more innovative and skilled people to sustain and rejuvenate its industry and society.

Enhancing Graduate Work-Readiness in Vietnam

This chapter explores the characteristics of the Vietnamese labour market including its advantages and disadvantages together with the government frameworks for the education system. The challenges of graduate work-readiness are also outlined, as well as how employers and educational institutions deal with them in Vietnam. A key concern is an unbalanced workforce which suffers from a lack of adequately skilled workers, resulting in serious threats to industry productivity and competitiveness in a globalised world.

Where was HRM? The crisis of public confidence in Australia’s banks

Abstract Globally the banking and finance sector has been rocked by a series of scandals that culminated in the global financial crisis (GFC) that witnessed the collapse of banks, economies and the personal lives of millions worldwide. At the core of this catastrophic event was a failure of international and national financial regulations and a range of nefarious practices across the financial sector. Australia was one of the few countries that were only mildly impacted by the GFC. However, even in Australia there was a systems failure in client and corporate governance that pre-dated the GFC. While remaining profitable, Australian banks suffered from reputational loss and adverse publicity, symptomatic of a failure of ethical standards and ethical enforcement. While these organisations met one of the criteria of performance (profits), in terms of their behaviour and treatment of some clients they were far from effective in their operations. This chapter examines the activities of two major Australian banks to highlight the failure of HRM systems to address reputational risk and the ethical behaviour of employees or to service the needs of clients.

Country Experiences in Integrating Sustainable Development into TVET: Towards a Synthesis

The chapters in Part III highlight the many initiatives in countries around the world to integrate issues of sustainable development in to TVET. These include examples of innovations in learning programmes as well as in the operations of college campuses (the UK and Germany), examples of research to identify sustainable development competencies that ought to be included in TVET programmes (Australia and Canada) and critiques of inappropriate competency-based approaches to the spirit of sustainable development (South Africa). The chapters in Part III also provide examples of the challenges facing all innovations in TVET, especially those, which like the principles underpinning sustainable development, question the dominant economic slant of traditional approaches to TVET (Azerbaijan, India, Australia and others). There are also inspiring stories such as those from China and Azerbaijan where major TVET reform programmes are underway to provide training for sustainable livelihoods. This chapter is organized around the themes that were common to these experiences. These include the barriers to innovation faced by TVET policy-makers and practitioners due to the low status of TVET in many countries.