Presented at its 'Inaugural Orana Outlook 2014' dinner, held at the Taronga Western Plains Zoo last Friday night, the report is a culmination of 12 months of planning, consultation and research into the Orana's workforce, skills and employer needs.

"Human capital is a key determinant of long-term regional economic growth. Where human capital is strong, generally there is strong economic growth, innovation, enhanced entrepreneurial efforts and social attitudes," said Regional Development Australia Orana CEO, Felicity Taylor Edwards.

In June 2014 RDA Orana, in partnership with about 20 stakeholders from across all levels of government, business, industry and the education, training and employment sectors, commissioned consulting firm Urbis to undertake a comprehensive research study into the workforce capacity of the Orana region.

"The aim of the study was to identify workforce issues currently faced by employers around the region and to build an evidence base on which to then develop strategies to address those issues. Ultimately, we want to see the region be prepared to take advantage of current and emerging economic opportunities and strengthen the economy by developing our workforce capacity."

The research study revealed some interesting findings; in particular it found that there is a strong desire for growth in the region with 45 per cent of all businesses surveyed indicating that they expected to grow their business.

Despite this desire for growth several impediments were found to be hindering progress. These included:

o Difficulties for businesses to recruit staff - more than 71 per cent of businesses reported that they had experienced difficulties in the last 12 months when attempting to recruit staff. This was reportedly due to a lack of basic work skills (31 per cent), a lack of specialist skill (31 per cent) and a lack of talent caused by remoteness (27 per cent). Some businesses reported facing competition for staff and wage pressures within and across the Orana, which created difficulties in attracting and retaining staff, and it was found that 68 per cent of all businesses used informal methods of recruitment - word of mouth and personal networks to form the basis of many businesses recruitment strategies.

o A number of skills gaps and shortages across industry. This was particularly true in areas such as automotive and engineering technicians; trade workers; sales workers; design, engineering, science and transport professionals and health workers.

The findings that have resulted from this research clearly shows that there are very real issues around the access to, recruitment and retention of staff, and attracting the right skills to existing jobs in theregion.

A skilled labour force is essential to assisting the Orana region to grow and be sustainable into the future. Developing co-ordinated strategies to address these issues faced by employers is imperative and RDA Orana is now pursuing this work along with its stakeholder group.

Anticipated areas of focus will be around:

o Job Readiness

o Aligning training to the needs of the region

o Workforce attraction and retention

o Job matching

o Maximising the transferability of skills

The full Workforce Capacity of the Orana Region research report can be found on RDA Orana's website at:

www.rdaorana.org.au