CAN TRAINING BE A VEHICLE TO DRIVE CULTURE CHANGE IN AN INDUSTRY?

After the Australian Seafood Industry conference (Seafood Directions) in 2022, Seafood and Maritime Training (SMT), Tasmanian Seafood Industry Council (TSIC) and Women in Seafood Australasia (WISA) teamed up to look for an opportunity to raise awareness of the benefits of a diverse workforce and shifting towards gender equality in the Seafood Industry and community.

During this meeting an opportunity was recognised for SMT’s current training programs to play a major role in shifting the balance. This was highlighted based on:

• SMT is the Tasmanian Seafood Industry’s preferred provider and trains over 1000 students in a variety of commercial fishing, aquaculture, and maritime courses each year. 
• Of these students 95% are employed in the Tasmanian Seafood and Maritime industry and many of them are undertaking the training as they have just been employed for the first time.  
• The student cohort are also majority male aged between 16 and 30 which we believe are a target group to promote change in the way they think about the benefits of diversity
• With more than 8000 people being directly or indirectly employed by the Tasmanian Seafood Industry, within a small State both in size and population, SMT’s student enrolment represents a significant proportion of the industry and community and provides an opportunity to drive change.

To capture this opportunity the team set about developing a strategy on how best to bring the diversity conversation into SMT training which included:

• The development of a vision and purpose for the project that promoted and guided the team on what they wanted to achieve.
• Scheduling facilitated workshops with SMT Training, Administration and Management staff plus key industry stake holders to tease out the gender inclusion and diversity conversation that could be woven into the training.
• Looking for partners to help capture the outcomes of this work as part of an ongoing study of training driven change and a diversity of thought score card for the industry.

At the time of submitting this abstract the teams project vison is -  For the Tasmanian Seafood Industry to become and be recognised as a champion of gender inclusion and diversity. With the purpose - To change an industry culture by embedding the benefits of gender equality and diversity of thought, into the training that industry participants are already engaging in.

The workshop is planned for May 2023 and we are looking forward to implementing the diversity conversation into SMTs training courses and gauging the initial feedback from students and employers.

The presentation at World Aquaculture will showcase a case study of how this gender equality and diversity conversation has progressed, outline the process SMT have gone through to start this program of work to achieve our vision for the Tasmanian Seafood Industry, and discuss the challenges and opportunities.