Having railed against -unfair" competition from emerging Asian economies exploiting low-cost, low-skill labour, Australian manufacturers have drifted toward the same economic model.
Late last year, some of the world's better brains gathered in Sydney to explore ways to maintain momentum in the development of a global Knowledge Economy. A wealth of intellectual commentary described the efforts of countries like Israel, Ireland, and Singapore to power up their economies through the development of new technological infrastructure and industry.
For the KE conference to be held in Australia was a bit like discussing bush fire management in the Sahara: however worthy the topic, its practicalities were far more relevant elsewhere.
Far from gearing up to develop and exploit knowledge, Australian employers continue to ignore training and development, spending fewer dollars each year on employee training and providing less time for it. According to OECD figures, our employers rank sixth lowest among 21 developed countries in creating high-skill jobs. On the other hand, they lead the developed world in annual average growth of low-skill jobs.
It can be said that workers should be responsible for their own development (they are the immediate beneficiaries of better skills after all), but in the broader view the imperative to grow business through knowledge, not drone labour, remains with employers.
Government, state and federal, obviously has a role in all thisââ,¬"but its investment in knowledge and education as a proportion of GDP is declining while other OECD countries have increased their investment.
A number of European economies have adopted training levies as a mechanism to draw government and business closer together in the development of a smarter workforce, successfully developing a -skills ecosystem".
The Training Guarantee Levy (TGL) introduced by the Hawke Government in 1990, under which employers committed one percent of annual payroll over $200,000 to employment-related training, was decried by employers as administratively cumbersome, open to rorting, and ineffectual. But by the time it was abandoned in 1996, training expenditure in the private sector had increased by more than 50 percent and the overall status of training, by employers' own admission, had increased significantly.
The lessons to be learned from TGL's short life here have been largely ignored as employers concentrated instead on preserving their balance sheets by preferring contracted labour to remove employee on-costs, and governments returned to rhetoric rather than political will to drive towards a -smart Australia".
In mid-2002, a discussion paper prepared by the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training (ACIRRT) at Sydney University for the Dusseldorp Skills Forum canvassed the idea of re-introducing a skills levy. Called You Value What You Pay For, it focuses on the role of Australian employers in the creation of our knowledge economy (see www.dsf.org.au).
Its content is particularly cogent when seen against the findings of a major national survey into unemployment in the ICT sector undertaken recently by the Australian Computer Society among its 14,000 members.
We believe that the time is right to reinstate some form of levy that will assist those companies who are willing to bite the bullet and look after their staff. This is especially relevant to the thousands of SME's in the ICT industry which exist by the barest of margins.
These are the companies that offer most in terms of innovation and smart developments but that can least afford the outlay for skills development.
While analysis of the survey results continues, some early indications are worrying: unemployment among ICT professionals runs at twice the national rate, and a significant number are qualified at Masters, PhD, or MBA levels.
So much for a skills shortage.
Why aren't employers able to recognise the benefits that will accrue to their businesses by making investment in staff professional development a number one priority?
Richard Hogg is National president of the Australian Computer Society (ACS). The ACS is the recognised association for Information Technology (IT) professionals, attracting a membership (over 16,000) from all levels of the IT industry and providing a wide range of services. A member of the Australian Council of Professions, the ACS is the guardian of professional ethics and standards in the IT industry, with a commitment to the wider community to ensure the beneficial use of IT.
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