69 results

Fishing and Aquaculture Workforce Capability Framework

Project number: 2022-153
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $127,997.50
Principal Investigator: Deborah C. Prentice
Organisation: RM Consulting Group (RMCG)
Project start/end date: 2 May 2023 - 7 Mar 2024
:
TAGS
Workforce
Leadership
Capacity Building

Need

The objective of this foundational work is to collaborate with industry to produce a Fishing and Aquaculture Workforce Capability Framework. The Framework will be used by fishing and aquaculture sectors / communities for workforce planning and career mapping. It will support a more strategic and consistent approach to workforce planning. This in turn, will enable industry to build its capacity through better understanding of capability needs.

In addition to the universal challenges associated with a tight labour market (e.g. attracting people, barriers to entry, addressing skills needs), the industry is operating in a changing environment. Other challenges and opportunities for the fishing and aquaculture sectors include:
• Adapting to climate change
• Biosecurity
• Managing resources efficiently
• Meeting sustainability standards / social license to operate
• Moving to a circular economy
• Managing global supply chains (developing traceability, addressing counterfeit)
• Competing with other proteins
• New markets through free trade agreements
• Adopting digital technology, and;
• Attracting and retaining people to drive responses to changes that impact on the F&A community.

The AgriFood Supply Chain Resilience report (KPMG, 2022) identified ‘labour supply, wellbeing and succession’ as one of the significant stresses for seafood supply chains. Other significant stresses were weather and climate change, cold chain and freight space availability, sustainability and social licence, pests and disease and market access.

Fish Forever (2030 vision for Australia’s fishing and aquaculture community) highlights opportunities for the F&A community and contains outcomes under each of the following missions:
1. Growth for enduring prosperity
2. Best practices and production systems
3. A culture that is inclusive and forward thinking
4. Equitable and secure resource access
5. Society and consumers trust, respect and value.

This project will identify the capability needs (current and future) to address these challenges and opportunities. Further, it will support industry, to attract and retain people and to provide pathways to build capability. Sectors will be better informed as to how to address capability needs.

Addressing these needs will ensure industry is better equipped to respond to changes, challenges and opportunities that impact the fishing and aquaculture communities. The fishing and aquaculture map (FRDC website) highlights the “complex systems behind Indigenous, commercial and recreational fishing and aquaculture in Australia and how the elements are connected”. It also highlights how issues or events in one part of the system can have impacts on other sectors. Therefore, industry needs to be prepared for changes.

This project will engage with all key F&A sectors to ensure the capability framework is industry-driven and collectively owned. In addition, the project approach is designed to utilise existing sector/industry plans and not replace existing frameworks. RMCG will work collaboratively with industry.

Objectives

1. Development of a fit-for-purpose capability framework for the fisheries and aquaculture industries and individual organisations
2. Engagement and collaboration with key industry stakeholders to enable adoption and use of the framework
3. Establishment of a shared process and terminology for talking about capabilities throughout the fishing and aquaculture industry
4. Mapped critical capabilities highlighting gaps and opportunities for collaborative action

Final report

Authors: Deborah Prentice Sasha Brightman Natasha Frazer and Anne-Maree Boland
Final Report • 2024-06-01 • 14.11 MB
2022-153-DLD.pdf

Summary

In 2023 RM Consulting Group (RMCG) was contracted by FRDC to develop a Fisheries and Aquaculture (F&A) Workforce Capability Framework (hereafter referred to as the Framework) that would be used as a high-level, standardised tool across all F&A sectors. The FRDC and other groups in leadership roles for Australia’s F&A sectors have highlighted workforce development as a key opportunity and priority.
We have created a comprehensive Framework that captures the enablers (the internal and external systems and culture that either help or hinder employees and businesses to thrive and support growth in people’s capability) and the people capabilities (knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviours) that should be considered as a starting point in F&A workforce planning.
The intention of this project was to collaborate with industry to produce a F&A Workforce Capability Framework. This has been achieved, as demonstrated through the many and diverse stakeholders engaged and the attached Framework. The stakeholders interviewed and engaged had some interest and/or experience in workforce issues so were able to add value to the development of the Framework. They will also be able to champion the subsequent  implementation of projects that emerge from the Framework.
The Framework is a step towards addressing the above challenges and opportunities. It provides a broad, high-level approach to thinking about how to  meet the needs and aspirations of businesses and organisations.
The case studies included in this document offer real-world examples of where innovative thinking has been used to solve issues around workforce  planning, attraction and retention of staff, and broader geographical and social challenges.
The research and the development of this Framework emphasises the need to think differently, innovate and enable collaboration.

Project products

Report • 2024-06-01 • 7.34 MB
2022-153-Capability_Framework.pdf

Summary

FRDC Workforce Capability Framework
People

Practicing aquatic animal welfare: Identifying and mitigating obstacles to uptake and adoption by the Australian Fishing Industry

Project number: 2019-023
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $100,100.00
Principal Investigator: Nicki Mazur
Organisation: ENVision Environmental Consulting
Project start/end date: 1 Dec 2019 - 14 Dec 2020
:
TAGS
Wellbeing
Human Dimensions Research
Fisheries Management
Community
Animal Welfare

Need

Recent research shows general public support for Australia’s fishing industry (Sparks 2017; Voyer et al 2016) that depends on people’s assessments of industry’s commitment to implement best practice and demonstration of being effective environmental stewards (Mazur et al 2014). The FRDC has recognised external pressure for the fishing industry to move beyond compliance with environmental and other regulations and improve its performance in key areas, including animal welfare. As noted above, the FRDC has provided support for a range of research and industry initiatives to achieve positive aquatic animal welfare outcomes. The FRDC also recognises that further improvement to the seafood industry’s aquatic animal welfare practices are required.

Recent FRDC project investments has produced valuable knowledge about how when change is called for it is very important to recognise that multiple factors influence – positively and/or negatively - people’s decisions to take up those new, innovative, and/or different practices (i.e. 2017-133, 2017-046, 2017-221). These factors typically include personal values and belief systems, access to different kinds of resources required to make changes, particular features of the recommended practices, as well as a range of macro-levels factors that while they may be outside of people’s direct control still affect their choices. FRDC Project 2017-133 generated important insights about how and to what extent these kinds of factors have been keeping the seafood industry from making more substantive progress towards building greater stakeholder and community trust (Mazur & Brooks 2018).

Further work of this nature is now needed to shed greater light on aquatic animal welfare in the seafood industry (FRDC 2017-221). In particular the research should be focused on identifying the particular features of ‘best care’ for aquatic animals, the range of factors that may be obstructing industry members’ use of those practices, and examples of recent (extension) initiatives used to encourage better aquatic animal welfare.

Objectives

1. Identifying best practice in (aquatic) animal welfare.
2. Identify the extent to which fishers and finfish aquaculture farms are applying best practice in Australia
3. Identify factors impeding the uptake and adoption of a selection of recommended aquatic animal welfare practices in wild-catch commercial fishing and finfish aquaculture
4. Identify appropriate strategies to mitigate obstacles to improved uptake and adoption of those recommended practices
5. Help build the Australian fishing industry's capacity to design and implement extension programs, especially those targeting increased uptake and adoption of recommended aquatic animal welfare practices
6. Contribute to increased likelihood of more widespread and enduring practice-change in the seafood industry's aquatic animal welfare practices in wild-catch commercial fishing and finfish aquaculture

Final report

Author: Dr. Nicole (Nicki) Mazur and Mr Andy Bodsworth
Final Report • 2022-03-31 • 1.78 MB
2019-023-DLD.pdf

Summary

This FRDC funded research  focuses on the obstacles to, and drivers of, positive practice change relating to aquatic animal welfare (AAW) in Australia’s wild-catch commercial fishing and finfish aquaculture sectors. It was conducted between December 2019 and March 2022 in response to growing societal expectations that production animals, including fish and crustaceans, be treated humanely ; and the need to understand how the Australian seafood industry can, and should, respond. 

A mixed-method approach was used to collect data and information for this research. These included a desk-top review, stakeholder consultation, and a set of interviews. 

This Project identified a range of AAW practices used by some seafood producers that they believed to be ‘humane’. The Project also identified some factors enabling and impeding seafood producers’ approaches. Key factors supporting AAW uptake and adoption included a seafood producers’ openness to change and interest in learning, the relative advantages of using recommended practices, well designed and resourced extension, and positive relationships across industry, government and interest group networks. 

This Project provides highly useful insights about AAW practices used by a small sample of Australian seafood industry members, which were primarily representatives of the wild-catch commercial fishing sector with two from the finfish aquaculture sector. This project’s findings support results from other recent Australian seafood industry research and policy initiatives, which have found that more appropriately designed and consistently-funded extension programs can help improve AAW uptake and adoption. However, AAW is a complex issue, and requires more than just extension.  A range of carefully conceived and integrated policy instruments (e.g., market instruments, regulations) are needed to achieve substantive and lasting AAW practice change. Five recommendations have been formulated to help amplify enablers of and mitigate obstacles to AAW uptake and adoption. Suggested next steps include a workshop to draw out policy and industry-led options to enhance adoption, including feasibility of a risk assessment; and a case studies to test risk assessment and options to improve adoption.
Communities
People
People
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2020-065
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT

Indicators for density and biomass of exploitable abalone – developing and applying a new approach

The objectives of this project are to use the Victorian Western Zone (WZ) abalone fishery to develop and evaluate a new approach to calculating abalone density and biomass indicators from the combination of three information sources. The three information sources are: i. ...
ORGANISATION:
Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA)
TAGS
Survey
SPECIES
Blacklip Abalone
Blank
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2020-126
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Australian Agrifood Data Exchange (OzAg Data Exchange): Deliver an interconnected data highway for Australia's AgriFood value chain - Proof of concept

Pain point: The delay in exchange and reconciliation of catch data by fishers and processors means that there is a delay in quota accounting which impacts planning due to lack of timely information. Furthermore, with no access to pre-fishing information data to the processors means they are unable...
ORGANISATION:
Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA)
TAGS
Traceability
People
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