Huon has identified through employee interviews a need to focus on developing our current and future leader’s skill sets. Many of our Leaders hold extensive Aquaculture qualifications however many have not participated in Leader specific development nor are aware of career succession pathways. Furthermore, should an employee have an idea to make an improvement or better utilise a tool of trade/technology they don’t know who to share the idea with.

For Huon to be equipped for the future a focus and plan is needed now.
As outlined in the FRDC People Development Program (2008-2013), the following points are still relevant in the aquaculture industry and present at Huon:
• There is a shortage of industry leaders in all sectors of the aquaculture industry;
• The aquaculture industry has a poor performance in the uptake of formal training, and apprenticeships;
• The aquaculture industry will need to learn from other industries that have embraced a knowledge and innovation culture; and
• Existing leadership programs are inaccessible to most, either through limited availability or expensive course fees.

To address these opportunities Huon wants to invest in introducing an innovation and new ideas program. This will create the governance around structuring ideas and nurture employee’s innovation. This will additionally enable employees to feel comfortable expressing their ideas knowing there is a systematic approach applied to all requests received and reviewed.

The Aquaculture Leaders Program will be designed specifically around enhancing current Leadership capability, providing the leader cohort with skills in managing team performance and motivating employees by the introduction of coaching standards. Generally, random acts of training across an organisation fail. If no behavioural growth practises are developed. This will be an important consideration in the design of the training program so that the new learning is embedded. Furthermore, to ensure that training decay doesn’t occur, a set of post training accountability activities will be developed to encourage application of skills post training.