Foreword
The following report has been developed by Huon Aquaculture as a summary of findings from the ‘Assessing the people and capability framework for the aquaculture industry’ project.
This project is of huge importance for Huon and the aquaculture industry as a whole, as it explores leadership and people development, especially where the report’s findings will be embedded or operationalised within an organisation.
The findings from this project provide insights into the key learnings identified in the project facilitated by Huon.
Some key findings include:
- Design of resilient people and leadership development frameworks to support constantly evolving and changing roles;
- The importance of engagement and understanding leadership motivation;
- Operationalising a leadership program across multifunctional teams, the learnings and skill sets;
- Establishing a transferable Succession Planning Framework to meet future skill requirements with a significant focus on leadership competencies;
- Developing a retention strategy and career pathways program;
- How a workforce can operationalise innovation; and
- Lessons learnt from this project.
Results/key findings
Future leadership development programs often require a change in organisational culture and seamless change is notoriously difficult to deliver, so senior leader commitment was crucial to the project, especially when staff were taken away from business as usual.
Facilitating a Leadership Program within an organisation also requires consultation on training with minimal operational impact. This point required maximum attendance and the Huon Leaders Program achieved attendance rates just short of 100%. This attendance rate is testament to the enthusiasm of participants and their proactive engaging in all content.
Introducing a Leadership Program is not a one-off activity, it needs to be strategically placed into the people development cycle within an organisation. In Huon’s case, the Leader Development Program will continue to evolve as leaders across the organisation provide feedback and share their developmental needs. Huon have also asked for an emerging leaders’ program, so team members can be developed at an early stage of their career. To continue the growth of leaders, post the Leaders Program is a robust Succession Planning Framework to stretch and grow leader skill sets.
The project resulted in Huon gaining increased self-awareness and leadership skills from the existing workforce, whilst also helping to revitalise innovation across the organisation.
The Innovation Program enables Huon to connect with all employees and provide them with an avenue to innovate and help build Huon and the aquaculture industry.
Implications for relevant stakeholders
- People development frameworks require Executive Team support to ensure the programs are embedded into the organisation. In Huon’s instance, the work was interconnected, therefore project management and stakeholder management were key when facilitating the project.
- Traditionally, employees have undertaken training aligned to some form of certification. In this instance, the focus often shifts to assignment completion and not on using the new skills learned. The Huon Leaders Program was focused on operationalising learning and providing tools and approaches to leading teams able to be immediately applied.
- Succession Planning frameworks and career pathways require maintenance and ongoing commitment from the Human Resources Team to oversee and manage the work. Simply deploying any framework across an organisation will therefore be insufficient.
- Innovative workplaces should be encouraged with Innovation Programs to provide an exceptional platform to foster on-going innovation. Without the introduction of structure and rigour within any Innovation Program, this may affect the organisations engagement and culture.
Recommendations
This project resulted in a number of frameworks for industry partners to review and adopt
however, spending time reflecting on existing processes and practises is critical to success.
The programs are designed so others can use, accepting this should be contextualised to an
organisation.
Consideration to other internal people development activities and their alignments is an important element, leadership development is not a stand-alone activity.
There are additional materials that were developed for this project, should anyone wish to obtain these please contact the FRDC.
