Future Print recently turned one and, with a number of important milestones under its belt and plans well in hand for its second year of operation, this industry-wide initiative has plenty to celebrate says Joan Grace, Printing Industries general manager for Innovation, Training & Employment.
The program, launched last year as a federal government funded joint venture between the AMWU and Printing Industries, celebrated the milestone in pragmatic style, by releasing a tally of achievements and launching an important new project to businesses.
The Future Print Business Transformation Project is a federally funded program which has been designed to help businesses across the entire graphic communications spectrum equip themselves to meet the challenges of an increasingly diverse and dynamic market.
Running for the next two years, the Business Transformation Project will offer businesses a suite of resources from business analysis and planning, to support and training across a very broad range of business areas, complementing the industry-based training offered by the Future Print Apprenticeship Project.
The first ‘Leadership Briefings’ are currently underway and have reported enormous success. Further briefings are to be held around the country in coming months, giving a wide range of businesses the opportunity to take advantage of these valuable resources.
Future Print’s first initiative, the Future Print Apprenticeship Project, recently signed on its 190th apprentice, taking it well on the way to its original target of 240 by the middle of 2015. The first apprentices have now achieved their first units of competency and, therefore, wage progression, with many hoping to qualify within the next 18 months to two years.
Nearly 100 businesses (98 to be exact) are currently involved in this part of the project, many taking the opportunity to offer formal qualifications and upskilling to their existing workforce, while others have taken on some of the 50 trainees who are completely new to the industry.
This month, the Apprenticeship Project itself will undergo evaluation at an Apprenticeship Summit, convened to assess its progress as Future Print works towards its stated aim of delivering a sustainable training model for the industry of the future.
The Summit will bring together stakeholders from the project including Printing Industries and AMWU representatives, the RTOs and Future Print advisors, employers, mentors and apprentices themselves, to help evaluate how the system is working and to gather feedback, ideas and information which will help make it even more effective in its second year.
“We’re enormously pleased with the way the industry has embraced Future Print so far,” says Grace, “and with the terrific results we are starting to see and the continued input of our stakeholders, we are confident that the next year will deliver some even more exciting results.