ConCOVE Advisory Groups: 
Māori, Pasifika and Women  

Blog post by ConCOVE General Manager Bharti Kottaiya

As the General Manager of ConCOVE, I am excited to be part of this brand new journey, as we bring together the Construction and Infrastructure industry and Vocational Education providers to ensure the latest industry knowledge and best practice is brought into the  CoVE.   

New Zealand is in the midst of a huge increase in construction and technology jobs – but what can we, at ConCOVE, do to ensure that we start to see more Māori, Pasifika and women in the workforce?  

As we rebuild the country’s economy post-COVID-19, this is a pivotal point where we have been given the opportunity to make huge shifts towards developing diversity in these sectors, while also providing a clear career path across the industry.   

My team and I are putting a plan in place to make sure that happens. In fact, we invite you get involved.   

ConCOVE has begun the process of setting up three key advisory groups – Māori, Pasifika and Women. We want to capture the lessons, the gaps and the solutions from all sectors of the community.  

We feel like this is a necessary step in the right direction in making it possible to design and deliver strategies to address historical inequalities in the New Zealand Workforce. We want to represent traditionally excluded groups, bring them into the conversation, so that they can see their community participate in initiatives, and have them feel represented.   

These advisory groups will ensure we are listening to and staying ahead of the concerns and ideas within our community as we embark on our five key projects designed to address significant issues in creating a talent pipeline:  

• Disruption – preparing industries to manage disruptions to the nature of work brought about by new technologies and develop training solutions.  
• Learning Framework – reform entry-level training to decrease the time it takes workers to become engaged in meaningful employment  
• Retention – improve workforce productivity and retention by developing career support services including training, mentoring and networking.  
• Diversity – provide tested strategies and models for stakeholders to grow workforce diversity, particularly in relation to Māori, Pasifika and women.  
•  Sustainability – help the industry respond to increasing demand for environmentally sustainable practices.  

For these five projects, we want to conduct a thorough due diligence and research programme of which we will spend 2021 researching these programmes and these five projects.  

The Māori, Pasifika, and women advisory groups will play an important role in understanding vocational education and career development in the Construction and Infrastructure sector.   

They  will need to understand how the role of a supported environment is required to promote entering the construction sector, as well as retaining their participation and achieving equitable outcomes.  

These advisory groups will provide the General Manager and the Board with advice on issues, trends and solutions and how it will support the objectives of ConCoVE.  

We are aiming to have our nomination and selection process completed in April 2021, so that our groups can start collaborating with our projects in May 2021 – which is why we encourage you to get in touch as soon as possible.    

We look forward to your support and we look forward to hearing your ideas.  

• Imagine supplied by Manukau Institute of Technology