A steering group’s meeting for the first time this week, tasked with coming up with a workforce strategy for the Queenstown-Lakes.

Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce chief executive Sharon Fifield says the Chamber, council and regional tourism organisations have been advocating to government for support around workforce and staffing for ‘‘quite a while’’, and sent a letter to ministers before
Christmas.

Resulting from that, funding’s just been approved for the Chamber to create the strategy, which will identify what needs to happen across the district to create a sustainable workforce and what support’s needed from government — for example, regionalisation of policy settings
— for it to become a reality.

Members of the steering group include Destination Queenstown and Lake Wānaka Tourism, Ignite Wānaka, the council’s economic development team, the Regional Skills Leadership group lead, and Ministry of Social Development, which is funding it.

Fifield says while Otago’s workforce plan was launched last year, ‘‘every district’s different’’.

‘‘Queenstown-Lakes … have our own specific needs and challenges, so this is what this strategy will address.’’

She says the strategy will create a more coordinated approach across the district, but will also help with lobbying central government in future.

‘‘We are not going to spend heaps of time on the strategy, because we know what the problems are, so we’re actually going to turn it around in a few months — an action plan, because there is some urgency to this.’’

Noting accommodation’s a ‘‘big barrier’’, Fifield says the strategy will recognise that, but ‘‘this strategy isn’t aiming to solve that’’, instead looking at better looking after existing staff, and attracting more.

‘‘I think one thing it will reference is that globally everyone’s struggling for workers, so how can we better enable employers and businesses to be as productive or more productive with fewer staff — adopting tech, sharing staff, that kind of thing.’’

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