We are grateful that the Result 9 Accelerator has enabled our team to FAIL FAST, FAIL CHEAP & LEARN DEEP in a safe environment.
We rapidly developed, tested and invalidated a proposed solution to the problem of finding suitable seasonal workers for businesses in the horticulture and viticulture industries. Big shout outs to everyone that we have talked to. We really appreciate it and this enabled us to move fast, which is truly where government is trying to be customer centric and move swiftly through a rapid evaluation process.
We focused on the problem that businesses in the horticulture and viticulture industries struggle to find enough suitable seasonal workers.
Businesses’ perspective on the problem
- The nature of a seasonal business is that there is high demand for labour over a short period of time, which makes the employment of workers more critical and strenuous.
- Many businesses are not able to be provide better job packages to attract more suitable workers due to low industry margins.
- Some businesses are already working with industry and Work and Income on worker training programmes to increase the pool of suitable workers.
Workers’ perspective on the problem
- Workers’ reliability can be influenced by geographical remoteness of work (e.g. transport, accommodation).
- There are not always the right incentives for the workers to be motivated for the work (e.g. wage rate is low, short term employment, hard physical working conditions).
- Due to the short term nature of the work, workers find it difficult to get up to speed to reap the benefits of contract rates.
Our solution was an online platform where businesses can find suitable seasonal workers and vice versa.
Why businesses would not use our proposed solution?
- Businesses are not inclined to be more involved in the matching process of NZ workers than the current:
- Businesses prefer suitable workers to approach them instead because this shows workers’ motivation.
- Businesses see the recruitment of workers from Work and Income being the role of their Work and Income workbroker.
- Businesses have satisfactory workarounds in place to get the job done. This is through gaining access to workers from the Pacific Islands through the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme and contractors of labour in New Zealand. Some businesses have also increased the use of machinery to get the work done.
Conclusion
The labour market in the horticulture and viticulture industries is influenced by social and economic factors, which our digital solution could not address. However, the problem still exists and is an opportunity for others, who want to explore alternative solutions in this space.
We will take the learnings over the last 7 weeks forward and apply them to another problem, rapidly develop and test solutions in front of businesses. We have set ourselves the challenge in the next 5 weeks to have a solution that we are proud to present and a solution that we know businesses will be screaming to use it to improve interactions with government!
Thank you once again to all the people who have been on this journey with us 🙂
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact Suki Xiao (suki.xiao@gmail.com).
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