The Breakthrough Co publishes insightful guide to address NZ Horticulture labour challenges by developing front line leaders

NZ Horticulture is facing unprecedented labour shortages.

Your ability to attract staff, train and retain them is the new competitive advantage. That means you need managers with the right soft skills to keep your people engaged and productive.

The Breakthrough have created this guide to help people develop training strategies based on the three key solutions for horticulture:

• Develop the operational managers: they’re the visible face of the culture
• Focus on the essentials of management first
• Training has to cater for the seasonal nature of horticulture. It has to make low demands on peoples’ work and personal time, but have a high impact at all levels of the organisation

This guide is written by Dr Mike Ashby, an expert in management training and a former EastPack director, and Heather Burton, a former GM HR at EastPack and now working with The Breakthrough Co at Apata and Scion. She has also undertaken industry work for NZKGI and HortNZ.

"The critical thing for horticulture and seasonal industries is to follow the arc of the year. In the off-season, learning and development can follow a regular cycle and we can take more time to work through content, but this has to be balanced by the fact that, in the absence of production activities, their ability to learn through practice is limited. The exciting opportunity is the high season. Learning can be continuous right through the year, with the learning formats varying to adapt to the demands of the seasons…"

The full guide is available for download at https://tbco.at/hort-guide-prwire

About The Breakthrough
Operating since 2003, The Breakthrough run learning and development programmes for business leaders and managers. Highly knowledgeable in what actually works in developing fundamental skills of operational leaders, our programmes develop managers and leaders that can contribute their best for themselves, their teams and their organisations.