What is ‘quiet quitting’ and how do employers navigate it?

engineering sector does not operate in the high volume, low value production of consumer goods. They’re typically SMEs who are dominant in a small niche of the capital goods business and have longstanding relationships with relatively few customers.

“When you’ve had good relations with customers for 20 years and you have to tell them you can’t fill any orders until the end of next year and you are losing customers as a result, this is a serious blow to a business of this size.

“These customers have a policy of never relying on one supplier and as a result, New Zealand is losing contracts to our international competition,” he says.

Adam says the new Hanga-Aro-Rau report will provide valuable data and context for those involved in long term resource planning and investments within the industry.

“Until now the industry has little in the way of verifiable numbers to support their anecdotal assessment of the current situation.

“As a result of the research, we now have greater insights into the numbers, including key demographics that are disproportionately underrepresented within the sector.

“We are already seeing increasing interest in the upskilling of existing staff, but we will also see increased emphasis on breaking down the training barriers that prevent those from diverse cultural backgrounds from putting their hand up for training.

“The sector is also going to need to look at how it can incorporate more flexibility into what are usually rigidly defined operating times for shifts – in order to attract more female and younger workers,” he says.

Alexander-Crawford says there are three key pathways open to the manufacturing industry including attracting more workers through training or from other industries, upskilling the current workforce and increasing productivity.

“We know that the manufacturing and engineering sectors are competing with other industries, both domestic and international, for skilled labour.

“New initiatives which reinforce the attractiveness of the sector and increase workforce participation in training are needed to reduce the skilled labour shortage – particularly within key demographics such as Maori, Pacific, disabled people and females, who are underrepresented in these industries.

“With Maori and Pacific peoples expected to see the highest population growth of any ethnicity over the next six years within the regions where Aotearoa’s largest manufacturing facilities are concentrated, they represent a critical segment of the future workforce for these sectors,” he says.

John Tan, partner at Deloitte, which worked in collaboration with HangaAro-Rau and the Tertiary Education Commission to produce the research, says COVID-19 has had a disruptive impact on the manufacturing and engineering workforce and these impacts may endure in a volatile post-pandemic period of significant economic uncertainty.

He says while there is a risk that workforce capacity constrains economic output, there is also an opportunity to adopt different strategies for post-pandemic workforce development.

“Since COVID 19, there has been a reversal of the trend of positive net migration to New Zealand, highlighting New Zealand’s traditional reliance on skilled workers from overseas. The shortages in skilled and unskilled labour are particularly acute in the manufacturing and engineering sectors, for which there is intense global competition.

“Our estimates show that there is a significant workforce capability and capacity gap of up to 17,000 manufacturing roles and 12,000 engineering roles, and the size of this gap is likely to increase if current trends persist. This capacity and capability gap is putting upwards pressure on the cost of labour and risks constraining output,” he says.