Cadet Collab

Rachael Fairweather, Kaya Walsh and Rachel Vis, left to right

Innovative labour solution

SOPHIE PREECE

KAYA WALSH has always had a thing for tractors, which her hotel workmates found hard to fathom. “They all thought I was mad,” says Kaya, with a laugh. But when Covid-19 saw the hotel supervisor’s hours plummet last year, her interest in tractors led her to an intern scheme shared by three Marlborough wine industry employers - Ormond Nurseries, SLT, and New Zealand Wineries. “There’s so much to learn about that you would never know working in the one job,” she says 16 months later, working as a team leader at Ormond Nurseries. “I love working between all three.”

Kaya was the test case for the Vine to Wine intern collaboration, created to address labour pressures in peak periods, while offering a full year’s work to each intern. Knowing 15 hours a week at the hotel wasn’t enough to support her and her son, Kaya had approached vineyard machinery company SLT about a job in winter 2020, and general manager Dan Campbell saw an ideal candidate for the initiative. “We have always had a bit of trouble having enough staff in the summer period,” says Dan, who had researched bringing people from agricultural colleges in Ireland and Scotland. “The more I spoke to people the more difficult it got.” When Covid came along, that option was off the table, “and at the end of the day we would rather employ Kiwis and give them an opportunity”.

Since that winter, Kaya has had two periods working with SLT, including driving tractors in the busy summer season, two stints at Ormond Nurseries, and a vintage at New Zealand Wineries, in the pressured vintage push. The cycle means she is literally hands-on from the grafting of the vines at the nursery to the making of the wines at the winery, with tractors in between. “I had no idea before I started doing this what goes into making wine,” she says. And Kaya is in no hurry to specialise in one area, relishing the changing landscape of her wine career. “I feel I could learn so much more,” she says, noting how different it is to seven years of doing the same thing at the hotel. “When you do change you’re constantly learning new things. The heart races a little and you think ‘how can I do better next time?’”

Brendan Varney was one of the collaboration’s inaugural interns, and is also at Ormond Nurseries, having already worked for SLT and then at New Zealand Wineries. The Covid-19 pandemic saw Brendan lose his job in the travel industry, and he says the internship was an opportunity to get his foot in the door of a new career pathway, and to glean insights into different facets of the wine industry. He plans to get another year of the internship under his belt before deciding on what to do next. But whether he stays in the rotating role or opts for a full-time position, he’s now in the wine industry for good, he says. “The door is wide open for a lot of opportunities.”

Rachel Vis also saw the internship as a chance for change, getting her out of hospitality and into the outdoors. “This job came up, and I thought ‘that sounds cool to be able to try all aspects of the industry’.” She’ll stay on in the internship for another round, then thinks she’ll specialise in one area. “It’s definitely a good opportunity,” Rachel says. “They have set up to cover their seasonal work, and we get to do three different jobs throughout the year.”

The four interns move through each workplace together, so while the roles might change, their core crew stays the same. “We bring our family with us,” says Rachael Fairweather, the fourth of the interns, known as Mama Rach in the workplaces, alongside Aunty Kaya. “I am the person who asks all the questions,” says Rachael. “Why do we do that? Why can’t we do this?” And throughout her winter work at the winery, and now at Ormond Nurseries, there’s always been someone with a good answer, she says.

Rachael has worked as a lab technician for a health provider and for Cawthron Institute, and more recently worked with the Department of Conservation, where she started out in the field. When restructuring saw her spending eight hours a day behind a desk instead, she knew it was time for a change. “I had also got to the point where I wanted to learn new stuff,” says Rachael. “I enjoy the physical side of the job and I am quite interested in the science behind things.”

As well as the learning on the job, she’s now teaching herself Spanish, in order to connect with the South Americans she worked with at New Zealand Wineries. “I have really enjoyed working with a diverse range of people from across the world,” says Rachael, who has mapped out the home-towns of friends on the winery’s Facebook page, and plans to visit them in Italy, South America and Taiwan when she can. Rachael is eager to learn more, and is looking forward to working with some of the cuttingedge technology at SLT, while learning about viticulture. “I like the technical stuff,” she says. And at vintage, she hopes to move from the red cellar to the lab, putting her past experience to good use, while continuing to ask “why?”.

Kirsty Trolove, owner of Only Human - HR & Recruitment, worked with the three companies last year, to design the programme, recruit the first interns, and develop a “mutual understanding”. That included ensuring the employees would get the advantages of a full-time role, despite being on fixed term contracts. Kirsty - who is currently recruiting the second round of four interns - says the initiative has required each company to look outside the square when it comes to employment contracts, and also when it comes to who they recruit. It was decided early on the interns would be chosen for attitude not aptitude, with good initiative, interpersonal skills and willingness to work trumping experience and qualifications. The challenges of Covid-19 have helped the employers get their heads around that ethos, and the results have been excellent, says Kirsty.

“They are an awesome group of people,” agrees Ormond Nurseries general manager Marcus Wickham. “Enthusiastic and ready to take on whatever is happening at the time.” He says the company has faced labour challenges “for ever and ever” because the business of growing, grafting and distributing vines is a six-month push from mid-May, with the labour requirement “dramatically reduced” for the subsequent six months. “We really struggled to keep those people busy during the off season,” Marcus says, noting the financial challenge of keeping staff when they’re not required.

The company has had a good local crew of regulars, who like the on and off season, “but we were still really struggling to get enough high quality people”, he says. Then Covid-19 closed the borders and things got even tougher, with access to Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme workers from Pacific Islands crunched. “We have been using RSE guys over the past five or six years,” says Marcus. “Normally it’s a dozen and in past few years we have had four or five.” That puts more pressure on their full-time managers, who are already busy.

The intern scheme has been a fantastic innovation, he says. “It has allowed us to attract and retain high quality people by offering them a full-time job. It just happens to be three different organisations whose seasons are complimentary.” It’s not the first time Ormond has worked with other businesses with a different busy period, but the combination of three employers with different seasons is a viable long-term solution, he says.

And the programme is a win-win, offering the interns a great opportunity to build knowledge and networks quickly, as a great leg up to the wine industry, Marcus adds, calling it a “crash course” in vines and wines. Coordinating to ensure pay rates, holiday pay and sick leave are aligned throughout the year has taken some figuring out, “but it’s easy to do when you are working with like-minded companies”, he says. “We all want to make it work.”