IMNZ is All About Growing Your Skills

New Zealand’s largest industry training organisation, the Institute of Management NZ (IMNZ) is committed to giving its industry groups the best possible technical and commercial skills to grow their businesses, and Skills Group, the purchaser of the Institute of Management NZ (IMNZ), can boast some very impressive statistics.

Skills has a 25-year history, is New Zealand’s largest industry training organisation (ITO) and manages more than 100 New Zealand qualifications. It works with more than 4,000 employers to facilitate apprenticeship/training programmes for up to 20,000 trainees. And all this across 22 industries as diverse as electricians, plumbers, gasfitters, roofers, real estate agents, security guards, government and emergency response.

Skills Group chief executive, Garry Fissenden, said, in announcing the purchase, that Skills is committed to, “giving our industries the best possible technical and commercial skills to grow their businesses, their industry and New Zealand.”

He told Management that there are two parts to the purchase of IMNZ. Firstly, large corporate and government departments they work with want leadership and management training and often ask what Skills Group can do for them.

Corporates see this space as a natural extension of what Skills already does.

In the SME sector, where many of their trade clients are, there is currently not a great deal of formal leadership/management training undertaken which, he says, could be due to a price point, relevance to the SME’s or quality issues. “New Zealand is not keeping up in the international productivity stakes.” Part of Treasury’s hypothesis is that this is because we are largely a country made up of SMEs, and SMEs do not always have the capacity and management resources to fully leverage their businesses.

He sees this move as a way of allowing businesses to lift their own management capability. “In a typical trade business someone has gone into business because they are a good tradesman or woman. They think they can make money and they focus on being a great tradesperson.” But, he says, in a successful trade business the owner should not be saying they are an electrician, plumber or roofer. Instead they should be saying they are a successful businessperson who happens to run a trade business.

Next month we continue with this theme, explaining how IMNZ offers targeted leadership and management training, and for more information on courses in Auckland, project management courses and business courses Wellington please go to http://imnz.net.nz .