Bosses want upskilled workforce? Pay your way, says Suncorp
Key Points
- Suncorp chairwoman Christine McLoughlin says national skills-shortage looms.
- She says 1 potential fix is for business to allocate paid development time.
- Argues that such time will become an employee right.
Suncorp chairwoman Christine McLoughlin says employers must allot paid time for staff to develop skills, saying this will become a “fundamental employee right”.
Promoting and funding such skills development will help close a national skills shortage and boost productivity, Ms McLoughlin said on Tuesday.
Suncorp chairwoman Christine McLoughlin on Tuesday raised questions about bridging a skills gap.
But she said businesses had so far fallen short in upskilling employees, and that workplaces needed to act swiftly to catch up.
Speaking at a QUT Business Leaders’ Forum lunch, the chairwoman of the $20 billion banking-insurance conglomerate argued people caring for families and running households while working full-time did not have enough hours to undertake personal development in their own time.
“Studying and reskilling just slips by the way,” she said. “Part of the employment proposition as I see it, given how much change is going on, is to embed [skills development] into the paid day job, in a focused and directed way.
“Then, we will be able to demonstrate productivity [and have] people feeling they can thrive, they’re not being left behind.”
She cited data that predicted Australia needed an additional 600,000 technology workers to meet a goal of 1.2 million people in such roles by 2030, a “whopping” gap that needed to be closed quickly.
“Continuous skill development will in future be considered a fundamental employee right, not a workplace duty or an add-on benefit. Employers need to take charge of this agenda [including by] directly attributing paid work time to skills development,” she said.
“This is something historically we have not done at the right level.”
Speaking on the event’s sidelines, Ms McLoughlin told The Australian Financial Review the company was working constructively with state and federal governments to clear political sign-off for selling Suncorp’s banking arm to ANZ for $4.9 billion.
That deal was revived after ANZ successfully appealed the competition regulator’s decision to block the merger in the belief that it would entrench the banking oligopoly.
ANZ will proceed with an application to Treasurer Jim Chalmers to approve the deal on national interest grounds. The Queensland government also needs to amend a law to allow the deal.
Ms McLoughlin played a straight bat to questions about how discussions were going, saying the dealings were “all very professional”.
Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick has been an enthusiastic backer, saying his state was the “winner from this merger”. Among the sweeteners on offer included an additional insurance centre in Townsville for Suncorp and more jobs from a new ANZ Brisbane technology hub.
Even when the Australian Competition Tribunal paved the way for the deal to proceed last month, it raised doubts about some of the supposed Queensland benefits.
Its decision noted some of the sweeteners were “significantly qualified”, highlighting the supposed lending commitment of $35 billion over 10 years.
“The tribunal does not accept that the lending commitments can be characterised as ‘certain’, or that the spending commitments are ‘clear and time bound’,” it said.
“If the Queensland commitments are profit maximising, there is no sound reason why [Suncorp or ANZ] or any other profit maximising entity would not pursue them absent the proposed acquisition,” the tribunal said.
Suncorp and ANZ declined to respond to the tribunal’s comments.
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