Industry insights on skills needs
According to the Sport and Recreation IRC’s 2019 Skills Forecast, the following form the top priority skills required across the industry:
- Teamwork and communication
- Problem solving
- Self management
- Technical/Job specific skills.
Additionally, other skills and knowledge gaps identified included online and social media, marketing, initiative and enterprise (i.e. small business management) and sports administration.
The following generic skills were also identified as highest priority for the Sport and Recreation industry:
- Customer Service/Marketing
- Communication/Virtual collaboration/Social intelligence
- Learning agility/Information literacy/Intellectual autonomy and self-management
- Design mindset/Thinking critically/System thinking/Solving problems
- Managerial/Leadership.
The importance of communication is supported by findings from the job vacancy data, in which communication skills was identified as the most in demand advertised generic skill in the Sports and Recreation Activities industry, followed by energetic, organisational skills, planning and detail orientated.
According to job vacancy data the most advertised occupations were for Fitness Instructor, followed by Swimming Coach or Instructor, with the top two employers identified as YMCA and Anytime Fitness.
The Sport and Recreation IRC’s 2019 Skills Forecast highlights that workforce shortages currently exist for swimming teachers and aquatic centre managers, with the high demand for people to fill these roles expected into the future.
Another challenge facing the sector is access to these facilities in remote areas. As sporting and aquatic facilities are often provided by local councils, access can be limited due to restricted operating budgets. Solutions are required to overcome these challenges as the benefits of accessing these facilities are widely acknowledged and include improved health outcomes, providing culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities the opportunity to participate in the community, and offering an avenue for young people to pursue sporting interests.
In addition, current data suggests children are leaving swimming programs prior to reaching the national benchmarks for swimming and water safety. Socio-economic factors appear to further impact the incidence of attending swimming lessons, with attendance from a younger age more likely amongst those from higher socio-economic areas as opposed to children from low socio-economic areas. The call to strengthen school, vacation and water safety programs in the community will further increase the need for quality swimming and water safety teachers.
According to the Sport and Recreation IRC’s 2019 Skills Forecast, increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to Australia’s rising obesity rates. As people are living longer there are many who are living with chronic conditions and this contributes to the need to think differently about the role of sport, fitness and recreation in promoting physical health. More than one in two adults are living sedentary or low activity lifestyles and four in five Australian children are not meeting the recommended activity guidelines.
According to a journal article, the aquatics industry has been experiencing unprecedented levels of turnover amongst lifeguards. Analysis determined that lifeguards leave their current positions for four main reasons: lifeguarding being a temporary position, a negative working environment, pursuing employment in a higher paying lifeguard position, and location. Centre managers therefore need to consider both short and long-term strategies to retain lifeguards.
In response to this turnover the Sport and Recreation IRC has updated the Aquatic Instruction training package products in the SIS training package relating to job roles in the aquatic industry, with the update comprising of two units of competency and the creation of one new skill set.
FutureNow’s 2021 report on sport and recreation reveals that Swimming Instructors and Pool Lifeguards were heavily impacted due to the pandemic when swimming pools and beaches were closed. Across Australia the COVID-19 pandemic led to a loss of employment or a significant reduction in hours for many of the 67,000 frontline workers, of which almost half were casual employees, three-quarters female and 40% between the ages of 18 to 24 years. Two nationally recognised short courses, the Pool Lifeguard Skill Set and the Swimming and Water Safety Teacher Skill Set have been developed to fast-track participants into entry level pool lifeguarding and swimming instructor roles.
