What’s happening in the L&D space?
In the last survey sent to the Group, a popular response was for more training, so Winslow Group Learning and Development Manager Caden Harte provides an update on the L&D team’s efforts over the past 12 months.
Team Update
The team has expanded this year with Bety Mateski joining us as a Training Coordinator. She previously worked to support the Jemena team with its compliance training requirements.
With the addition of Bety, we now have a dedicated resource looking after Winslow Infrastructure, SMS, Trafman, OptHire and Total Underground Solutions (TUS).
Kerryanne Meiorin continues to support Winslow Constructors, YVE, Native Space, Winslow Maintenance, and Ecosphere and Nexpave.
Apprenticeship and Traineeships.
Certificate III Civil Construction
Winslow’s apprenticeship numbers are still some of the strongest in the industry despite a difficult market in Metro Victoria.
Along with that resilience is an uptick in apprentice and trainee numbers in our other markets. Regional Victoria numbers continue to increase, we had our first civil construction sign-ups in NSW, our South Australia cohort is growing, and Queensland continues to have solid cohort numbers.
National Skills Institute and Construction Skills Training Centre continue to do a great job supporting our apprentices and trainees on the ground.
Certificate III Landscape Construction/Parks and Gardens
Our initial group for Landscape Construction had difficult time to obtain their qualification by having to travel to Rosebud for classes. We have recently engaged a new provider for Native Space whose on-site training model is a close match to what our civil construction apprentices enjoy, meaning our existing apprentices will be swapped over and we are ready to begin enrolling the next group of 10.
We are also now able to offer the Maintenance team a Certificate III Parks and Gardens also with on-site training.
Certificate IV Civil Construction.
Our first Victorian Cert IV Civil group commenced earlier this year, after a few years absence, and is progressing well. We have been registering names for the next group, which will be enrolled early 2026.
Queensland continues to offer Cert IV funded by Construction Skills Queensland, and SA had its first enrolment with Civil Train. We will look to increase these offerings in the New Year.
Operator Training Program
Winslow’s Operator Training Team continues to lead the industry with training and up-skilling of plant operators. Their big focus over the past 12 months has been to extend their offering to move types of plant, ramping up cross-training. They currently deliver training to Victoria, South Australia, and our Queensland teams.
Undergrad/Graduate Training
We continue to strengthen our Graduate Program with the inclusion of structured learning session, which compliments the on-the-job learning our program has always delivered so well. Our first group started this year in South Australia, with the next focus being offering the structured learning component to the teams on the ground in Queensland.
eLearning
Winslow continues to create bespoke training with the help of Paul Moody, our dedicated Instructional Designer. Rather than off the shelf, these courses are created specifically for the Winslow team. More than 9000 courses have been issued to employees this year. We have more units planned to be delivered before Christmas, and when we return in the New Year we will head back into our annual renewal cycle. For anyone looking for more training, your eLearning queue is a great place to start: https://learning.winslow.com.au/
Leadership Training
Winslow Site Leadership Program
Our Site Leadership Program continues to provide amazing value. Our usual process after each group is to review the program and look at opportunities to continue to expand the learning with more modules, and I am proud to say that we have also been able to increase the capacity of our programs, and the reach of the participants. We have changed this program to a hybrid live-online and in-person model. We can now offer 3-4 of these programs per year, and are able to take people from all over the country on the journey, with participates from South Australia and Queensland participating in the latest group.
Emerging Leaders Program
The Emerging Leaders Program has nearly completed its fourth group since its creation two and a half years ago. Like the Site Leadership Program this course has been designed to be hybrid in person and live-online, allowing us to offer this program across various locations.
While the initial cohorts for this program were all engineers, we can happily say that this course has been updated and expanded to be able to accommodate a range of roles across the Winslow Group, with the latest cohorts including SMS, Trafman and OptHire. I am proud to advise that we have increased the capacity in this program, adding in more places per group, and increasing it to two per year. Our waitlist for the next program is nearly full and we are agreeing on the next start date
Elevate Program
Elevate program has again been delivered to our senior team this year, with the current group having its last session on the October 28. We have been busy collating a waitlist for the next group, which will begin in 2026. As always, thanks to Andrew Horsfield who continues to support Winslow and the development of our senior teams.
General Management Program
We continued this year to put groups forward for Training with Melbourne Business School.
Winslow Training Facility
We moved back into the newly renovated Melbourne office at 50 Barry Rd, Campbellfield in January. Pat Zaffina and the team went all out and included in the renovation was the Winslow Training Facility, our dedicated training space custom built to serve as the central hub for Training at Winslow.
We are currently upgrading the AV to elevate our live on-line learning capability. The Winslow Training Facility is a huge step forward for the L&D team, better equipping us to deliver on our mission of making training opportunities available to all Winslow employees across the group, regardless of location.
