- Training
o Funding
o Quality
o Access/provision
o Coordination of collective opportunities like first aid recertification
o The cost of maintaining qualifications (who shares that burden)
o Opportunities for training to further professional development and progress careers
- Employment
o Employee onboarding
o Employee support (field support, career support, but also post incident support)
o Pay
o Conditions (eg PPE, first aid kits, penalty rates, use of vehicles, etc)
o Vulnerable workers
o Insecure work (casualisation, seasonality, etc)
o Underemployment
o Rights and responsibilities (incl sham contracting, WHS, insurances, risk, licences, duty of care, etc)
- Career longevity/sustainability
o Financial (short and long term)
o Professional development
o Career pathways
o Health (mental and physical)
o Community (family and friends)
o High turnover of workers
§ Loss of investment made in training
§ Loss of corporate knowledge, experience and wisdom (not passed on to new workers)
- Collaboration and connection
o Geographically, temporally, and functionally fragmented and/or isolated workers
o Communication and centralised messaging in the sector for workers instead of management
o No collective voice for outdoor leaders to governments, regulators, industries, academia or the general public on:
§ Policy
§ Standards
§ Funding
§ Laws
- Collecting data
o A sector that is poorly understood, segmented, represented and/or measured
o Research/data that is focussed on addressing concerns of employees
o Unfavourable industry data (Loss of workers from the sector, as distinct from job hopping within the sector) and trends (with relation to government understanding and, in turn, support)
- Employees as the solution not the problem
o Concern about the blame for many problems being directed at employees
o (eg pay is expensive, insurance is expensive, quality of staff is poor, turnover is high, etc)
o Employees often shoulder the burden. We think this is unreasonable
o The outdoor sector faces many challenges, but these don’t stem from problems with the professional leaders in the sector
o Outdoor sector employees are passionate, committed professionals but are not treated or supported as such
o