UNSW Sydney yesterday launched its new workplace learning offer, Mentem by UNSW, which offers contextualised education programs to industry and government organisations to help meet current and future skills shortages.
Mentem by UNSW assesses an organisation’s needs and provides learning programs, training and coaching that incorporates formal education from UNSW expertise to reskill businesses for the long-term.
Vice-Chancellor and president, Professor Attila Brungs, said Mentem has been established at a critical juncture, with labour shortages expected to be a key focus of the federal government’s upcoming Jobs and Skills Summit, and with the country’s unemployment rate hitting a very low 3.5 per cent and many industries struggling to find staff.
“Universities play a key role in making sure our workforce has the skills it needs. Providing businesses with the tools they need to expand and grow is an important part of Australia’s skills planning architecture,” Brungs said.
“UNSW’s world-leading research capability gives us deep expertise in the current and future impact of shifts in various industries.
“By combining this level of academic rigour to a business environment at scale, we can ensure Australia has a workforce capable of meeting the needs of the sectors critical to our nation’s productivity and prosperity.”
According to Professor Chris Styles, UNSW Business School Dean, the university’s 73-year history of world-leading education experience makes Mentem uniquely placed to deliver skills across a large spectrum of disciplines.
“The government recently signalled its bid to have Australia predominantly powered by renewable energy. To do this, we must rapidly scale up our renewable energy workforce,” he explained.
“Being able to tap into and repackage UNSW’s vast amounts of higher education content into upskill and reskill products, which organisations can deploy in a way that is contextualised and relevant, allows us to offer a multi-disciplinary approach.
“The learning programs also aim to develop employees, irrespective of their role, to operate effectively in increasingly digital workplaces, as well as providing courses in other critical enterprise skills, such as problem solving and decision-making.”
Since its establishment in 2021, Mentem has developed and delivered digital literacy, data analytics, and business process modelling programs across government, not-for-profits, and the finance sector.
One recent example includes taking employees from across Suncorp Group and reskilling them to become proficient in business process modelling.
Matt Leslie, Suncorp Group EGM People and Culture Strategy, said developing this capability in-house reflected the company’s strong commitment to investing in its people, and building a workforce fit for the future.
“Reskilling our people in this important area of end-to-end business process modelling enables us to better review our service offerings, and ultimately, improve the experience for our customers,” he said.
According to Mentem CEO Arvind Sampath, the initiative also recently developed and implemented a Digital Skills Uplift pilot program for employees at the Department of Regional NSW.
“The program is a mix of formal and on-the-job learning, including coaching support, and is designed to fit into the daily work of employees. The scalable program was also co-designed with employees,” Sampath said.
“Another unique feature is our Insights platform, which enables us to take an end-to-end approach to learning. The platform allows us to identify who is best suited to meet the evolving demands of the business, pinpoint where their training should focus, and then measure the learners’ progress throughout delivery.
“No two businesses are the same. That’s why Mentem designs contextualised learning experiences that align skills programs to strategic objectives.
“We go about training a little differently too. Our approach is to embed an organisations’ subject matter experts, to really empower peer-to-peer learning. This enables businesses to become a self-sustaining learning environment, where employees continually grow together.”