Friday 20 February 2015:

I join my colleague Assistant Minister Simon Birmingham in urging Australian employers to take part in the Survey of Australian Employers being conducted by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) over coming weeks.

The survey is an important tool to help Australian business, trainers and all governments understand how our training sector is fairing and where improvements need to be made.
The views of small businesses matter. Small business makes a strong contribution to employment in Australia; around 43 per cent of all private sector employment is from small business.

The success of our small businesses is reliant on the drive and entrepreneurship of small business owners, but also the people that they employ, and it is critical that Australians have the job-ready skills to ensure our economy is strong and successful.

Businesses will be randomly selected from the Australian Business Register to participate in the survey, which will be conducted until June 2015. The survey aims to ask 9,000 employers from across the country and from all industry sectors about their experiences on how they meet their skill needs and how staff training needs could be better met.

The results will be published on NCVER’s website in late 2015.