Larkman Nurseries
Skills in a growing business
Signing up to the Victorian Skills Pledge sends a message – to employees, customers and other businesses in your industry - that your business values and benefits from good quality staff training.
Larkman Nurseries is one such business. Clive Larkman, proprietor of both Larkman Nurseries and the Victorian agency of Renaissance Herbs, signed up to the Victorian Skills Pledge as a public declaration of his business’s commitment to skills development. “Thanks to training, I have people like Kegan with the skills to get the job done,” he says. Now fully qualified, Kegan, 24, is one of some 20 apprentices the Larkmans have employed and trained over the past 20 years at their Lilydale and Wandin wholesale nurseries, which together produce over one and a half million plants a year.
Nine years ago, Kegan was doing a traineeship via the Community Jobs Program. He was working on a memorial garden for the Mt Evelyn RSL when someone told Clive about him. “It was a struggle to find an apprenticeship at the time,” Kegan says. “Everyone wanted someone already trained.” Clive interviewed him and offered him an apprenticeship.
Kegan studied for his Certificate III in Horticulture with Swinburne TAFE at Wantirna. For him, the mix of practical training and theory only deepened his love of plants and reinforced that he is on the right career path. “Now he’s teaching the other two young apprentices,” Clive says. “We can rely on him to use his initiative and think about doing things before we’ve asked him to do it. He has built a good relationship with us as a family and has earned a lot of respect.”
Part of the Victorian Government’s reform of the TAFE and training system, the Victorian Skills Pledge is open to businesses of all sizes in the private, public and community sectors. If your business is small to medium sized (up to 200 full-time equivalent staff), when you sign up to the Victorian Skills Pledge the Government can help you to skill your workforce through Skills for Growth: the Workforce Development Program. Skills for Growth provides eligible businesses with independent specialists to work with them – at no cost – to identify their strategic business aims and objectives, assess staff skills, and place staff into relevant accredited training.
Pledge businesses are also linked with the relevant Industry Training Advisory Body, which can help them understand and use the skills system.
The aim of the Victorian Skills Pledge, to improve the quality and uptake of skill development across the state, is underwritten by another component of the training system reform, the Victorian Training Guarantee. This ensures that any new training qualifies for a government subsidy if it involves upskilling employees through an approved provider.
With nearly 30 staff in total, Larkman Nurseries currently employ two apprentices and they are hoping a third employee will also take up an apprenticeship. Clive believes a balance of on and off-site training is best and tries to get young staff to do as many things as possible on the job - everything a nursery manager will one day have to do. “Off the job training gives them the foundation skills and knowledge: it helps tie all the things they learn on site together,” he says. “After that, it’s up to us to give them the opportunities to use the knowledge and grow from it.”