Wine Industry Skills Survey
Thank you for taking the time to complete this important survey.
Please download the survey instructions here, or please continue to read below.
This survey has now closed.
This critical survey will help ensure the future of your workforce
“The most important survey you can complete to ensure the future of your workforce”
- Richard Laugesen, Craiglochart Vineyard
Preparing our industry for the future
Deep insights for businesses to plan their workforce
Wine Industry Skills Survey
Thank you for taking the time to complete this important survey.
Please download the survey instructions here, or please continue to read below.
You will need to be prepared with information about your business – details are in the survey instructions. We recommend large employers aim to complete the survey over several sessions. You can work through one section at a time and come back to the survey at any stage before the survey window closes.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE WORKFORCE SURVEY
Wine Marlborough Ltd, New Zealand Winegrowers, and the Sector Workforce Engagement Programme are working together to ensure New Zealand has a strong, capable and thriving wine industry comprised of healthy people and businesses. We have commissioned Business and Economic Research Limited (BERL), an independent research consultancy, to conduct research with businesses in the wine industry, and businesses that provide goods or services to the wine industry.
This research will enable the wine industry and crucial support services to have a big picture understanding of where skill gaps exist and what clusters of skills look like in the wine industry, and to take a strategic and cohesive approach to workforce planning. The final report and outputs will be available to all businesses that participate in the survey to support you in your workforce planning.
The first part of this research is a survey to define and quantify the roles and skills that make up the wine industry (from vineyard to market). You are invited to participate in this research because your business is a core wine industry business or provides essential support services to the wine industry.
Your individual responses will be kept strictly confidential, and all responses are aggregated (grouped together), so your business will remain anonymous. Participation is voluntary, and you may withdraw at any time. Only the BERL research team will have access to the raw survey data. All information will be stored on a password protected drive and deleted by BERL at the completion of the project. The aggregated survey data will then be held by Wine Marlborough to ensure this data remains available to the wine industry.
These instructions prepare you to complete the survey by advising you on the type of questions in each section and what information you will need to have ready to be able to answer the questions. You can work through one section at a time, and come back to the survey at any stage before the survey window closes. SurveyMonkey will remember where you were in the survey, as long as you use the same computer to enter your responses.
SECTION ONE - BUSINESS DETAILS
This section includes a range of business demography questions, including type of business, location of operations and any corporate headquarters, and number of employees.
To answer these questions, you will need to have the following information to hand:
Wineries (including contract winemakers) – Number of litres produced per year
Vineyards – Number of hectares currently in production
Provider of support services to the wine industry – An estimate of the share (by percentage) of your business that comes from the wine industry by time (not revenue)
All businesses – Headcount of employees by type (e.g., full-time and part-time employees, seasonal workers, casual workers – including vintage staff).
Most of the business detail questions will be used for disaggregation; this is where we break types of responses into sub-categories, such as regions, business size, and business type, to understand similarities and differences. Your business will not be able to be identified by these responses.
SECTION TWO - SKILLS AND TRAINING
This section is the most substantial in the survey, and is the backbone of mapping the skills needed for current and future wine industry activities. This section will help us map the range of duties and skills across the wine industry, from growers to labour supply to support services to wineries, and provide a baseline for what jobs make up the wine workforce.
To be prepared for this section, you will need the position descriptions of your workers directly engaged in wine industry activities, as well as a list of support employees, e.g., human resources and finance roles (and how many of these you employ). Workers directly engaged in wine industry activities include vineyard and winery workers, as well as laboratory technicians, mechanical engineers, machine operators, growers, bottling and logistics specialists, wine marketers, and anyone who has specialised viticulture skills and experience.
For these workers, you will be using the position descriptions to list the job title, main duties, core skills, technical skills, and qualifications for each of these positions. We ask about vacancies and the training provided, too.
If your business contracts a labour supplier, or other support industry goods and service provider, as part of operational activities, please do not include these contractors in your headcounts or position descriptions. This section is for direct employees only.
If you are a grower or sole operator and do not have any direct employees, we would like to understand more about your role. Please complete this section, including main duties, core skills, technical skills, and relevant qualifications for your position (marked as owner-operator). Please mark any questions that do not apply as N/A.
Instructions for all businesses
Support employees include management and administration roles, such as human resources, accounts payable/receivable, information technology and support, and office manager or leadership roles. For these positions, you will be listing the job titles only. The survey has capacity for up to 50 of these positions.
Growers and sole operators do not need to complete this section.
Instructions for businesses with 20 or fewer position descriptions
If you have 20 or fewer position descriptions for workers directly engaged in wine industry activities, you will complete this section on SurveyMonkey. If you have position descriptions that have similar duties and skills, please combine them.
You will list the number of employees in each of these positions, as well as the average length of tenure, average hours worked, and average hourly wage. Annual salaries (or the dollar value of annual salary packages) can be converted to hourly wages by dividing the salaries by 52, and then by the average number of hours worked per week. For example, $72,000 divided by 52 = $1,384.62 per week, then divided by 40 (assuming 40 hours on average worked per week) = $34.62 average hourly wage.
Duties include tasks such as planning/supervising the production of wine from selected grape varieties, operating machinery to make and/or bottle wine, pruning and maintaining grape vines, and managing wine inventory. Core skills are non-specialist skills gained through life experience and formal education, such as the ability to work unsupervised, teamwork, problem solving, the ability to delegate, read and interpret instructions, and effective work planning. Technical skills are specialist skills needed for that specific position, and may include knowledge of specialised technology or tools. These skills include undertaking laboratory operations and analysis, explaining technical product information to customers, operating specific equipment, and transporting crops or finished products.
Instructions for businesses with 21 or more position descriptions
If you have 21-to-50 position descriptions for these employees, you will complete the majority of this section in Excel. Please use the Excel spreadsheet provided, as this has been designed to match the SurveyMonkey responses. The instructions for the spreadsheet are on the first worksheet of the survey. If you have position descriptions that have similar duties and skills, please combine them.
SECTION THREE - TURNOVER
This section discusses employee turnover, including exit interviews, the reasons workers left, and where they went.
If your business conducts exit interviews, it will be helpful to have summary information from these to complete this section of the survey. Otherwise, please list the number of workers who have left in the past year. Growers and sole operators do not need to complete this section.
SECTION FOUR - BUSINESS OPERATIONS
This short section asks about leave liability and whether your business has created any new roles within the last three years.
Leave liability is the dollar value of all the types of leave that may be paid out in a final pay, such as annual leave, long service leave, and alternative leave accrued by working on a statutory holiday. Leave liability on your balance sheet is both an indication of financial liability (when workers leave) and a sign of labour constraints (when workers are unable to take leave). Growers and sole operators do not need to complete this section.
SECTION FIVE - FUTURE RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES
The last section in the survey is an opportunity to think about where you see the wine industry going, and where you see your own business going, particularly in terms of workforce opportunities and risks.
This could include how jobs are being created or transformed due to adopting technology, changing practices, or climate change, for example. It could also include changing markets, education/training possibilities, or any other disruptions, risks, or possibilities that you see for your business and the wine industry. You may want to talk with your leadership team or different teams within your business to gather this information.
Wine Industry Skills Survey
If you have questions or would like more information, please reach out to project lead Nicci Armour via nicci@winemarlborough.nz