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Skills Active Aotearoa, the industry training organisation for snowsport in New Zealand, recently spoke with Cardrona’s People and Performance Manager Laura Hedley, about on-job training in an alpine environment.

With skiers and snowboarders eagerly anticipating the start of the season, Cardrona Alpine Resort has produced a new video in which it shares some of the workforce development practices it uses to build a world-class team on the mountain.

“We are one of New Zealand’s biggest ski resorts,” Hedley says.

“Thousands of people come up here every year to ski and snowboard.”

These visitors are looked after by a crew of more than 700 staffers during the winter ski season, she adds. It’s the talent, hard work and professionalism of this team that ensures guests come off the mountain each day having had a fantastic experience whatever the weather.

Hedley says Cardrona has teamed up with Skills Active for several years now to deliver a wide range of qualifications to its team. These include technical certificates for skilled professionals in departments such as bootfitting, rentals, snowschool and lift operations.

About 350 people also went through the Alpine Resort Operations qualification in 2018 – this is an introduction for new starters on the mountain, which gives them a grounding in Cardrona’s operations, its values and health and safety systems.

“Everyone comes to Cardrona for a different reason, some of that is career development and some of that is to become better in a certain skill. If we can offer some of these on-job qualifications to them, we’re going to be able to keep this really good team that we have here.”

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