Do we have to have the TQS?

I’ve written responses to some very good questions over the life of this blog. The question above is probably the best question of all. I hope I can do justice to the question in my answer.

Where are you going?

Whether or not you need the TQS depends on your business model and your business objectives. If you’re looking to rely on government funding for your income, then you definitely need to consider the TQS seriously.

If the funding bodies with which you work expect their suppliers to hold the TQS, then clearly Achieving the TQS will make business sense.

It might also make sense to achieve certification if you want to become a member of your National Skills Academy (NSA). TQS certification could become a condition of NSA membership in the future.

However, you need to think of some other issues, too.

Will it matter to our customers if we gain the TQS?

To address this think about your relationships with your customers.

Will your customers think differently of you if you hold the TQS? Will they do more business with you? How much value do your customers place on the TQS as a brand and as an indicator of training excellence?

Will you take action to make the most of that certification with your customers? Are you going to use your TQS certification as a means of differentiating yourself from other provider organisations? Will you use your certification to promote yourself strongly?

Will you take a hand in promoting the TQS brand? After all, once you hold certification, it will be in your own interests to promote the TQS concept, too.

Will it matter within the learning and skills world, if we gain the TQS?

Will holding TQS certification help you to fulfil the requirements of other assessment frameworks? Will your TQS certification help you with inspection issues?

Don’t just look at the requirements of each framework as you think about your answer. Think also about whether the work you do in the TQS context will make life easier for you when you are preparing for inspection. Will having systems, processes, frameworks and structures in place for managing relationships with your employer customers will help you with your preparations for other assessments?

Doing more with less

Achieving more with limited resources is going to be important for many years to come.

Will the process you go through as you prepare for TQS certification help you to work more efficiently and more productively?

Have you thought about the benefits you will gain by overhauling the ways in which you manage relationships with employer customers? Will those systems and processes help you to work smarter? Will the new systems help you to do more business with your existing customers? Will you give your employer customers a better experience because you have a systematic approach to dealing with them?

For example:

• Do you record the costs you incur in order to gain a new employer customer?
• Do you work out how much it costs you to hold on to an employer customer?

The systems and processes you introduce to help you to achieve the TQS may cut the costs of both activities. To be sure of this you will need to do some measurement of current expenditure.

In the end you might decide you can’t afford not to seek certification, but you won’t know until you do that measurement.

Is the TQS providing a framework for excellence?

Irrespective of TQS certification issues does the TQS provide you with a framework that will help you to serve your employer customers better?

If you believe it does, then you will probably have the answer to the question about whether you have to have the TQS, too.

See also:

How much LMI do we need?

An assessor's view of the TQS

What did you gain as a result of working with us?

How often do we keep in touch with our employers?

Meeting the A5/B3 Challenge

If you're planning for your TQS assessment, you will be thinking about A5 and about B3 - if you're looking to be certificated for both parts of the standard.

What is all the fuss about?

Why do so many organisations seeking TQS certification struggle with A5 and B3?

Well, the answer has a lot to do with how the FE sector views awards and how the sector goes about getting endorsed, certificated and approved.

Anyone who has worked in FE – and that means colleges and learning provider organisations – knows what happens when an organisation decides to go for an award.

People are asked to focus their efforts on gaining the prize: Investors in People, the Matrix Standard and so on.

It doesn’t matter what the challenge is, the approach is the same.

Busy people are asked to apply lots of effort to preparing to meet the new challenge.

• They are asked to focus on the requirements of the award and make sure they address them.
• They are briefed about why this prize is important.
• They are asked to give the award their full attention.
• They do lots of extra work to ensure their areas comply with requirements.
• Their organisation gains the award.
• Their organisation moves on to the next challenge.

This approach is the main reason why so many organisations are struggling with the TQS. The usual methods for getting through don’t work.

Why?

The assessment process is looking to confirm that, over time, you have been doing what is necessary to achieve the standard. Come the assessment, it’s not a case of simply looking at what you are doing right now. You need a history of working in a particular way, and you need to demonstrate that the ways in which you work generate results – results for the employers you work with.

The assessment looks for results and for trends in results.

Consider the following when you think about trends.

Is progress being made towards increasing levels of performance? If already at a high level, is it being sustained? Is the trend sustained for two years or more?

Think also about your results and the targets you set.

Are targets being set and on what basis? Is performance against targets being monitored? How well are targets being achieved?

Then there are results in comparison to others.

Are results achieve being compared with those of other organisations? How well do the results compare, given different contexts?

Oh yes, and where do you write about results? You’re right, in A5 and B3.

Of course, for the moment, those who can’t show the results and the data necessary to address these aspects of the standard can gain conditional certification, but that all changes later this year.

The reason for this is obvious. Every one has had plenty of time to become familiar with the TQS requirements, so every one should now be working towards addressing them.

Of course, that’s the theory, but life isn’t really like that.

Quite a few organisations are still using the tried and trusted FE development model outlined above.

Your organisation doesn’t fall into that category, does it? You don’t go for the short-term approach, do you?

If you think you do, now’s the time for action. Change the model you use for developing your organisation, if you want to Achieve the TQS. Start to develop a longer-term perspective, and think about those trends, over time.

See also:

Planning the TQS development journey: first things first

What's the real difference between Part A and Part B of the Training Quality Standard?

A thought for January 2010 - Are you creating the right impression?

Here's an activity to try out whilst the snow seems set to keep us all at home.

There’s nothing more satisfying when you come to think about how you’re progressing with your TQS development journey than to be able to set out in front of you your systems and processes for managing your work with employers.

I say “set out in front of you” because it’s a good idea if you organise your development journey so that you’re able to do this.

You will be better able to be clear about what you do and how you do it, if you use a visual approach.

What does your employer engagement system look like?

Some people use process maps – and there is software around to help you to do this. Some people use flow charts. Some people use a range of colourful and fancy methods. It’s not important which approach you use. What is important is that you think about what needs to be done to manage your relationships with employers. Then set out the processes you use to do the job.

When we help people with this task in our workshops, we start with the employer’s journey.

We look at the various stages of an employer’s involvement with a provider.

These include:

1. the time before the employer works with the provider organisation
2. the contracting stage
3. the time when the employer is working with the provider organisation
4. the time when the first piece of work/contract finishes.

We then look at what the provider organisation needs to do to support the employer at each stage of that journey.

This is the time to draw up a list of the processes you use.

For example, in the time before you begin working with an employer, you will need a process for managing enquiries, a process for deciding how and when to refer an enquirer on, a process for checking that the employer doesn’t get lost in the voicemail limbo, a process for undertaking organisational needs analyses, and process for getting proposals completed . . . and so on.

We provide a list and help people to decide what they need. Of course, we also have some sample processes, which people find helpful.

All of this means the value of mapping management processes is established quickly in the workshop. People draw their flow charts or their process maps. These then become the documents used throughout their organisation.

As a result of adopting this approach they make rapid progress with the tasks linked to consistency and standardisation.

• They have something to work with when they are training their staff.
• They have processes that they can document in more detail if they wish.
• They have an approach which is easy to communicate.

Pause for a moment then, and think just for a moment about how you start your relationship with an individual employer.

• Can you set out your process simply?
• Can you fit the overview onto a single page?

Think about the various stages and the impressions you will create with employers at each stage.

If you have difficulties take a step back and look again at the posts on:

What exactly are you trying to do to support employers?

Employer engagement basics - the summary

Net promotion

I haven’t written much about TQS validation and net promotion before.

Like lots of people, if I were asked to give a rating to a supplier on a scale of one to ten, unless I knew what the scores meant, I would never give a nine or a ten.

For me eight out of ten is as much as I can ever really see myself giving.

Quite a few people have been asking about net promotion and its background recently so it’s time to write a post about it.

Where does the concept of the Net Promoter® score come from?

Did it come from the LSC?
No, it didn’t.

Did it come from OFSTED?
No, it didn’t.

Did it come from government?
No, it didn’t.

In fact the concept is well established in the field of building customer loyalty and assisting business improvement. It’s also a registered mark so strictly one should always put ® after writing the term Net Promoter®.

There’s a book called: The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld which really started to popularise the concept. It has been taken up by lots of large companies hoping to build their business through building customer loyalty.

In fact, there is a whole industry linked to net promotion and using it to build business. One of the interesting statistics is that those who embrace the concept and use it to drive improvement in their business are likely to grow faster than other organisations in their industry by about 2.5 times.

Of course, there’s a lot more to net promotion than ringing up customers and asking them that question.

There’s a plenty of information to be found at:

www.netpromoter.com

Achieving the TQS, one year on - the view from Wakefield College

Liz McFarlane, Director Services to Business, Wakefield College, offers her view today on the benefits of holding the TQS.

Thank you, Liz, for your insights.

"Definitely not a time to sit back and bask in the euphoria of achievement!

It is a time for consolidation and embedding of all the good practice developed over the year.

It was not until I addressed the question of the effect on us at Wakefield College that I really understood the depth and breadth of the issue. It has had an effect not only on the Services to Business Department and its staff but also the whole college and its stakeholders. The continuous hard work and proactive approach to employer engagement has been recognised both internally and externally which gives us prestige and thus an edge over our competitors. It easily demonstrates the consistently high quality of our service and provision and our commitment to continual improvement. This has supported the development of the Services to Business brand and enabled us to present a quality image which promotes recognition from employers.

The last year has been one of increased enthusiasm to continue the work that started with TQS.

Staff have developed an immense pride in their work thus providing job satisfaction and promoting excellent team work. There is a feeling that employers trust our quality and products and are happy to work with us not just for the first time but on a regular basis thereafter. New partnerships have been developed in a focussed way and existing ones cemented by the enhanced business approach that has been embedded over the last year.

Preparing for, and achieving, TQS was very hard work but it has had lasting benefits in terms of giving momentum for positive change and providing a framework for improvement that has led to enhanced reputation and increased business. It has demonstrated the quality of our employed engagement through Framework for Excellence to Ofsted and other important stakeholders.

The seamless quality improvement process had led some to say there is nothing different in college but there has in fact been an enormous step change that was born out of the work done in preparation for TQS. Activities are clearly planned to meet the needs of our clients and align with the college mission and objectives, processes and practices have been developed refined and streamlined giving a smooth consistent service and raised the expectations of all concerned. The confidence of teams has been enhanced and the pride in our work has led to a strong ethos of continuous quality improvement that in turn generates the confidence of employers.

Employers however do not overtly treat us differently because of TQS but they do have the confidence in our quality products that brings them back again and again.

New relationships have been developed and long standing ones enhanced. Stakeholder confidence in the college to provide a quality service is high and the TQS kite mark is held in high esteem by the Sector Skills Councils who are an excellent source of support. Communications are greatly improved which makes the employer journey smooth and seamless. These are all benefits that we have enjoyed because of the work we did in preparation for TQS that is now embedded in our practice.

Most employers however do not understand the rigours of TQS or even what it means when they are choosing a training supplier. A higher national profile would greatly assist in the recognition of TQS.

So what are the benefits?

• Employers have confidence in us because we have achieved an externally assessed quality framework.
• It has moved us significantly towards being the training provider of choice in the local and regional area.
• An enhanced reputation among other colleges and providers
• We are continuously challenged to improve and develop our quality service and assess its impact on our customers’ businesses.
• Enhanced ability to win tenders and bids where TQS holds significant influence."

Achieving the TQS - Was it worth it?

There are more than one hundred and twenty organisations listed on the TQS website as having achieved Part A of the Training Quality Standard.

In some cases more than a year has passed since they achieved their certification.

This means it’s possible to ask the question: “Was it worth it?”

You can ask yourself this question, too, wherever you are on your TQS development journey.

Will holding the TQS bring in more business?

Many provider organisations sought certification as a means of differentiating themselves from other providers. They hoped that gaining the TQS would mean that they gained more LSC contracts, or gained larger contracts, and that more employers would value their new status.

The organisations which gained their certification earliest have had the most opportunity to generate new business. Their views are, therefore, of interest to providers who are still on their journey to certification.

I interviewed Rachael Fidler of HTP about the impact of holding the TQS on her business some time ago. She was very positive about the business benefits.

She said:

“We find that employers are seeking us out, as are the LSCs. People see our certification as a statement about the quality of what we do and about our responsiveness to employer needs. That’s good for our business, because more people want to work with us.

I think the impact on us as a business is also very positive. We always knew we worked hard and tried to do a good job. Now we are confident that we do. We are also a stronger team because we worked together on this.”

So that’s one endorsement.

Several of our customers have said that following certification they have been having more conversations with more people and that some of those conversations are leading to business.

In broad terms then, they are saying that achieving the TQS is worth the effort.

Have you built your reputation?

This is a more difficult question.

There are really two parts to it. Reputation building takes place within the FE sector and with employers, too.

Within the sector organisations are looking for their work to be recognised by funding bodies and by OFSTED.

There are quite a few LSCs asking their providers to look seriously at the TQS and anecdotal information from providers in several regions indicates that holding the TQS is now being seen as something of value in the contracting process.

Most providers are aware of the links between the Framework for Excellence and the TQS, so most people in the sector know that holding the TQS certainly helps with aspects of this framework.

But what about building a reputation with employers?

This is more difficult to judge.

Where providers already have good relationships with employers, and with employer groups, there is evidence that relationships are being enhanced, once the provider gains the TQS.

Where a provider is looking for new business, holding the award seems to be of less help, simply because the majority of employers don’t know too much about the TQS. Thus, they are meeting a new provider and being introduced to a new quality badge at the same time.

However, providers do see the potential of the award. I interviewed James Billingham, managing director of TTP about how holding the TQS will help providers and he was very clear about how holding the TQS could offer an organisation advantages.

“The standard is only given to those organisations that can demonstrate a high level of customer satisfaction and a fundamental understanding of their industry. Those training providers that achieve the standard should be the first that employers turn to for good quality training.”

(This article was featured in Fast Forward, the journal for training providers in the logistics sector.)

Have you thought about what you will gain from achieving the TQS?

Now’s the time to think about that you want from your TQS certification. Now’s the time to set some objectives. Now’s the time to think beyond gaining certification and about how holding the TQS will help your business.

• Have you thought about the gains you will make by achieving the TQS?
• Do you know what you want, in business terms, as a result of your TQS certification?
• Have you thought about the opportunities that will be available to you as a holder of the TQS that are not available to you now?
• Have you thought about how you will capitalise on your achievement?

You won’t know if what you gain is worth the effort you put in to achieving the TQS if you don’t know the answers to at least some of these questions.

So ask yourself sooner rather than later if achieving the TQS is going to be worth it.

See also: Goodbye to the early adopters.

Good questions - and great answers

Back in September I was very pleased to publish an interview with Peter Hillman, a TQS assessor with Investors in Excellence.

At the time Peter agreed to answer questions about the TQS on this blog.

Here are the first three questions that were sent to me. Thanks again to Peter for his clear responses.

Why aren't assessors drawn from education and from OFSTED?

"As I indicated in my earlier interview, the assessment includes the perspective of the "employer's experience". It is an assessment of how a provider defines, implements and manages the processes that support this, and how achievements and performance are measured in relation to the objectives defined in the strategy for each aspect of performance - i.e. planned outcomes, employer satisfaction and assessment of impact on the employer's business.
The Standard is an assessment of continuous service quality improvement which is fundamentally different from OFSTED's inspection role.

Part of this difference is that TQS is a process driven assessment framework which looks at how well specific approaches are developed and implemented, where "soundness" (or degree of "good") relates to the contribution to the achievement of the organisation's (provider's) strategy and not to an objective model of educational excellence.

Hence what might be "sound" for one provider may not be for another. Consequently assessors need to understand how organisations and processes are managed appropriately and effectively and it is this background that is looked for in assessors rather than a specific educational knowledge.

Experience has shown that having many assessors with a limited background in education (and not limited education!!!) has been valuable in bringing a fresh perspective on provider practice.
There is no bar on assessors from an OFSTED background becoming TQS assessors as long as they have the background experience and knowledge e.g. EFQM Excellence Model experience."

What proportion of organisations being assessed now are gaining conditional certification?

"This is information that is not routinely published and individual assessors do not have access to this information. However an initial report published by CFE is on the TQS website."

Is it a problem if people in a provider organisation haven't seen the TQS application?

"Not really.

However it is highly likely that the verification visit will include discussions with a range of staff involved in the employer responsiveness processes. We would expect them to know how things are done and whether this should be consistent with the information provided in the application.

Remember the application should reflect what actually happens in the organisation rather than "what is thought happens" or "what should happen". The evidence in the application should be "naturally occurring" which means it is "what happens on the ground" and it is key to ensure that this is the case.

So if you are confident that the application represents what is actually happening - particularly in relation to implementation - then it would not matter if everybody has not seen the application!!"

If you have more questions for Peter, please post them in the comments section of this post.

See also, the original interview with Peter: An assessor's view on the TQS and the series of good questions in the blog archive.