Your Route to TQS Certification (3) Speak the right language

I regularly hear staff working in colleges and in provider organisations struggling to communicate with employers, especially private sector employers.

I hear people telling employers about Train to Gain, NVQ and diplomas and using the FE jargon that they understand so well and which is of little or no interest to their listeners.

The result: frustration on both sides, – and all too often a decision on the part of employers to avoid further contact with the FE sector.

If you’re going to make a success of working with employers – showing your responsiveness and demonstrating your understanding of the particular sectors in which you have expertise – then you need to speak the language of employers.

Their language is easy to understand.

Employers want to hear about three things:

1. how you will help them to make more money, or if they are in the public sector, how you will help them to achieve their objectives
   


2. how you will help them to keep more of their money, or to save money by working more efficiently
   
   and, a long, long way down the list of priorities:
   


3. how you will help them to improve their personal skills and abilities and their professional standing.

Therefore, the real task for every one trying to build up good working relationships with employers, and along the way to progress towards Training Quality Standard certification, is to talk to employers in their language, not in the language of education, skills, learning, qualifications etc.

So think about how you promote your programmes and qualifications to employers.

Discard everything you would normally say about learning and development and practise explaining to employers how your offer will help them with the first two points above.

This, more than almost anything else, will help you to be more in tune with employers and their concerns and to speak the right language when you meet them.