Thursday 30 October 2008

Success Stories

Success stories is a series of interviews with senior people in organisations which have achieved the Training Quality Standard

It offers insights into those organisations’ TQS development journeys and advice to organisations still working towards TQS certification.

I recently spoke to Paul Coxhead of Targeted Training Projects Ltd (TTP), the first company to gain TQS certification for Part B in logistics, about TTP’s success.

Tell me, Paul, what did you gain from the process of achieving the TQS?
“We formalised things.

When we first looked at the Standard we saw that we do all that it asks us to do, but that a lot of what we do wasn’t written down and structured.

I really liked the TQS from the start, because I saw it would give us recognition for the way we work with our customers.”

How difficult was the TQS assessment?
“Difficult.

The submission was hard. I thought we needed about four days to write the application. In the end it took us eleven. We were working on it right up to the deadline.

The assessment visit itself was great. The assessors were professional. They put staff at their ease. They knew what they had come to do.”

Do you think other providers should get involved with the TQS?
“Yes, yes, they should.

It will really sharpen you up as a company. We do more measuring of things now than we did. Staff had noticed we do. It’s also helpful to our employers. We help them to understand how the training we do is supporting their business.”

Do you think achieving the TQS will help your business?
“It’ll be great for business.

I accept it’ll be a slow burn. I think it will help us to retain our customers and get new ones.

The industry does talk, you know.

They’ll talk about TTP, and say there’s a provider who will help you to decide if the training is working. That’s good for us. It’s really valuable, in fact.”

Targeted Training Projects Ltd, a company which delivers tailored transport and logistics solutions to the logistics industry, has achieved the TQS in Part A and in Part B (Logistics). They are based in Kingswinford in the West Midlands.

Click here to visit TTP's website.

Wednesday 29 October 2008

About the Achieving the TQS newsletter

This post is an information note for readers of the blog who do not currently receive my monthly Achieving the TQS newsletter.

If you would like to be added to the list of subscribers, go to the enquiry page on our website.

Just put the words: “Newsletter Request” in the message box on that page and remember to include your name and e-mail address with your request.

You’ll receive the next issue, which will be the November edition.

This issue will be celebrating the TQS successes of some of the organisations I have worked with which have gained certification recently.

The newsletter will be out about midway through the month.

Wednesday 22 October 2008

Your Route to TQS Certification (6) Be clear about the differences between Part A and Part B

I recently reviewed an application where I started to have a sense of déjà vu when I reached B0.

It wasn’t a mistake. The text in B0 was exactly the same as what had been written in A0.

This provider, like quite a few organisations preparing for TQS certification, hadn’t really thought through the differences between Part A and Part B of the standard.

There is a difference.

  • Part A deals with employers as individual customers and how the provider organisation responds to them. This could mean responding to local employers. It could be responding to large employers, small employers, public sector employers, private sector employers and so on.

  • Part B deals with how the provider works with a specified sector, and how the organisation develops and then deploys and delivers support to a sector. This means thinking about the expectations of the relevant sector skills council and being familiar with its “footprint”. It also means trying to demonstrate a local, regional and national perspective on developments within the defined sector.

Writing about the two different employer groups will be easier if you think about horizontal and vertical slices in the employer marketplace as you write.

Part A looks across the whole spectrum of employers and so can be seen as the horizontal slice.

Part B is the vertical slice, looking up and down a specific sector.

When the organisation I mentioned at the beginning of the post reworked its application the managers wrote about broadly the same issues in Part A and in Part B but the perspective from which the “story” was written was different. The managers used horizonal and vertical perspectives.

That also led to the organisation writing about different approaches and, of course, the two parts of the application then highlighted different results.

Thursday 16 October 2008

Your Route to TQS Certification (5) Look forward to your success

Be clear about this.

You are going to succeed with the TQS. You are going to progress smoothly, overcoming obstacles, working systematically and achieving your certification.

Therefore, take a moment now to look forward to the time when you have achieved your goal.

  • What will be different in your organisation?
  • What will have changed?
  • What will you want to tell the world about how you have improved?

Take some time to think about this and write down your answers. Make a list of the successes you will have achieved by the time you gain TQS certification.

Now review your list, because it’s an important list for several reasons.

First, you’ve just drawn attention to the successes you want your organisation to achieve as a result of your TQS certification. Doing this means you have focused on your goals.

Second, you now know what you are going to put on your website and in your newsletters once you have gained the TQS.

Third, and probably most important of all, you have identified the benefits you need to promote incessantly to the senior team in your organisation to help to maintain their commitment to the TQS project.

So, make sure you draw up that list . . . and keep on dreaming about the future.

Sunday 12 October 2008

Your Route to TQS Certification (4) Measure impact

Measuring the impact of training interventions has been one of the challenges facing every one looking to achieve certification since the TQS was introduced.

With conditional certifications still being awarded it’s clear that measuring the impact of training remains a challenge.

The advice out there exhorts people to identify, at the outset, the outcomes training will deliver, and the measures to be used to establish outcomes. This seems straightforward advice, but quite a few people still struggle.

Measuring the impact of training interventions on employee productivity is the easiest way to begin. Think about:
  1. Learner (Employee) Achievement

  2. Leading to Enhanced Employee Performance

  3. Quantified via Performance Measures and Indicators.

Use expected learner achievements as the starting point from which you will measure enhanced employee performance. Work with the employer to establish these outcomes and the key performance indicators of success before the training takes place.


And the measures to use?

I use five different types. Three to try out are:

  • Employee productivity - for example, getting more done
  • Employee efficiency - for example, working faster, reducing errors and error rates
  • Employee flexibility - for example, multi-tasking.

You won’t need to worry about being able to answer the questions employers ask about how your training will help them. If you have your list of measures and improvements in mind when you first start the dialgoue, you will be in a strong position.

If you plan your interactions with employers, and show that you know how to measure the impact of your interventions, employers will be more likely to want to work with you.

When this happens you will be well on the way to TQS certification.

Monday 6 October 2008

A Bonus Strategy

Does your TQS application look like this?

Well, I hope not.

Last week in an organisation that doesn’t need me to remind its managers of what happened, we drew together all the evidence that people had sent over to the application writing team.

There were so many folders and guides and reports we had difficulty in getting into the room. We certainly couldn’t see each other across the table where we were working.

We decided to measure the depth of the paperwork that the team was being asked to go through and to use to help with the application.

I’ve added up all the figures.

If all the pieces of paper were piled on top of each other, each of the four people on the application writing team would have a pile of documents like the one above to work through.

So, here’s the bonus strategy for success.

When you ask for help with evidence gathering, be quite specific about what you say you want. Otherwise you could end up with a pile like the one we ended up with at ………… (Your secret is safe!)

Wednesday 1 October 2008

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.