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.

Teamwork wins every time

I’ve written quite a lot about the TQS team over the past few weeks. That’s because it’s important to remember that gaining the TQS is all about teamwork.

Good teamwork doesn’t just happen.

There’s a lot to creating effective teams, but it always starts with the senior team. That’s why one of the early posts in the series was about preparing the senior team to support your TQS development.

There are still quite a few senior managers who are less aware of the differences between the TQS and inspection than you would like them to be. This means you will need to allocate time to working with your senior team to ensure they have the right level of understanding of the TQS.

Then there’s the issue of getting a working team together.

Of course, there are teams within teams, and teams working in different areas of your organisation. There are larger teams and smaller teams. There are teams with more influence than others.

Your job is to keep them focused and moving in the right direction. This can be easier said than done.

That’s why I wrote a post entitled: Is your TQS team really working as a team?

It’s a good question. You need the answer.

I also wrote about the TQS Part B team.

It’s important to give some thought to how best to help the people working on Part B. Often they are not as heavily involved with the TQS development journey as those who are working on Part A. They can be forgotten, unless you keep reminding yourself that they need to be included in just about everything you do.

Finally, I brought many of the key issues together in the post: Fantastic TQS team – what’s the secret?

That’s a post that shows what you can achieve when you take your team seriously and take the time to build a strong TQS team.

So now you know.

Teamwork wins every time.

Teamwork will definitely help you to achieve the TQS.

Fantastic TQS Team - What's the secret?

My series of posts on the TQS team has generated some discussion in TQS training sessions we have been running.

The issues are always about that secret ingredient that makes one team successful and another team – well, less so.

I’m not sure there is a secret, but there are a few things that really help.

Check out if your TQS team would benefit from doing any of the following.

Focus on systems and processes, but also think about their deployment.

It’s important to work on the systems and processes you know you need, and it’s necessary that you do this. You will need an organisational needs analysis (ONA). You will need a way of measuring the impact of what you do in employer organisations. You will need a system for managing the employer’s relationship with your organisation.

It’s essential to your TQS success that you have sound systems and processes for managing your work with employers in place. It’s also important make sure they are used consistently.

The organisations we have worked with which make most progress with the TQS most quickly think about their new or revised systems and processes and how they will be implemented at the same time.

In TQS terms they think about getting sound systems and processes set up, but they think about the deployment of those systems and processes, too.

On quite a few occasions I’ve seen assessment dates put back and applications stalled because the work has been done on getting the right systems and processes devised, but little or no thought has been given to getting them used. As a result, take-up of the new ways of working is piecemeal.

Therefore, the secret ingredient in the TQS mix is not related to getting the right systems and processes in place. It’s about having a plan in place to ensure they will be used

Get the principal/CEO on the TQS team.

If the person at the top on the organisation is actively involved in your TQS development work, progress towards certification will be faster than if it is left to people with less authority to ensure that things happen.

With the most senior person in the organisation on the TQS team things just happen faster. If you have the authority of the person who leads your organisation behind you, it works wonders when you have to deal with the pleas from people who want to carry on doing things as they always have, or to devise their own way of working with employers in their department, or faculty or on a particular site.

If it’s not possible to get the most senior person involved in making sure that your organisation does embrace change, then the second best option is to have someone on the TQS team who can act with the most senior person’s authority.

Check out if you really have senior management support.

Doing this boils down to a very simple question.

Can the TQS team insist?

In lots of provider organisations the TQS team is not in a position to insist the new approaches to managing employer engagement are used.

If this team can’t insist, if the team members can only exhort, then some people will adopt the new approaches, and some won’t. Some will make use of the new CRM system. Some will keep their employer database to themselves. Some people will use the new ONA. Some will just carry on talking to employers about training.

Check out if you have the support that will allow you to insist. Then make sure you insist on changes where they really are necessary.

What do you need to do now?

It’s easy really.

Be clear about what you can do and what you can’t.

Separate the tasks linked to devising new ways of working from the tasks of implementing them.

Get on with the developmental work.

When it comes to implementation and to making sure the systems and processes are embedded, stand back.

Look to the highest levels of management to take the lead here.

Remember that the TQS team knows how to steer the ship, but there aren’t enough team members to man the oars, too.

See also: Your route to TQS certification: adopt a realistic timetable.

Who’s on the TQS (Part) B team?

It’s very easy, when thinking about the TQS, to focus exclusively on the requirements on Part A. After all, you need to achieve Part A in order to be in a position to be certificated for Part B.

Focusing on Part A often means that the people you are going to call on to work on the Part B application are excluded from a lot of your TQS activity. As a result they don’t really know what is expected of them when they come to be involved.

This is causing problems in quite a few provider organisations. Are you facing these same problems?

Problem one: Wrong focus

The person who will lead on a Part B isn’t sufficiently familiar with the TQS requirements to be aware of the differences between TQS Part B and the requirements of assessment and inspection frameworks with which your organisation is more familiar.

When critiquing applications I’ve seen lots that are all about the curriculum, about courses and about learners.

Solution: Plan ahead.

Decide early who will be writing the TQS Part B submissions. Keep these people involved in all your TQS development activities. Make sure they develop their understanding of the requirements of the standard before they are asked to write anything.

Problem two: No close links with the Sector Skills Council (SSC)

Some provider organisations just haven’t made the time to build up good working relationships with the relevant SSCs.

In some cases this means that a Part B application isn’t clear about the SSC’s footprint, so the writers can’t explain to the readers which areas of the SSC’s remit the application covers. People1st, for example, covers fourteen different industries, including hospitality, catering and travel and tourism.

As a result, some providers define their application in terms of their curriculum and not with reference to the SSC.

I’ve seen applications that deal with all aspects of care: childcare, adult care, social work and care in the education world and so on. I’ve also talked to Part B writers who don’t see any reason to change such an application.

I’ve seen applications that muddle the work of Skills for Logistics (freight logistics) and GoSkills (passenger transport).

Solution: Make sure your Part B specialists are familiar with the relevant sector

Whoever is writing your Part B application needs to know that these applications are reviewed by the relevant Sector Skills Council (SSC) once they are submitted, and the SSC’s reviewer will identify issues and questions for the assessors to pick up on.

Therefore, make sure your Part B specialists are familiar with the work of the sector, as it is defined by the SSC, and make sure it is very clear how you are supporting the work of the SSC in the application.

Problem three: You don’t actually have a relationship with the sector

When it comes down to it, some provider organisations are not working closely with the sector where they want to gain Part B certification. Sometimes they think they are; sometimes they know they aren’t.

To have sector expertise you need to know what the issues facing the sector are. You also need to know how you are supporting the sector – as opposed to how you are supporting individual employers – to deal with at least some of those issues.

The sector has local, regional, national, and in some cases, international dimensions. Does your sector expert know how you support your sector at each level, or how your work contributes to the work of the sector at different levels?

Is your sector expert active in the work of the SSC and other relevant bodies, for example, some of the trade associations?

If not, are you sure you have sector expertise?

Solution: Get to know the SSC

If this is your problem, start building relationships with your SSC and with your National Skills Academy (NSA), if you have one. Build up your contacts and your knowledge over time, but start now.

Problem four: Part A and Part B applications are completed in isolation

You know why this happens. There’s the issue of time. There are other priorities. You had good intentions, but somehow co-ordinating everything is more difficult that you anticipated.

As a result the emphasis of the two parts of the application is different. Worse still some of what you say in Part A is contradicted in Part B. Where you have more than one Part B then conflicting statements are sometimes made in the different applications.

Solution: Sequence the writing of Part A and Part B

It really is the solution.

Sort out Part A first and then think about Part B. Your Part B writers will be more confident about their tasks, if they know what has been said about the whole organisation. They will have some guidance in front of them to help them to shape and construct a good Part B submission. They can also share Part B applications within the organisation if there is more than one Part B being written.

So, in the end there is a lot you can do to support your Part B writers. The most important thing to do is to bring them into the TQS team as soon as possible.

How about starting that process today?

See also: What's the real difference between Part A and Part B of the TQS?

TQS Assessment – Seize the opportunity!

Just about every one in the FE world will have heard, by now, that the deadline concerning conditional certification has been changed. You now have more time to gain conditional certification than you thought you did.

I’ve already had ‘phone calls from people in colleges saying:

“It’s great. We can take things at a more leisurely pace now.”

I have no problem with this.

After all, people have always been able to choose the pace at which they travel the road to TQS certification.

However, before putting the TQS on the back burner it’s worth remembering that TQS success is not just about having sound systems and processes set up. It’s about operating them, too.

Take your time

You need time – and quite a bit of it – to do justice to your application.
Our customers tend to take between four and seven months to write their applications.

Why?

It’s because they change things about their practice as they go along. They also give themselves time to review, edit, and then revise their applications – often more than once.

You will get a lot more out of the development process if you take your time with it. The benefits you gain will be more far reaching, and systems and processes you set up will be more robust, if you take the time to make sure they work and that the deliver the outcomes and benefits you are looking for.

So what should you be doing now the heat is off?

Put the heat back on.

Stick to your original TQS schedule for getting your application written.

Then you will have time for all the reworks and rewrites. You’ll also have time to improve your approach to employer engagement before it comes under the assessors’ scrutiny.

See also: Goodbye to the early adopters

Is your TQS team really working as a team?

You created a team when you first started work on the TQS. Perhaps you have a steering group. Perhaps you have a monitoring group.

However you have chosen to divide up the TQS responsibilities, is every one working together to achieve the TQS?

If your organisation is like most provider organisations, then your team members are probably working in their own ways and focusing on the things that are important to them. Maybe they’re not really working on the TQS much - except when you have your TQS meetings.

Here are three things to do to help your team to work better together.

Work together on defining the key management processes

You need to work out the key processes for managing your employer/customer journey. Do this as a team if that will work. If not, bring the team together to agree and to approve the processes which have been devised.

Make it clear that approval of a process also entails getting involved in ensuring that people use the process.

For example, if the TQS team agrees that all employer information is to be recorded on your CRM, then they must share the responsibility for making sure this happens.

Create a timetable of tasks to be completed

When you begin work on the TQS and you start to make your list of what needs to be done, you will probably be overwhelmed by all the things that end up on the list.

Other people will feel the same way, too.

Above all you need to help every one else to avoid that feeling of being overwhelmed, because you want the other members of the team to take action. People who are overwhelmed by a task are unlikely to take action, so it’s in your own interests to help them to keep control of their involvement with the TQS development work.

Therefore, you need a timetable of tasks, and agreement within the team, about what will be done when.

Make sure the list of activities is realistic. It’s very easy to set up a timetable that is just too demanding. Once your team members fall behind, they will become demoralised and give up. They’ll stop attending team meetings and just quietly drop out of things.

Use your TQS team meetings to check progress and to find ways of helping the TQS team to meet deadlines and complete tasks on time.

Give feedback on progress

When people are working on something new they need to know how they’re doing. When people are being asked to take on extra roles and extra tasks they need to know that they are making progress with the TQS and that their efforts are appreciated.

Make sure you monitor what is happening and take steps to help people to avoid mistakes. This means that when you give feedback on progress, your comments will be positive. You will be able to reinforce success.

Every one likes to be associated with success, so this will help your organisation to make the progress you know is needed.

Keeping a team together, even a motivated and committed team, takes time and effort. Your progress towards TQS certification will be faster and smoother if you think about how the TQS journey should be managed as well as about how to achieve the TQS itself.

See also:

Three Questions – Karen Kimberley
Preparing the senior team

Who should be on your TQS team?

There’s a simple answer to this question.

It depends.

It depends on where you are in your TQS development journey. It depends on how large your organisation is. It depends on how you are approaching the way you use the TQS. It depends on how quickly you aim to gain the TQS.

You might need more than one team, or you might need to change your team during the life of your TQS project.

However, you will need the following at some point in the development process.

The big guns

You will need senior management support for your work with the TQS. Some of the changes that you are likely to need to make must be made at the highest level, so you need backing and support at that level.

This might mean that your most senior person is on your team. It might mean that a member of the SMT is on your team.

The beavers

You will need people who will just keep on working on the TQS. They will be building up people’s understanding of what you are doing. They will be keeping their teams and their colleagues moving in the right direction. They will be modifying their practice to ensure you meet the requirements of the standard. They might be rewriting your processes. They might be reworking your employer journey.

They might not have a high profile, but their work will make all the difference to your success.

The promoters

Some people are good at helping other people to understand what your organisation is trying to do. These people are your promoters.

Your promoters might be working with people within your organisation. They might be working with your employers. They might be working with your stakeholders, including the relevant Sector Skills Councils.

Whoever they are working with they keep on explaining why it’s important to gain the TQS, what your organisation will gain from being certificated, how your reputation will be built as a result of certification and how you will be even more responsive to the needs of employers as a result of your success.

You need a number of promoters on your team.

The application writing team

The application writing team is an important team. It is this team that makes or breaks your application.

There are four principal roles in this team: the principal writer, the principal reviewer, the principal evidence gatherer and the project manager.

You need a minimum of two people in your application writing team. This team needs time and space to allow it to succeed.

I’ve written before about the application writing team. There is a link to that post below.

The whole organisation team

Sooner or later you need to ensure that you take every one with you, so that you can be confident that every one endorses your work with employers and with the TQS.

So now’s the time to think about who is on your team and if you need to shake it up.

See also:

Preparing the senior team
What, no team? – big mistake number three

Preparing the Senior Team

Senior staff in your organisation are likely to be involved in the TQS verification visit. You will need to ensure they understand their role in the process leading towards TQS certification.

Here are five actions to take sooner rather than later.

Explain the differences . . .

TQS assessment is different. Let senior people know this. Explain that other assessments senior people may have taken part in are rather different.

Use briefings, newsletters and one-to-one meetings to help you to get your message across.

Produce clear messages and repeat them often

It’s not enough to produce your wonderful guide to the TQS. Make the messages more personal.

“Everything you need to know about . . .” is a possible heading for your guide.
“Three things you need to remember about ….” could also help you.

However, reiterating your messages often is even more important.

Don’t let people forget their role in the TQS assessment and verification process.

Go through the application with senior managers

Make sure senior managers understand that it is your application that is assessed. Then make sure they are aware of what has been said in the application about aspects of your work for which they are responsible.

Think about who you would speak to in order to verify practice with the different parts of the TQS. Then discuss the specifics of the application with those people.

Use the magic words often

In the TQS world the words consistency and standardisation have magical qualities. So much of the TQS is about proving you have systems and processes in place and operational. Talk to the relevant senior managers about some of the issues about standards and systems they need to be aware of.

Ask managers the: “How do you know …” questions.

How do you know that every employer who receives a visit from the college has an organisational needs analysis?
How do you know that employers really do value programme x or y?
How do you know that employers are gaining more from our programmes now than they did three years ago?

Spend time explaining that the TQS is about more than what you achieve. It’s about the systems and processes you have in place to help you to deliver what you promise to employers consistently.

Preparing your senior team for the TQS assessment and verification process will be a lot simpler, if you follow this advice.

See also:

What ... no team ...
TQS assessment is different
Build a good TQS portfolio . . .

TQS assessment is different

When I deliver sessions of TQS assessment I show a slide about the different stages in the assessment process. People listen and nod, but in many cases, they don’t really think too much about what I am saying.

Most people in provider organisations know what to expect in assessments. They know what inspections are like. They know what is coming.

Or do they?

Well, in many cases, they don’t.

Remote assessment

Lots of people still think that the assessment takes place on-site. They think TQS assessment is like Investors in People, or Matrix or OFSTED. It still comes as a shock when they realise that the assessment is completed prior to the on-site visit.

That’s one big difference between TQS assessment and other assessments.

Teaching and learning – who cares?

Another big difference is that the assessors aren’t that interested in the teaching and learning process. All of us who come from the teaching and learning world are drawn back to teaching and learning. We understand the language. We understand the objectives. We understand the issues.

The majority of TQS assessors don’t have that background. They are not steeped in the teaching and learning process. They don’t know the sort of things those of us who have taught for many years take for granted about teaching and learning. They don’t want to read about teaching and learning in TQS applications.

Thus, if you’ve been tempted to cut and paste information from documents you have produced for other audiences and to place it in your TQS application, there can only be one piece of advice. Don’t.

Write about your business

When you write your TQS application, you’re writing about your business. You’re writing about how you help employers either individually or in particular sectors.

Other assessments do not really have this sort of emphasis.

I try to make these points in that slide I mentioned earlier. I reinforce the slide with two questions about how to influence the on-site visit, which is about verification.

• How are you going to drive the assessment in a particular direction?
• How are you going to make sure the assessor has the right information?
  

The answer, of course, is: “Write what’s needed in the application.”

If that doesn’t get the message across, I know that, when I get the application to review, I’m going to be making quite a few suggestions for changes.

See also:

Never mind about the application
Underestimating the job – big mistake number two
Writing for the wrong audience - big mistake number four

An Assessor’s View on the TQS

Most of the readers of this blog are thinking about TQS assessment when they apply the advice they find here. Therefore, the opportunity to receive guidance from a TQS assessor will always be welcome.

During August I spoke to Peter Hillman, a licensed assessor with Investors in Excellence.

We discussed assessment and captured below are some of his personal insights into the assessment process together with lots of useful guidance to every one working with the Training Quality Standard.

What do you think is the main value of TQS assessment to providers?
I think there are several aspects of the assessment which really add value to providers.

The assessment helps a provider to focus on the employer and the benefits that employer gains as a result of working with that provider.

The assessment offers an independent objective review of how the provider works with employers, - plus feedback. The feedback is from the perspective of how employers’ business needs are identified and met, rather than from the educational experience of the learner; this is likely to involve assessing how organisation-wide processes and performance are measured and managed. That’s what makes the TQS different from many of the other assessments with which providers may be familiar.

The assessment also makes providers look at the data they hold about employers. Their learner data is usually a lot more accurate than their employer data! There are understandable reasons for this, and TQS helps to show providers that by applying the same rigorous processes as for learner data, they can do just as much with their employer data.

How is assessing against the TQS different from assessing with reference to other standards?
The TQS assessment is application based.

It’s the application that is assessed and if some of the good practices that the provider has in place are not in the application they will not be included in the assessment. This makes the application critical to the assessment process and it needs to be a comprehensive “story” of how Employer Responsiveness is managed from Strategy through Application to Demonstration of Performance through a range of Results.

If it is not in the application it does not get assessed.

The aim of the verification visit is for the assessment team to resolve any questions they may have about the information in the application – it is not an opportunity for the provider to present the “ (new) evidence they did not include in the application”. Many providers have not yet caught up with this or the implications and how this makes the TQS different to other assessments and inspections!

It is also worth remembering that essentially the only information the assessors have about the applicant is what is in the application (and what may be on their website). Therefore it is important not to make assumptions about assessors' understanding of “how you do things”. Once providers realise the importance of the application it should raise questions with them about who should write it and who the audience is. It needs to be someone who knows the organisation, not just “someone who has the time”. The person who writes the application needs to be able to write well in order to present clearly how the organisation delivers employer responsiveness. The writer’s job is to explain how the provider does things and how they know they are happening and working.

This means that the writer must be able to write concisely and clearly.

The application itself needs to show how the provider is employer responsive. The strategy for working with employers should describe the “business” that you are in and why, together with a range of SMART objectives to support this. This provides the context for the assessment and for the application.

What are the various stages of your work as an assessor?
The assessment team has a lot to do even before seeing the application. Once Registration is complete and an “assessment agreement” finalised it’s usual for the lead assessor to call the provider and introduce himself or herself and to set up the actual dates (within the agreed window) for the verification visit as quickly as possible. It’s important to make sure, as soon as possible, that the key people will be around when the visit takes place.

Prior to the verification visit the assessors will review the application. They will do this independently including identifying Strengths, Areas for Improvement, issues to be discussed during the verification visit and then score the application. They would then share their views and arrive at a consensus on the information including the key issues to be addressed during the verification visit. When they’ve finished this part of the process, the desktop review will go to the certification body.

The preparations for the verification visit come next. The lead assessor produces a visit plan including people they wish to talk to and documents they want to see. The assessors may, for example, want to see some documents such as Employer Responsiveness Strategy, Employer Surveys, completed ONAs and reviews of outcomes. It’s fine, if they’re stored electronically. There’s no need to create copies just for the assessor.

This verification visit plan is shared with the applicant prior to the visit.

When the assessors visit, they will spend their time addressing the issues that emerged when they did the desktop review. Following this they review their findings - Strengths, Areas for Improvement - and arrive at a consensus of the evidence and hence the score - whether or not to change the scores in the desktop review. Remember the assessors will not provide you with any feedback at the end of the verification visit – no matter how many times you ask!

After the visit the lead assessor will produce the feedback report and agree this with the other assessor.

Where validation happens it is managed by the certification body and the assessors are not involved.

Following the decision on the outcome of the assessment process the lead assessor meets with the provider to discuss the feedback report which will have been sent to the provider about a week before the feedback meeting

What is enjoyable about being a TQS assessor?
You get to meet a range of people in different types of organisations – large and small, FE Colleges and Independent Training Providers. – It’s challenging, rewarding and you have many opportunities to see examples of good practice in action

You put yourself in the employer’s shoes at some points in the process and in the applicant’s shoes at other points. You check out the system the provider uses for managing work with employers. You look to see if it’s suited to its purpose.

You also have the opportunity to tell providers what they’re good at. That’s very enjoyable

What is challenging about being a TQS assessor?
The biggest challenge is avoiding giving advice to providers.

You have to remain objective, and you are not there to tell people what they should be doing. They ask. Of course, they ask for advice, but you can’t step over that boundary. You’re there as an assessor and not as an adviser. You have to be very clear about your role and about the boundaries to your role.

Also, TQS is a framework and you have to constantly be aware of what is “appropriate” for the size and complexity of the organisation you are assessing

. . . And a final thought . . .

Whether or not you apply for certification, I believe the TQS provides a world class framework for developing an effective employer responsive business and is an excellent development tool – “it is a route map for the journey to a successful future”.

Peter Hillman has been a TQS assessor for over two years and has conducted over 50 assessments including employer organisations involved in TQS for Employers.

If you have any questions you would like to ask Peter, please post them as a comment. Peter will reply via the comments, too.

A Deadline is Looming

As the start of the autumn term approaches the final opportunity to gain conditional TQS certification also approaches.

The current guidance is that conditional certification will end in December 2009. If, by the end of the year, you have not registered your organisation to be assessed, you won’t be able to gain conditional certification. You’ll have to gain full TQS certification if you want to be certificated.

Before the term even begins this deadline means that managers in some provider organisations are panicking.

Try to avoid this. Step back. Make a judgement about your current readiness to gain the TQS, and the likelihood of your needing to rely on gaining conditional certification.

Consider your answers to the following.

Do you have a customer/employer journey?
Have you set down what happens to employers from the time when they first make contact with you to the time when you can be reasonably confident that they have a long-term relationship with you?

Have you thought about:

• first contact with your organisation
• the matching and contracting process
• the period when an employer is doing business with you
• what happens at the end of a piece of work
• how you build on-going relationships with individual employers?

Do you have systems and processes in place to help you to manage the customer/employer journey?
Have you flow-charted what happens, or documented it in some way that allows you to communicate your approach to your staff?

Are you operating a system of organisational needs analysis that leads to the production of business-focused proposals?
Central to the way in which you manage your work with employers is the way you set up the relationship. Can you demonstrate you do think about helping the employer’s organisation as well as thinking about how you help learners?

Are you sure your training interventions really do help employers? Can you demonstrate that you do check, after a training intervention, just how well you have supported the employer?

Are you building relationships with employers for the future?
Have you a system for managing the on-going relationship with employers and building that relationship over time?
Are you measuring your successes with employers?
Are you thinking about the impact of what you do to support employers?

What are you doing about consistency and standardisation issues?
Whatever systems and processes you set up, are you making sure they are adhered to? Are you making sure that the employer always gets at least a defined minimum level of service and, yes, do you have service standards against which you measure your performance?

Make an assessment of your current situation. How much more do you need to do before you will be ready to seek certification?

If you still have a long way to go, work out how long it will be before you believe you are ready to be certificated. Make a judgement. Is the December 2009 deadline relevant to your situation?

Carry on with your development work and check your progress at the end of October.

Then think about how much more activity you will be able to undertake in the six weeks between the beginning of November and the middle of December.

This analysis will help you to be clear of whether the ending of conditional certification is something that affects you, or whether this is a deadline you can afford to ignore.

Employer Engagement Basics - the Summary

Over the past few weeks I've been writing about employer engagement basics.

This series of posts offers a good starting point if you want to make sure you set up the right systems and pay attention to the right things. The series will also help you if you want to check that you are doing the right things.

The series started by covering the key elements of:

the employer engagement strategy

Next there was some guidance on:

organisational needs analyses

including a post on why you need an organisational needs analysis.

I wrote about LMI in a post entitled: What's all this about LMI?

I also answered the question: how much LMI do we need?

I wrote about measuring the impact of training and also about continuous improvement.

Use the series as a source of basic guidance and as a means of benchmarking your progress with your work with employers to date.

Attract more business - the blog

I've added a new blog to my list of blogs.

It's called: Attract more business. You can access it by clicking on the blog name or via the blog roll on the right hand side of the page.

This blog has a broader focus than Achieving the TQS. It looks at how to do a lot more business with employers.

I've noted the key themes that the blog will be covering in a post today.

Continuous improvement

Continuous improvement comes up sooner or later in every development programme.

If you’ve been following the series of posts on employer engagement basics, you will have found quite a few areas where you can improve what you currently do to support employers.

In the context of continuous improvement it’s important to record the detail of your systems and processes for supporting employers. You also need to show how you change your processes for managing your work with employers. When you make these changes you are creating a case study of how you manage the continuous improvement process.

Don’t worry, then, that you have four versions of your ONA and three versions of the approach you use to measuring the impact of your interventions in employer organisations. You’re demonstrating incremental development via each iteration. You’re showing how you are adapting your work to be more employer-responsive. You’re showing you want to serve your market more effectively.

If you’re looking to measure your improvement as well as describing it in narrative terms, think about the performance measures you have identified for your organisation. Remember these are not your targets. They are the measures you are using, your own key performance indicators (KPI). They could relate to employer satisfaction. They could relate to productivity issues and how you are helping employers to improve their ability to do what they do.

Do the trends you have noted show an improvement? Are you able to demonstrate that more employers believe you are helping them to improve their business, for example?

If they do, and if you have the numerical information to prove it, you are on your way to demonstrating continuous improvement.

Measuring Impact

It’s all very well to talk about measuring the impact of your work with employers, but what, exactly, do you need to measure?

The answer is all to do with what you are trying to achieve for the employer, rather than for learners.

How have the training interventions you have delivered, or are delivering, helped the employer’s organisation?

What difference is your training making to the organisation’s success?

You must work out what you are trying to achieve before you begin working with the employer.

After you have completed your interventions you must go back and measure how well you did.

When you think about measurement, what sort of things should you be measuring?

The easiest way to get started is to think about improvements to employee productivity.

• What can employees do now that they couldn’t do before the training?


• What can employees do faster and making fewer mistakes than previously?


• What improvements in employees’ performance can you see in the areas which were covered by the training you delivered?
  

Talk to the employer about these subjects. The chances are you will find that this sort of thinking leads on to discussions about other improvements.

Does the employer think that employees are performing more effectively now they have completed their training?

Is there a sense of improved morale and motivation in the employer’s organisation?

Can every one see what difference your interventions have made?

If they can you have begun to measure impact.

About ONAs

An organisational needs analysis (ONA) is an essential element of your employer engagement strategy.

You can’t do business without one . . . but what goes into it?

I’ve seen ONAs that are long, and I mean long. I suspect you have, too.

I’ve seen ONAs that have ensured that employers never get in touch with a training provider again. Yes, they won’t even speak to the provider on the telephone.

I’ve worked with lots of employers who see ONAs as bureaucratic form-filling activities.

You need to make sure your ONA is different. You need to make sure your ONA adds value to the employer.

Remember that the primary purpose of an ONA is to support the employer, not to give you lots of information to put into your database.

Therefore, you need to think about the answer to a simple question.

What do we need to know about an employer to enable us to tailor a support package which right for the people in his or her organisation?

That’s it. Simple.

In reality, providers get carried away and try to find out a great deal more. They take up lots of an employer’s time. At the end of the process the employer feels that he or she has lost an afternoon or a morning and gained nothing.

To avoid falling into that trap decide that whatever information you are collecting, it must only take you an hour at most to collect it.

Think also about ways in which you can make that meeting or discussion something that the employer will think is valuable. What useful information can you make sure you impart? What does the employer want to know more about? – No, this doesn’t refer to your offer. What is the employer struggling with, right now – and how can you help – without selling your offer?

Of course, you need to ensure you capture the usual information about names, addresses, contact details, web addresses and so on. There are other things, too, that you really need to know about.

These include:

how the organisation heard about you, the provider – because this will help to shape the discussion

the employer’s key challenges – because you don’t know how you can help until you know what is keeping the employer awake at night

how the employer is addressing those key challenges at the moment - because that will give you a hint as to where the gaps in the strategy are at the moment

what the employer aspires to achieve in the next year – because everything you eventually offer must support the employer’s own plans

how the employer currently develops his or her staff – because that will help you to be clear about what has already been done and what sort of development the organisation favours.

There are quite a few more things, but all of the information is gathered as part of a discussion. It doesn’t result from working through a checklist.

You can add value in an ONA discussion by actually giving the employer the chance to talk about these things. You can add value by asking questions that will help the employer to clarify and advance the thinking that has gone into current achievements.

Therefore, you need to spend some time working on your ONA. It can be a great selling aide and a reputation-building activity – if you plan it correctly.

Why do we need an ONA?

An organisational needs analysis (ONA) is an essential element of your employer engagement strategy.

You can’t do business without one.

You use your ONA to help you to find out what an employer’s key issues are.

An ONA is not concerned with training and what training an employer needs. It’s all about working out what is keeping an employer awake at night and where he or she feels the pain, right now.

An ONA deals with an employer’s business issues.

Whether you are dealing with public sector employers or with private sector employers, you need to know about the principal concerns of the organisations you are hoping to work with.

If you look at Part A of the TQS, you will see in A2.2 a requirement to find out about and to make sure you understand employers’ needs. The standard talks about “underlying business needs”.

This knowledge and understanding is important in the context of the Training Quality Standard, but it matters in the context of your business, too.

When you sell training commercially, you will need to link what you are offering to these underlying business needs. If you are going to stand a good chance of selling your product or service, you need to do this.

Therefore, today you need an ONA to help you to do business with employers.

Next time . . . what an ONA covers.

How much LMI do we need?

There’s an easy answer to this question . . .

. . . Less than you think.

You need information that you are going to use to shape your provision.

You don’t need great tomes of data that you will never use.

Why do we gather LMI anyway?
The main reason any business gathers and then uses LMI is to help it to spot business opportunities. That’s why you want to know about the size of markets and about trends in markets.

You use the information you gather to help you to decide where you are likely to be able to build your business.

You use it to help you to be clear about where you should be investing and growing your business.

LMI will help you to be more demand-led if you use your information in the right way.

What LMI do we really need?
You need to know about national developments – employment/unemployment rates - that sort of thing. You need to know what is happening in the industries and sectors that you are targeting.

You need to know if there is anything unusual about the part of the country in which you live. Is your area unusual in some way?

You also need LMI to help you to keep up to date with what is happening in your marketplace locally. This is an aspect of LMI that lots of providers ignore. Local information is best gathered by your own organisation. You can collect it with minimal effort. It's valuable because it helps you to shape what you do.

Every time you think about collecting and using LMI your first question should be: how are we going to use this?

If you don’t know the answer, ask another question. Do we really need to know about this?

What's all this about LMI?

Every one seems to want to know more about LMI and to gather more LMI. Therefore, I'll cover some of the basic LMI issues in the next post.

There is, however, a good question to start with.

What does LMI stand for?

• Is it labour market intelligence?
• Is it labour market information?
• Does it matter?

I tend to think of LMI as being about intelligence.

There is a hierarchy of importance in this field

Data is the raw material of your investigation. The individual evaluation forms that you collect in at the end of a training programme contain data.

Information is created when you analyse that data

Your analyses are interesting, but you create intelligence when you use the information to help you to decide what to do next. You create intelligence when you do more than just analyse data.

You analyse the forms that you collected at the end of that training programme. In doing that you have created management information.

You then decide what actions your analysis suggests. It is that activity that leads to the creation of intelligence.

Thus, information has less value than intelligence. It’s an intermediate output.

Unfortunately there is a lot of labour market information around and not enough labour market intelligence.

Don’t be satisfied with Labour market information. Insist of being presented with labour market intelligence.

Get a grip!

This could be the sub-title to most of the presentations that I make to colleges and learning providers about the TQS.

People who are just starting out on the TQS journey often don’t know where to start with employer engagement.

They don’t know which are the activities they need to do quickly.

Defining how you work with employers early in your TQS development process is essential if you are going to progress rapidly. It will also add value to your employer engagement activities.

One of the employer engagement basics, then, is to think about how you manage the relationship with individual employers.

To help to be clear about how you work with employers consider the stages of the employer's journey with you. Think about:

• The time before employers do business with you – when they are making enquiries and you are dealing with them
• When they are considering working with you – that is when you are creating an offer and a way of working with them
• When they are working with you – when the programme they have “purchased” is progressing
• When the first piece of work comes to an end – when you work out with each employer just how well you have supported him or her (not how well you have supported the learners)
• When you come to build the relationship further – when you think about how you can turn a single piece of business into a long-term relationship.

You need to have systems and processes in place for managing each stage of the employer’s journey.

You also need to make sure those systems and processes are implemented consistently across your organisation. (If you don’t work in a consistent manner you will have problems when you come to think about assessment.)

All of this could sound like a big piece of work.

It is, but it’s a relatively simple and straightforward piece of work, if you do it sooner rather than later.

Your Organisational Needs Analysis

At the heart of your employer engagement strategy is your approach to finding out exactly what makes employer organisations tick.

• You want to know what their issues are.
• You want to know what keeps people in employer organisations awake at night.
• You want to know the problems they are wrestling with.

You want to know this because until you know these things, you cannot possibly know what training to offer employers.

Your ONA is at the heart of your commitment to being demand-led.

Therefore, do you have one?
Do you use it?
Do you aggregate the outputs you receive from individual employers to help you to obtain a better view of your marketplace?

If you are just starting to think about ONAs, produce something very simple and straightforward.

Think of ways in which you can add value to the employer via your ONA.

Remember employers are giving you their valuable time. What will the employer get out of the ONA, on the day, immediately?

Make a list of benefits.

Check that employers think these are benefits, too.

Your ONA is vital to your success with employers. It must be perceived as being valuable by employers, so work on this building block of employer engagement as soon as is practicable.

Even in you already have an ONA, review it and check that it is fit for purpose.

Check also that employers think your ONA is fit for putpose.

The Employer Engagement Strategy

Do you have an employer engagement strategy?

When I visit provider organisations the employer engagement strategy I am presented with is often the business plan.

It’s great to have a plan, but your employer engagement strategy needs both an internal face and an external face.

In simple terms, if your business plan is the internal face of your employer engagement strategy, the external face is your rationale for working with employers.

The external face is your series of statements which set out what you aim to do support employers. It’s also the set of statements you make about how you do this.

It’s that simple.

These statements need to be communicated to your staff and repeated to your employers and your stakeholders.

You will know your employer engagement strategy has been understood when your employers start telling you what you aim to do to support them and they offer you the messages you have promoted to them.

What goes wrong?
Quite a few organisations don’t really know how they help employers, so they can’t create those public statements. They don’t have an external face to their employer engagement strategy.

Check your situation. Ask three of your staff now:

What do we do to help employers? . . . . . . . .

Employer Engagement Basics

The next few posts are about employer engagement.

If you are new to the TQS, use them to help you to get started on your development journey.

If you are approaching assessment, use them to help you to check your progress and your readiness to be certificated.

News about resources

There are some updates to our website that you may find interesting.

I have updated our Twenty Things To Do Before You Apply for Assessment Against The Training Quality Standard.

This report has become quite famous. I'm regularly asked about the "Twenty Things" document. Well, now there are twenty-five things to do before you make that application.

You might also be interested in another of our reports. This one is about using modern marketing techniques to sell training solutions to employers. It's called: A New Blueprint For Selling To Employers.

Both documents are pdfs and both can be downloaded now from the resources page on our website.

Good Questions (5) How often do we keep in touch with our employers?

This is the last of the five good questions that I introduced in our April newsletter.

How often do you keep in touch with your employers is an interesting question.

• Is there a hard-and-fast rule?
• Is there a right answer?
• Is there an answer that satisfies the TQS requirements?

The only answer is the one that is linked to employers’ requirements and expectations.

• How often do your employers want you to be in touch?
• Can your systems cope with employers who have different expectations?
• Can your systems cope with employers who want ad hoc contact?
• Can your systems cope with employers who want contact to be triggered by particular events and not by the calendar?

An interesting additional question is:

• How do you know what employers want and expect?

Asking good questions is an excellent way of helping you to progress. Use these five as you work towards TQS certification.

Good Questions (4) - What did you gain as a result of working with us?

I went out on some visits to employers last week. I was accompanying a Business Development Manager from a learning provider organisation.

Whilst we were at one employer organisation, he asked the question:

“What did gain from working with us?”

The answer he received was:

“We got some free training.”

I felt sorry for that manager, and wouldn’t have liked to have been in his shoes when he reported back to his senior team about his own organisation's readiness to go forward to TQS certification.

Yet, the exchange illustrates an important point.

You need to help the employer to be clear about what he or she is going to gain from working with you before you begin a programme. If you do that, the employer can be looking out for those benefits during the life of the training programme.

I was in a different employer organisation recently where the answer to the same question was:

“As a result of the SAFED training we have reduced our fuel consumption by 2%, so despite the fact that diesel prices are going up again, we are spending about the same on fuel as we were three months ago.”

How would you feel if your employer customers said this?

I know the account manager sitting next to me in that meeting was grinning from ear to ear for the rest of the day.

Remember then, that is you want your employers to see the benefits of working with you, you need to help them to know what they will get out of working with you before the training begins.

Employers won’t make statements like the one from the owner of the transport company above, unless you set them on the right track to begin with.

Good Questions (3)

In our April Newsletter there were five good questions. Here is some more guidance about the third of them.

Did you produce a proposal for the employer that dealt with business benefits?

If you think you did, the question is: are you sure?

A lot of the proposals that I see are not really business-focused. They deal essentially with training and training issues. This causes problems when you come to think about the Training Quality Standard.

If you don’t have proposals which cover the right things, you will struggle to address the requirements of 2.4 in the TQS. If you struggle with 2.4, you will struggle with 4.1. You will almost certainly struggle with aspects of A5, too.

Your proposals to employers are the bedrock of your practice. They are essential elements of your work with employers.

Don’t spend too much time thinking about how nice they look, how prettily they are laid out and if they are all written down. Think carefully about how your interventions will help the employer’s business. That’s what is essential in a good proposal.

This is a simple requirement, but it causes lots of problems.

It also takes time to rectify.

If your proposals don’t deal with business benefits, then you can’t create an audit trail which shows that you have done what you set out to do. You can’t show that your employers are benefiting from working with you.

This is one of the main reasons why you need to chip away at your TQS work over time.

You need to embed systems and processes and implement them for long enough to show that they work.

Therefore, when you think about this question, also ask:

• How long will it take us to ensure we do address business benefits in employer organisations?
• How long after that will we need to wait in order to prove that we are adding value to our employers as well as to our learners?
  

Good Questions (2)

The second good question in our April Newsletter is: Are your staff familiar with the SSC’s footprint?

Unpacking this one is helpful for anyone thinking about starting on a Part B application.

It’s truly amazing how often I see an application where the writer is unaware of what the relevant Sector Skills Council is trying to do to support its sector.

Given that Part B focuses on how the organisation works to support the development of the relevant sector, it’s impossible to write a good Part B application without knowing about what is happening in that sector.

A good starting point with all of this is to find out what the SSC is doing – what its footprint is. Then it’s worth finding out what the key trade organisations are looking to achieve. Next ask: who is lobbying government about what? That will help with the national perspective.

Then there are the regional, sub-regional and local perspectives on the industry. The person writing your application needs to know about these, too.

Once you are confident about where the sector is going, it’s possible to start to write about what you are doing to help the sector.

What do people write about instead?
Well, when they struggle, they write about how they work with their individual employers and about what they do in general terms. It’s sad, because so many providers do know their sectors well and senior staff in successful providers are often very active in their industries. They simply don’t write what will show their achievements off well.

More than once, a provider has admitted to running out of steam by the time they have reached Part B.

• Sometimes, the person writing Part B hasn’t had any training on what the application process requires.
• Sometimes the person writing Part B is doing so without having seen the Applicant Guide.

If you’re going to make a good showing with Part B, make sure you can answer this good question with confidence. That’s your starting point with your Part B work.

Good Questions (1)

Good questions are good for your organisation. They can be challenging, but good questions will help you to focus on the right issues.

In the April edition of the Achieving the TQS Newsletter I set out five good questions that it would be beneficial for you to ask in your organisation as your work towards your TQS certification.

I said in the newseltter that I would look at each question in more detail in this blog. Therefore, the next few posts deal with those questions in turn.

When you look at each question, before you think about the answer, think about the value of asking the question. Then think about the answer.

This first question is one to ask of the employer.

What briefing did you receive about the work we are doing with you?

It’s far better to talk to people who have been briefed than simply to look to check if there is a system in place to ensure that briefings to take place.

• Having a monitoring system is part of your management process.


• Implementing a monitoring system is part of your management process.


• Proving that the monitoring system works as specified is a valuable activity.


• Talking to your employers about this not only allows you to check the efficacy of your system, it helps you to build your relationship with each employer.

People in colleges and provider organisations often say they need more reasons to get in touch with employers in order to build rapport and to understand employers better. Here is one question that can start a conversation and help you to do just that.

You also need to speak to the employer about the briefing that he or she has received, because it’s the employer’s judgement that counts. You may think your communications system works well. You can’t be sure of that, until it is endorsed by your employers.

The meaning of all communication is found in the message received, not in the message sent, so your employers’ perceptions really matter.

Some providers introduce convoluted checking systems to work out in they’re doing what they set out to do. They often forget that asking a simple question can make life a lot simpler and can be just as good - or better - than those checks at providing the information you need.

The answer to this question gives confirmation that an important part of your process for working with employers works. Therefore, remember to ask it.

Magic Words

People who know me know I write professionally.

I write guides to the TQS. I write books. I write articles in various journals, some for the education world, some for other markets.

This means that I focus on words, and words are at the heart of everything I do, which is why our TQS critiquing services are so popular.

Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be focusing on words in this blog, or rather I'm going to be focusing on questions.

Good questions are really important in the world of the TQS.

If you learn how to ask yourself the right questions, you can review your progress with the TQS very easily.

If you learn how to ask yourself the right questions, you can gain an honest and accurate impression of how you far you have progressed with your TQS journey.

This new series starts next week.

Countdown to the second assessment visit

The TQS launch was in May last year. Therefore, quite a few organisations that received conditional certification will be coming up for a second visit from the assessors in the new few months.

Preparing for that visit starts a long time before the visit is due.

If you’re thinking about your second visit, use the checklist below to guide you. If you’re on the road to your first visit, consider how useful these timescales could be to you.

Three months before the second visit – look closely at your assessment feedback report. Decide how many of the issues highlighted in that report you have addressed. Take action to work on anything that has been neglected. Check your progress with all the other issues.

Take action where necessary.

Two months before the second visit – start thinking seriously about the case you want to make to the assessors. Appoint a team to lead your preparations.

Think about the written submission and the visit.

Six weeks before the second visit – review all your preparations. Review documents. Review your policies. Review your submission. Update as necessary.

Four weeks before the second visit – think about the fine details. Who is responsible for what?

Two weeks before the second visit – make sure all the key players, and especially senior managers, know exactly what impact your training solutions have on employers.

One week before the second visit – brief every one about what is happening. Then slow down.

Think laterally and prepare to meet your visitors.

TQS Myths (4) “Build a good TQS portfolio and you’re home and dry.”

I met someone in a provider organisation last week who was wheeling a supermarket trolley filled with lever arch files around.

As I stepped out of the way to let the trolley pass, my contact pointed to the documents in the trolley and whispered to me:

“That’s our TQS portfolio.”

As my visit progressed I learned that this organisation was putting most of its TQS efforts into building the portfolio so that when the assessors arrived they would have everything that wanted.

“Build a good TQS portfolio and you’re home and dry. That’s what the assessors really want,” was what a manager in the organisation said to me.

My question was: “How do you know the assessors will ever arrive?”

I went on to explain that whilst it’s great to have supporting evidence available, and set out in a way that makes it accessible, evidence gathering is not the only activity that is needed.

Something comes before building the portfolio.

It’s making sure the application is sound.

Without a sound application the certification body might decide not to proceed to the on-site verification visit.

I checked with that same organisation how much time people are spending on the portfolio and how much time people are spending on writing the TQS application. They seemed to think they were spending about five times as much time on gathering evidence as they were on writing the application.

Whilst I wouldn’t necessarily recommend reversing the ratios, there is probably a need to spend more time on the application.

So, as managers in provider organisations start to think about a well-earned rest, take a rest from the shopping trolley approach to the TQS, too.

Clear your minds and come back from the Easter break ready to write a succinct, relevant and informative TQS application as your first priority, and think about building your organisation’s “portfolio” second.

There’s magic in the air, or is there?

The ‘phone has been ringing quite insistently over the last couple of weeks, and the calls have been primarily from organisations which gained conditional TQS certification last year. They are now about to receive a follow-up visit from the assessors, and they’re worried.

Conversations have begun with such statements as:

“We had our TQS action plan quite a while ago. We read through it and we meant to ….”

or

“We haven’t done much about A5, measuring impact, that sort of thing but we know we need to.”

The conversations then progresses to:

“So, do you think you can help us?”

Well, the answer is “yes”, but not necessarily in time for the assessors’ next visit.

What these callers are really asking me about is the state of my magic wand.

As you can see from the picture, it’s bent. In fact, it’s broken.

I can’t conjure up the sort of information that people are asking me to produce. I can’t manufacture data about the impact of your organisation’s work with employers.

The assessors want to see evidence about performance and outcomes. They want to see how you are doing with reference to the requirements of your own strategy.

They are looking for trends, and where appropriate, improvements in your performance over time.

This means you need to be able to demonstrate you have been doing the things you know you should be doing for some time.

Therefore, whether you are about to receive your second assessment visit, or if you are looking forward to your first assessment, remember you can’t just put lots of effort into the TQS for a short period of time, and then move on to the next trophy. You need to sustain your efforts and build your track record in anticipation of your assessment.

For the moment, focus on getting the right systems and processes in place and start tracking what you do to support employers and what you achieve with them.

Then, when the assessment approaches, you will have the necessary data and information, and you won’t need my magic wand.

Goodbye to the early adopters

Watch out in the near future for the one hundredth TQS certification.

Looking at the list of certificated organisations suggests that someone will become the one hundredth successful organisation fairly soon. (If you count employer organisations as well, we might already have the one hundredth achievement.)

What a milepost like this will indicate is that the TQS is well and truly in the mainstream of activities.

The organisations that like to be the first to achieve an award, whenever a new one is first promoted, have got their badges. The organisations which were just about ready to be certificated, when the TQS was launched, have gained their certification.

The first in the region, the first in the sector, the first to gain full certification in …. have all achieved their successes.

The photographs with happy people holding their certificates and plaques are on the websites and life is moving on.

This all means that the organisations coming through now are often taking a bit longer to get ready for certification. They probably have had further to travel in terms of their development than the trail blazers. They have more things to do, more systems to put in place, more processes to define, implement and refine than some of the organisations that achieved certification early in the life of the standard.

Today, many organisations looking for TQS certification really do need a structure for their activities and for their TQS development journey, if they are going to gain the prize of certification.

So, from now on, the way forward for these organisations is a systematic approach to gaining certification. The best way to do this is to produce a week-by-week development plan and a checklist of systems and processes that need to be in place and operational before the application is sent off.

Now that the period of innovation and novelty has passed, as far as the TQS is concerned, it’s time for sensible development, down-to-earth planning and plenty of hard work.

Goodbye to the early adopters, indeed!

TQS Myths (3) – You can forget about the TQS for a while, once you have conditional certification.

Well, you can, but you wouldn’t be advised to let the TQS slip out of sight.

If you’ve struggled with A5 or B3, there’s a good chance it’s because you haven’t got a history of measuring the things the TQS wants to see you measuring. That means you need to start thinking about the systems and processes you intend to use to do that measurement as soon as the assessors leave.

You might be able to demonstrate all sorts of interesting trends when it comes to how you support your learners, but with employers it’s a different matter.

Remember that:

• the longer you delay, the more difficult the task.
• the longer you delay, the more difficult the next assessment visit.

It’s worth remembering that any activity that relies on input from people outside your organisation will take time to organise, so the message must be: start working with employers as soon after the assessment as its practicable, and find ways of demonstrating how you add value to them.

As the weeks and the months go by make sure you think about:

1. how you track the impact of your work with employers
2. how you ensure that you know if employers value what you do with them and for them
3. how you ensure you know if you are helping your employers to be more successful (however they, and you, choose to define this).

As some providers are finding, time really does fly.
As some providers are finding, it is almost time to start panicking.

The assessors are looking to come back to check up on progress . . . and not a lot has happened.