Do we have to have the TQS?

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

Where are you going?

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

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

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

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

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

To address this think about your relationships with your customers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doing more with less

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

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

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

For example:

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

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

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

Is the TQS providing a framework for excellence?

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

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

See also:

How much LMI do we need?

An assessor's view of the TQS

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

How often do we keep in touch with our employers?

Meeting the A5/B3 Challenge

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

What is all the fuss about?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

The assessment looks for results and for trends in results.

Consider the following when you think about trends.

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

Think also about your results and the targets you set.

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

Then there are results in comparison to others.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See also:

Planning the TQS development journey: first things first

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does your employer engagement system look like?

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

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

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

These include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What exactly are you trying to do to support employers?

Employer engagement basics - the summary