Is there a future for the TQS?

I’m asking this question because lots of other people are asking it. I’ve had telephone discussions around this theme with four providers this week, and this exact question, typed into the search engines, has brought this blog several new readers.

Welcome!

I don’t know if there is a future for the TQS, but I do know that the people who are asking the question are more likely to have the answer than the people in the funding agencies.

When people ask me if the TQS will survive, and if it will flourish, I now have my answer ready.

“It will if you value it.”

Do providers value the TQS?

Think for a moment about your own TQS journey. Did you decide to go for the TQS because of the value that you think it will add to your organisation? Did you decide to go for the TQS because someone was pushing you in that direction?

Your answers will shape your view of the TQS.

If you’ve decided that having a systematic approach to working with employers will help your business, then you know that the TQS will help.

You can use the standard and the framework to help you to devise systems and processes to support your work with employers. You can reorganise the way you work with employers. You can follow the principles of the TQS – all at very little cost.

If you’re just starting out on your TQS journey, I’d advise you to buy the Training Quality Standard Applicant Guide, if you can’t get one for free. It will set you back £30, but that will be the extent of your outlay.

You can then use the TQS as a development tool.

I remember getting on for twenty years ago now I spent a lot of time delivering workshops all around the country for MCI (Management Charter Initiative) helping people to see that the newly-published management standards could be used for more than gaining qualifications. They helped business, too, in organisational development, in recruitment, in performance management and so on.

I think the same applies to the TQS. You can gain a lot of benefit from using the standard without thinking of certification.

Does anyone say you must gain certification?

This is the thorny question. Do you need TQS certification in order to gain access to government contracts? Is the ground shifting beneath the sector?

In all honesty the answer matters less than you might think.

If you decide to work with the TQS and apply its principles, then gaining certification is a short additional step to take. You can take that step when someone says you need your certification to take part in the next round of contracting. You will have travelled a long way down the road towards certification using the TQS as a development tool. Gaining the plaque won’t be too big an additional job.

Is there really a future for the TQS?

There are some questions to think about.

• What else is there to put in its place?
• What are the feelings about the TQS in your part of the country? Does it have lots of advocates?
• Has the TQS passed that very important test? Does it actually add value?

It’s your decision.

See also:

Is the TQS still top of the agenda?

Do we have to have the TQS?

Is the TQS still top of the agenda?

The fact that I’ve been asked this question several times in the last month seems to suggest that the answer is: no.

More than one hundred and fifty organisations have gained the TQS to date. A lot of those organisations are colleges.

Inevitably this means that for some colleges the TQS is not now top of the agenda. They’ve achieved certification. They have the badge, even if – in some cases – that badge is held provisionally. This means that quite a few colleges can now focus some of their attention on something else.

In many cases funding issues are now top of the agenda. Strategies for increasing income, often from employers, are centre stage.

In those colleges that haven’t gained the TQS, as yet, some serious questions are being asked?

• Do we need the TQS?
• Does anyone say we have to have it?
• If we can’t gain it by the summer should we bother?
• What are other colleges doing?
• What will we lose if we don’t go for certification?

In private training provider organisations the same questions are being asked, along with a couple of others:

• Will be still be able to sub-contract from colleges if we don’t achieve the TQS?
• Can we find a way to go through as a small organisation – because it’s cheaper that way?

Colleges and private training providers are also asking whether they need to think about Part B or if they can concentrate on their Part A activities.

These are all legitimate questions, but finding the answers is problematic.

With the demise of the LSC and the end of the World Class Skills programme, a lot has changed in the sector. On the larger stage the outcome of the general election could change a lot, or not very much. Then there’s the issue of the stance of the Skills Funding Agency or of the National Skills Academies with regard to the TQS and how much influence they have.

So what’s the best way forward?

It’s worth going back to the actual standard and reviewing it. Then the key question is:

• Will working with the TQS help our business?

Any organisation looking to work with employers will be certain to see the value of addressing the key principles in the standard, so every provider organisation can improve its business prospects by using the TQS as an organisational development tool.

Working with the TQS in this context remains a valuable activity, and one that can remain top of the agenda.

Seeking certification is quite a different issue and it is the external environment that will dictate decisions in that context. It will take some weeks or months before it is clear how the environment in the sector will change and develop.

We will all need to wait to find out if TQS certification will be top of the agenda in the autumn and beyond.

The shrewd organisations will probably hedge their bets.

If they can achieve the TQS by the summer they will. If they can’t, they’ll work with the standard and be ready to seek certification if and when they need it.

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?

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.

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.

Planning the TQS Development Journey (7) – Writing mileposts?

This post will come as a revelation to most readers, it deals with mileposts that most people ignore.

Think about the time you have available to you to write your TQS application.

You have, of course, as much as you want, because you can start anytime. You don't have to wait until you have registered with a certification body.

However, assuming you are working to a deadline, think first of the total time you have available to you.

Then consider the following:

• After how much of the time available should you have the first draft finished?
• After how much of the time available should you have reviewed and updated the first draft?
• After how much of the time available should the application be reviewed by the senior team?
• After how much of the time available should you be doing the final review, proof reading and consistency checking?

For most people these questions are irrelevant. Everything is squashed into a very short space of time when they are rushing around trying to get words – any words - onto the computer screen.

However, if you want to make the best of the application writing process, you will establish some mileposts and they will look something like this.

The first draft will be finished when 35% of the total time available has passed.

Your first review and update will be completed after half the available time has passed.

Senior managers will have completed their review and revisions when two thirds of the available time has passed.

You should then make further revisions. At this point you will have used up about three quarters of the time available.

You should then wait for a few days before undertaking your final review, consistency check and proof reading. It’s amazing how many mistakes and inconsistencies you find if you leave yourself time to work in this way.

Here is the link to what Sue Lowe from Hugh Baird College had to say about the application writing process. It’s worth taking her advice.

Establish mileposts.

Create deadlines – and stick to them.

Planning the TQS Development Journey (6) – What about the mileposts?

Your journey towards TQS certification may begin with a single step, and you certainly know where you’re going, but have you identified the mileposts along the way?

There are probably between eight and ten mileposts leading to the major road sign which says: “Start writing your TQS application now.”

Most of these mileposts are attached to gates across the road. That is, you can’t get past the milepost until you open the gate and pass through it. Try to go around the gate and you’re likely to get bogged down in the mud at the roadside.

So how are you doing at getting past the first few mileposts?

Milepost one: We know who our principal stakeholders are.
Congratulations, if you do.

Test this one out immediately by drawing a diagram with your organisation at the centre and the five or six principal stakeholders clustered around you.

Then check that you have a consensus in your organisation that these are your principal stakeholders!

Milepost two: We know who owns the employer.
Great, if you do.

Quite a few provider organisations don’t.

In some cases no one owns the employer, which means no one takes responsibility for managing each employer’s relationship with the organisation.

To check that you are clear about the quality of these relationships, map out an employer journey and see who takes responsibility for ensuring that the employer’s relationship with the organisation is rewarding – for the employer, that is – at each juncture.

• Who takes care of the employer when he or she first works with your organisation?
• Who takes responsibility for making sure the relationship develops?
• Who ensures that the employer is happy with the service received?
• Who builds the relationship for the future?

. . . And lots more . . .

Milepost three: When we make proposals to employers we always deal with business issues as well as training solutions.
Time for a celebration, then.

This is a development issue that takes time to get right. Lots of provider organisations struggle with this one.

You need to be certain you understand your employers’ organisational development issues and the challenges they are facing before you are in a position to recommend any training and development programmes.

Thus, the only way you can demonstrate that your training and qualifications are relevant to your employers is to demonstrate that there is a link between the work you undertake with an employer to the business issues that employer faces.

It’s relatively easy to check how you are progressing with these stages of the journey. Success with most of them is about clarity of thought and writing down what you do – as is success with much of the TQS.

More mileposts next week.

Planning the TQS Development Journey

You will have noticed that the first four posts under this heading have focused on employers and your relationships with employers.

They haven't given much attention to the Training Quality Standard itself.

That is deliberate.

After all, markets matter most.

Thus, the first four posts covered:

1. What exactly are you trying to do to support employers?
2. First things first (working out the difference your interventions make)
3. Have you put your own house in order?
4. How good are you at communicating with employers?

You need to deal with these and similar issues before you can really make progress towards certification.

The next posts will look at you and your relationship with the Training Quality Standard.

The fifth item in the series will be about the key decisions you need to make when you start to plan your journey.

Planning the TQS Development Journey (4) - How good are you at communicating with employers?

Is your organisation good at communicating?

How would you know?

The simplest way to find out is to ask the people who receive your message what they think of your organisation.

The meaning of all communication is found in the message received, not in the message sent, so you can only check the quality of your communications be talking to those people to whom you are sending your messages.

1. What do employers think of you?
2. Have they received the messages you wanted them to receive?
3. Do they know what you do?
4. Do they know how you can help them?
5. Would they turn to you if they had a business need?
6. Would they turn to you to help them with their people development issues?

The list of questions could be a lot longer, but the answers are more important than the questions.

If you don't know what answers employers would offer, then the chances are you won't review and update the messages you send out. You won't know if you need to amend your messages, because you're not receiving feedback on your communications strategy.

It's really important to find out how you are perceived in your marketplace, because this will shape your whole approach to working with employers. How you are perceived in the marketplace will have an impact on your overall success with employer engagement, too.

If you want to develop strong working relationships with employers - which you need if you are to be successful with the TQS - you must have a communications strategy which ensures that employers receive the messages you want them to receive.

So the question stands: how good are you at communicating with employers?

Planning the TQS Development Journey (3) – Have you put your own house in order?

The FE sector understands initiatives.

There have been projects, awards, imperatives and opportunities to innovate in the sector for just about as long as anyone can remember.

Most of us who work in, or with, colleges and work-based learning provider organisations know how initiatives usually work.

• You have an idea.
• You find a champion, or a group of supporters.
• You obtain an amount of funding.
• You create a pilot project.
• You use the pilot project to refine your original plans.
• Finally – and somewhere along the line – you roll out a modified and must improved version of the original idea to the whole organisation.
  

If that’s how you’re planning to work with the TQS, there is one thing you can be certain of. Your journey will take a long time.

Why?

Two really important concepts, as far as the TQS is concerned, are consistency and standardisation.

In order to get consistency and standardisation in an organisation, you need systems and processes.

You need your systems and processes to be applied across your organisation. Then you need to track the use of those systems and processes so that you can be confident that they are being implemented.

You need to know, and to be able to demonstrate, that your approaches and ways of working are embedded into the life of your organisation.

Putting your own house in order – as far as the TQS is concerned – is about getting those systems and processes up and running as soon as possible.

You know, for example, that the system for establishing business benefits with employers when you come to discuss training solutions needs to be in place and operating quickly. Without this system in place you will not be able to generate evidence for parts of A2.

You also know that you need a mechanism for measuring the impact of the work you do with employers - actually with employers themselves. You need to be able to do this to help you to address A4 and, of course, A5.

Therefore, take some time to get these things set up now. It will save you time later on. It will also help you to be realistic about when you will be ready to seek certification.

Planning the TQS Journey (2) First things first

Now that you know what you do to help employers, you can begin to ask yourself the really important question.

What difference do your interventions make to employers?

If you did nothing would the employer be better off? You hope not, but how do you know?

Is the employer more profitable or, in the case of public sector organisations, is the organisation achieving more of its objectives, as a result of your interventions?

If you don’t know, you need to find out.

Set up the audit trail when you first begin to work with an employer.

Think about business benefits. When an employer chooses to work with you, what’s in it for the employer?

Think about key performance indicators – business performance indicators, that is.

It’s hard work establishing the right KPIs but you need to do this so that you’ll have something to write about when you get to the stage of working on your TQS application. You’ll need the answers to help you with A0 and A5.

Start working on these issues now.

Be prepared to work on your system for several months before you seek certification. You will need to show that you are actually identifying business benefits, setting performance indicators and measuring your success.

Planning the TQS Journey (1) What exactly are you trying to do to support employers?

Do you know?
Do your employers know?

Thank carefully about your answers, because those answers should be linked to what you know employers want.

I wrote about what employers want in an earlier post. You can re-read it here.

However, here’s what you need to do to help you to be clear about where you’re going.

Review what you currently say about how you support employers. (If you don’t have such a statement, then here’s your starting point.)

Remove everything from you statement that refers to: training, qualifications, courses, NVQ, Train to Gain, Apprenticeships, funding, skills . . . You get the picture.

Then remove any statements about helping employers to build a skilled workforce, or to meet their business objectives, or to solve their problems, or to become more profitable etc.

Why? Well, it’s aspirational and fuzzy and every one promises to do these things, so to get their business you need to do more – a lot more.

Stuck?

Here’s a clue. Those readers who have worked with us for quite a few years will remember our early How To Do More Business With Business programme. I used to say to anyone who asked me about it:

“We help colleges to do more business with business.”

It’s a simple statement.
It’s memorable. (People still quote it back to me.)
It encapsulates how we helped colleges then – and now.
It’s also the sort of thing the customer wants to hear, because it’s a statement about the benefits the customer will gain. It’s not about the products and services the provider can offer.

Employers want to hear about benefits they will gain, not what you can offer, when you talk to them.

So, December is a good time for strategic planning. Give some thought to the essence of what you do.

Write it down.

Work on your statement and refine it.

Succeed here, and you’ll also go a long way to preparing to write A0 in your TQS application.