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?