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.

Three Questions – The Experience of Assessment

Wakefield College has recently gained TQS certification for Part A and for Part B (Logistics).

Services to Business, the business arm of Wakefield, led the college towards its TQS success and managed the college’s TQS development journey.

Every one at Wakefield College is absolutely delighted with the achievement.

As the college’s literature says: “We are proud of being acknowledged as one of the top training providers in the UK, having received the Training Quality Standard.”

I spoke to Janet Hilton, Services to Business Market Development Manager at Wakefield College recently, about the college’s experience of assessment. Janet offered lots of good advice and useful insights into the TQS assessment process.

How long did it take you to produce your application?
“From start to finish it took us about six months.

We had the systems there but not in the way the submission required. This gave us the opportunity to review how we presented our statistics to make them more sector specific. We have now altered our processes not only with Logistics but we have extended this to other areas as well.

We involved the whole college and that takes time. The exec. team, the QA team, our own staff within Services to Business including sub-contractors and the apprenticeship team – they were all involved.

We didn’t leave it at that. We involved the stakeholders, too – employers, Skills for Logistics, schools, European connection to name but a few.

As a result every one had ownership of our submission.

We found that Part A and Part B are different. Writing the two parts was different. With Part A we concentrated on the whole college. Part B was a lot more specialised.

We were very confident as we were writing because we know we are an excellent training provider and everything we said we could prove. We, however, knew we had to find the right way to tell the assessors about what we do.”

What was the verification visit like?
“Thorough.

It was rigorous. It was probing. The assessors knew what they were looking for.

They were friendly and pleasant, but they were clear about what they wanted.

The assessment process was a challenge yet the experience was very positive. We pulled everything together to make sure we were ready – and we were. They wanted to speak to different people – our executive team, human resources, the CPD unit, sub-contractors and staff – we made sure everyone was available.

We had prepared lots of examples of evidence from across the whole college ready for the visit. We could pull them out easily. That meant we were well prepared for the visit.”

What hints and tips would you like to offer to organisations preparing for assessment?
“Make sure that whatever you write about in your application you are able to evidence.

Sell yourself, and your organisation, but make sure you can evidence what you say. That’s really important. Don’t take anything you do as obvious – tell them about it.

Remember also that it’s your story and nobody else’s. Be clear about that.

Have a team of people make an input to the application. Staff, stakeholders, every one. Get their input. Get them to contribute. Their inputs are so valuable. Keep going back through your application and be willing to alter what you have put to make it flow more easily, Don’t just do this at the end. Brianstorm ideas as people from different areas will look at the submission wearing a different hat from yourself – don’t miss the opportunity to listen, and include what they have to say.

We kept asking ourselves if we were selling what we do strongly enough. We kept asking if we had enough statistics to support what we were saying and, with Part B, if we were meeting the requirements of Skills for Logistics.

We checked amongst ourselves. We checked with other people, too, and asked them to read what we were writing, because it’s very useful to have lots of people look at the application.

In the end the application was a credit to all our staff.”

Find out more about Wakefield College’s work with employers by visiting their website.