Ashridge Education and Skills (AES) employer as customer

Ashridge Education and Skills

The Employer as Customer Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Ashridge Education and Skills

Contents Introduction

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement College of North West London Cornwall College Omnia Training South Trafford College Sussex Downs College Tresham Institute of Further Education Westminster Kingsway College Yeovil College

Postscript Acknowledgements

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Introduction

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With the launch of Train to Gain in 2006 the Government signalled its intention to move ahead on the “demand led” agenda for training providers and employers. Soon afterwards the Leitch Report reinforced and extended this approach, further signalling structural and cultural change in the learning and skills sector.

Over the past year, hundreds of training providers across the country have been responding to the changing agenda.

For some, for example private training providers, Train to Gain has provided an additional impetus and funding stream to an established business. For others, for example many of the traditional Further Education colleges, much of what Train to Gain brings is new, either in part or in whole. For all parts of the sector it has raised the need to address not only Train to Gain but also the wider employer responsiveness agenda.

This publication provides a record of the experiences of eight such providers, and represents, in each case, a snapshot of where they were in the early stages of their Train to Gain and responsiveness journey and their progress over the past twelve months.

Each case study provides a time- and context-specific illustration of the challenges the various providers were facing at the time we spoke with them, and the solutions they were putting in place to respond to the emerging policy agenda.

The insights are not designed to be illustrative of ‘best practice’, or indeed to suggest a ‘how to’ manual. While it is very easy to talk liberally of ‘best practice’, in our experience, it is often better to think in terms of ‘effective

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practice’. Context is all, and what works for one organisation may be of no practical relevance to another organisation whose context is even only slightly different.

Rather, taken together, the insights provide a representative reflection of the experiences and challenges that most providers have been facing during these twelve months. In publishing the case studies, our hope is that they raise useful questions for you to consider in the context of your own organisation, as well as, perhaps, some specific examples of initiatives your organisation might take to build upon or accelerate your success.

The case studies represent colleges and private providers across the country, serving a wide variety of different business sectors: The insight for the College of North West London provides an example of the importance of developing truly flexible and responsive processes; as well as the challenges of working with multiple partners, a series of complex projects and funding streams. Growing the learner pipeline and smart working with partners are also key features.

The insight for Cornwall College outlines an example of (i) aligning the whole organisation around the principle that the employer (not the learner per se) is the real client; (ii) bringing the ‘whole organisation’ to the client, thereby maximising the breadth and depth of business with that client; and (iii) the benefits of consolidating efforts (in this case under Cornwall College Business) in order to simplify things for customers and make it easier for them to access and understand what the college has to offer.

The insight for Omnia Training is a fascinating and inspiring example of how something of real value to clients can be developed from deep personal insight into the marketplace and built on profound personal experience and change.

The insight for South Trafford College provides an example of the importance of integrating employer engagement into the core business of the college, with a particular emphasis on investing in infrastructure and systems to support information capture and communication flows. The case study also highlights the value of being a member of various partnerships, bringing with it the possibility of much greater sharing of best/effective practice.

The insight for Sussex Downs College represents a good example of strategic marketing and market segmentation, with service to clients being differentiated according to their strategic value to the college. It also highlights the considerable benefits of maximising engagement with an external consulting process.

The insight for Tresham Institute shows us a good example of actively seeking to create sustainable organisational change in order to build the climate for sustainable performance improvement.

It also highlights the importance of creating and actively using informal peer referencing groups, over and above any more formal partnerships or consortia arrangements.

The insight for Westminster Kingsway College gives us an example of working collaboratively with ‘the competition’ in order to maximise everyone’s opportunity, alongside the development of working partnerships and clear roles.

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The insight for Yeovil College shows an example of flexible, 24/7 demand-led provision; and of how to ensure the full involvement and engagement of unions and management in the ONA process.

The college has also developed an effective, user-friendly website which supports the client/potential client in thinking through their challenges before the first contact is even made.

While it may not be possible to generalise across contexts, the research and analysis which has gone into this publication does suggest a number of enduring themes across the insights, and thus points to the possibility of some fundamental issues which may apply regardless of context.

It seems, for instance, that there are five key themes in particular which, to varying degrees, imbue the experiences of everyone featured here, and also (in our experience) the myriad range of other providers across the sector.

They are: 1. The importance of clearly answering the fundamental question: who is the ‘client’ – the employer or the learner? There is a range of opinion: some say the employer (for example Yeovil); others the learner (for example Westminster and Omnia). Others may say both. There is a very persuasive argument that the ‘real’ client has to be the employer, since it is the employer that benefits from the up-skilling of its staff, thus raising productivity, and contributing (en masse) to growth in local, regional or national GVA/GDP. Either way, the lesson appears to be clear: however you define it, the guiding philosophy must be,

at least: employer-centric: learnerfocused. Such a focus allows the generation of a much tighter, commercially focused mission statement (and thus business operating model). In our research and consultancy, it became clear very quickly that the good mission statements speak to the value added (eg in terms of improving skills in the local employee population to drive EVA/GVA for the local or regional community).

Cornwall College is an excellent example of this. In other words, the good mission statements tell the organisation something about how they need to operate, and remind them of the bigger picture. It is necessary but insufficient to think that having a wide product portfolio or a ‘broad and deep curriculum touching all parts of the community’ is enough to succeed. It isn’t.

2. The real importance of ensuring that a healthy balance is maintained between strategy and operations. Great strategy that isn’t executed is, at the end of the day, useless. Equally, incredibly slick operations without a well thought through strategic direction run the risk of business failure. Time and resources must be invested in both, and senior management, governors and boards must take a vested interest in both.

3. Understanding that changing the name of the diagnostic appraisal from ‘TNA’ to ‘ONA’ is not in itself enough to move the emphasis onto forging productive business partnerships with customers.

A full and detailed TNA is a very long process, and runs the

risk of presenting solutions the customer doesn’t want, because the emphasis is on ‘what we can offer’. What is really needed is a productive dialogue based on a professional relationship of what the employer needs to develop their business, followed by a businessdriven response to the design and delivery of training.

4. For colleges, the question of which core operating model – centralised business unit of some description, or owned within faculties? Where there is a separate business unit, the emphasis needs to be on internal communication (including the establishment of some kind of meaningful cross-college steering group); alignment of MIS and processes; and protocols and standards to ensure clients get the same experience however they enter the organisation and/or which faculty or curriculum delivery team they work with. Westminster Kingsway has its own, dedicated unit, which is very successful.

So too do Cornwall College and Tresham Institute.

The key question is whether there is a ‘best practice’ model. Not surprisingly, it seems to depend!

Where there is already good cross-college communication between faculty and ‘central’ staff, the evidence is that a ‘whole organisation’ approach is possible.

If there is good communication, and particularly if the central team includes people from faculties, there is a greater chance of all acting as ‘one college’. Where this isn’t the case (for example

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where there is a highly devolved management structure) it may be best to have a central business unit solely responsible for employer engagement. As a result of these insights, and from other consultancy assignments, the jury might still be out.

However, it’s not really about the model: it’s about the people – good people can make a ‘bad’ model work! Where there is a central business unit, it seems the ‘ideal’ blend of resources includes business development people; administration; and delivery.

Business development people are focused on consultancy skills – ie they get round the client’s side of the table and discover what’s important for the client, from which they can then suggest a range of solutions, including bespoke.

Where people are sales-focused – ie offering the ‘broad and deep curriculum’, in the case of colleges; or the ‘full product portfolio’, in the case of private providers, success seems (and certainly is likely to be) more limited. And, having a ‘Business Centre’ does, of course, force a more commercial mindset (not a curriculum mindset).

5. However, the biggest challenge is ‘change management’ and not ‘employer engagement’! Accepting and dealing with the fact that the competitive landscape has already shifted is a tough one, especially for organisations that have effectively only ever known one operating model, or have been working in a largely unchanged business

context for many years. As one of the participants in this research from an established FE college put it: “…they’ve got to get a more commercial edge to the way they are thinking”. Following that, internal alignment between, on the one hand, strategy and structure, and on the other, culture and ways of working is key. It’s all about creating sustainable organisational change in order then to create the climate for sustainable performance improvement. As another of the participants put it: “Managing growth is easier than managing decline”! And growth means change.

Tailored consultancy has given providers access to a range of resources to help develop strategy and practice, both in the context of Train to Gain specifically, but also in the wider context of employer engagement.

Given the context-bound and different circumstances of each provider, and organisations being at such distinctly different stages in their journey, we believe that the key message for policy makers is that investment in consultancy should be the primary vehicle for making the changes that are needed.

Over the past twelve months, we have worked with over 100 organisations, broadly under three themes: •

Creating and supporting a cultural change so that provision is developed and delivered when and where employers want it

•

Fostering a ‘whole organisation’ approach so that all roles and levels

of staff understand their contribution to employer-led provision •

Increasing commercial awareness: both of the business needs of employers and also within provider organisations.

Our intent has been to develop both the capability and capacity to anticipate, create, and manage the meaningful (and in some cases profound) changes necessary to fully meet the wider employer engagement agenda. As such, our work has typically focused on five things: •

Strategic marketing – understanding the customer(s), the market(s), and making informed choices about where best to target limited resources

•

Getting everyone in the organisation on the same page, moving the whole organisation together: ‘thinking as one’

•

The fundamental importance of also engaging employees

•

Supporting culture shift (including through organisation-wide communications)

•

Gap analysis and action planning to support ongoing development beyond the term of the initial consulting assignment.

As you go through the insights, you will see references here and there to this work, and to the work organisations have been doing for themselves, as well as insights into their own learning. What we have learned can be summarised under one simple, broad theme: the importance in many cases of

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‘unfreezing’ the old culture and starting new conversations about the reality of the change; and how everyone in the organisation needs, to some extent, to embrace new ways of working.

Over and above this, the case studies here highlight other challenges, not only for the participants in this research, but across nearly all of the organisations we have had the pleasure of working with: •

•

•

New structures and roles – some are finding it difficult to operate outside of long-established ways of working How to manage increases in business with limited capacity, whilst not losing sight of quality Struggling with doing what’s right in the context of employer engagement, versus doing what specific finance regimes may ‘require’ organisations to do to meet funding and other requirements

out strategic partners who can deliver on their behalf (with some kind of commercial benefit to the finder) •

The importance of having a strong, commercially focused lead partner in partnerships/consortia

•

The importance of committed, energetic people leading the agenda

•

How to increase the share of the customer’s wallet (ie get more business from existing customers)

•

•

•

How to do effective TNAs/ONAs that focus on employers’ needs and business impact, rather than simply the benefits to the learner The importance of having strong relationships with senior management in client organisations, who see ‘training’ as a business issue (not an HR issue) And, above all, making everything simpler for the client – especially (a) the offer – a broad and deep curriculum is not always a guarantee of what will work for the client – bespoke solutions require bespoke thinking; and (b) the administration systems must be responsive – clients won’t wait for a response within 7-10 days!

•

Branding, especially in colleges – to create a ‘new’ identity, or to go to market as ‘the College’

•

Choosing which clients to work with, on the basis of their strategic value, and not working with those that don’t add value or are difficult to deal with

•

Remembering that a significant business impact (eg in terms of communications, teamwork and culture) can be made in very small SMEs with only a modest training intervention – it isn’t all about snaring the big blue chips!

So, as we said at the outset, the insights here are a mere snapshot in time, and so represent just a glimpse of where a variety of organisations have been on the journey so far. The question is: where next?

Recognising the need to expand into new areas, and if the college or private provider doesn’t currently offer a particular ‘product’, to seek

Putting all of the research data and consultancy experience together, we might argue there are three critical challenges over the next 12-18 months:

•

•

Recognising the importance of good client information systems, starting with robust Organisational Needs Analysis/Training Needs Analysis to assess the needs both of the client organisation and the learner; and the need for realistic, relevant and robust means of evaluating success (business impact and learner success).

Measuring impact should be part of ‘how you operate’

•

Maximising the benefits of scale, and where they don’t exist developing creative solutions to the problems of flexibility and capacity

•

The importance of engaging the whole organisation in order to embrace the diversity of talent and skills the organisation/partnership is able to bring to bear

We hope you find the material in this publication interesting and stimulating, but above all that it enriches your own debates in your own organisations; raises new questions for you; and provides a variety of ideas on very tangible, specific things you might be able to do to step up to another level in your response to the employer engagement agenda.

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Ashridge Education and Skills Ashridge Business School is ranked number one in the UK for tailored executive education in the 2007 Financial Times rankings. Ashridge offers a combination of learning, consulting, facilitation, coaching and research, directly applied to the realities and challenges faced by organisations. You can read more about us at www.ashridge.org.uk

As a specialist unit Ashridge Education and Skills brings the resources and approach of Ashridge to the sector. Working with key partners and clients at a national, regional and local level we deliver support for innovative leadership and management, strategic thinking, organisational change, business development and personal growth.

Our team combines experience of the learning and skills sector with a background in business based consulting. We actively invest in the transfer of knowledge between our clients through virtual and face-toface networking.

The Employer as Customer Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

College of North West London Customer insight based on interviews with Stephen Hall, General Manager, Fusion Business Unit

Customer profile The College of North West London (CNWL)1 is a general adult and further education college. It has around 17,000 students and an average learner age of 32/33 years.

The college offers vocational skills for employers in the workplace. Its mission is: “to support the skills needs of employers within London.” It is heavily structured towards technical industries: construction, engineering, and manufacturing, and is, in fact, the second largest provider of construction in the country, providing 25% of the nation’s construction vocational qualifications.

CNWL underwent an Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI) inspection in January, and was awarded Grade 2 across the board and Grade 1 for employer engagement. Its target for the next 12-18 months is to receive a Grade 1 across the board. The inspection generated a useful Quality Framework for the participation of the college in cross organisation partnerships.

The Fusion Business Unit In his role as General Manager of Fusion, Stephen Hall oversees the employer engagement side of the college.

His responsibility for strategic project management includes Train to Gain, European Social Fund (ESF) partnerships, and London Development Agency projects (knowledge transfer centre).

schools in the college tend to be traditional, with the customary flow of skills from construction to care; ESOL; Skills for Life and so on, some new skills areas do not necessarily fit into this model.

Train to Gain With potentially 2,000 learners and contracts totalling around £3.0M a year, Train to Gain is a large area to manage, so it has been split into two. Among the key roles in the 25-strong business team are a Strategic Manager; a Train to Gain Operations Manager and a team of Business Development Officers or BDOs. This team is responsible for setting up CNWL’s own brokerage system, payment formats and other key processes.

CNWL is lead partner in a nine-strong consortium of five colleges and four private training providers, the others being Harrow College; Stanmore College; Uxbridge College; Kingston College; Key Training; BMR; In Place Training and Skills Team Training. The partnership is contracted to deliver 1,300 learners in the current year.

CNWL also partners in three other consortia: a delivery partner in a Level 3 pilot, a partner in an ITQ programme, and a partner with CITB 2 in their Train to Gain national project.

Finding the learners and building the pipeline Fusion has four key roles: . To act as overall employer engagement coordinator for the college . To account manage/act as sales point for the college . To project manage certain delivery – around 65% of all the college’s work-placed, employer-driven work is managed by Fusion. . To act as a “School of Innovation.” Although

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Despite having the systems and infrastructure in place, CNWL was not able to make a real start delivering Train to Gain until November 2006. “Even then the timing wasn’t ideal,” explains Stephen. “A significant part of CNWL’s client base is in the leisure, food and retail sectors and at that time those clients were then gearing up for their busiest time of year. So November, December and January were out and we then had an ALI inspection in January. So the reality for CNWL is that we are having to meet our 12 month targets in only six!”

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement CNWL’s total overall contract was for around 1,300 learners. “The partnership is currently running at about 100 learners, so we are well behind contract,” continues Stephen. This has raised key questions about how partners in the college and private sectors engage in the delivery process and their capacity to do so.

In order to meet these challenging targets, CNWL have ramped up their game-plan. “We are looking for around 400-450 learners to come through CNWL (via Fusion) – and are well on track to hit this by the end of the 2006/07 contract year. To spread the workload and avoid ‘blips’, we are trying to distribute those 450 learners over a variety of sector areas: care; leisure; catering; management training; IT training; construction and Skills for Life.” It is planned that other partners will bring in around 500 additional learners.

“We definitely need to find other income streams and move towards full cost work”

“The reality for CNWL is that we are struggling to find the learners and fit them into the Train to Gain funding stream. We’re still taking them on – but our headline contract – Train to Gain – is not being fulfilled,” says Stephen. “We are finding that Train to Gain margins are too tight; we definitely need to find other income streams and move towards full cost work.

“We are now doing some Level 5 delivery with around 80 students, and we’re also on the point of launching a level 7 post-graduate product range – worth 30% towards a Masters. The one thing that’s coming out of the brokerage is that there is some management need, but this is not currently supported by Train to Gain.”

Many of the learners are coming through from SMEs via a variety of pipelines. “These tend to be medium size companies with upwards of 100 employees – the ‘forgotten area’,” says Stephen. “They don’t want their staff trained, because they feel threatened that those individuals will end up more qualified than they are.”

CNWL is liaising closely with LDA brokers and is paying them to signpost learners to them. The college is also working with regeneration organisations that have links to employers, as well as with chambers of commerce; sector organisations; clubs; providers of working materials and brokers.

CNWL is taking the view that it needs to be proactive, and is already juggling figures and pre-planning the coming year’s cohort.

Creating and meeting demand The College now actively approaches employers in a number of ways, including: •

Buying lists of employers from various agencies

•

Buying lists from local councils (employers are graded by sector and size)

•

Telesales activity

•

Brokering leads out to its partners – creating its own brokerage, in effect.

Example 1: McVitie’s biscuits “We asked them: ‘Who could you train in your own organisation using your own training staff? We’ll pay your training staff to do your own delivery. We’ll bring you up to qualification standard.’ We’re trying to be as flexible as possible to try and get these numbers in.”

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

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Creating and meeting demand continued...

Example 2: Stewarding at the new Wembley Stadium “CNWL is located next to the new Wembley stadium,” explains Stephen. “Through Fusion, the College trained 250 of Wembley’s stewards, achieving this in 13 weeks from scratch to delivery and getting 90% of the stewards through to a qualification.

“The Olympic Authority came to us in September 2006 and asked us to write the Volunteer Stewarding Qualification for the London Olympics. CNWL have written and tested it; we are currently piloting it around London and plan to take it through QCA and roll it out across the UK.”

Example 3: Catering in Brent The College went out to all its local schools and undertook to provide training for around 250 dinner ladies. “None of them had a Level 2, but none of them could get onto a Level 2 because they didn’t have the skills to get there yet. So CWNL offered to put them through Level 1 at the College’s expense. Brent Council chipped in as well. This would give them the jump-off point to do the Level 2 next year.”

Example 4: Skills for Life “We have 280 people on entry-level Skills for Life programmes. Once they’ve done the Skills for Life programmes, we can then get them onto an NVQ.”

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Successful brokerage: A key to success As lead, CNWL has taken on the brokerage function for the partnership and has developed its own, three-tier brokerage model.

Tier A / Full brokerage The broker brings a learner + employer to the table, all signed up. Good leads, particularly from LDA’s skills base.

Tier B / Warm linkage ‘You bring to us a very warm employer that has signed up to the contract. We’ll go to them and screen the learners. Depending on who we get, we’ll then pay you a brokerage fee.’

Payment is graded in terms of the number of learners: For 0-5 learners it pays the lowest rate.

For 6-10 learners it pays a middle rate.

Tier C / Lukewarm lLinkage ‘I’m in contact with Fred or Freda who might like some training.’

From the 11th learner onwards it pays a higher rate.

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement “In terms of these numbers, we’re trying to encourage the 5s, 6s, and 7s, because to deliver an NVQ we need an economic cluster of five learners in a geographical area – not necessarily with the same employer,” explains Stephen. “But the leads we find come at a cost. We are prepared to find them, but it’s a business service. To make this economic, we have to look carefully at how we cover our costs.”

Partnership working: ensuring quality “We have a formal partnership agreement in place with the partners. It’s a legalised, top-down type partnership.

It had to be set up this way, because of the contractual arrangements that had to be imposed. There are certain other contractual issues. For example, at the moment, by default, the partnership is structured around ‘you will do this, if you want access to this funding’, which isn’t ideal.”

“We do have quality monitoring processes in place. In fact we have developed our own comprehensive quality management tool for learner and funding, which we’ve also shared with partners who are leading other projects.

“We have developed our own comprehensive quality management tool” The tool is essentially a four-step process: 1. Engagement of an external, independent ALI inspector who is briefed against criteria agreed by the partnership 2. Day-to-day quality management. CNWL acts as the CPU – Centralised Processing Unit, and all paperwork must necessarily come into their office.

But this is very paper-driven – something the private training providers find a challenge. Although they are plugging into existing college systems, it is still paper-heavy and resource-heavy 3. Regular audits

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Ashridge Education and Skills 4. Formal structure. CNWL requests a letter from the Financial Director of each partner organisation, confirming that as lead partner, the college can access its main accounts.

“Standardisation is happening to a certain extent,” says Stephen. “For example, in our ILPs. CNWL now has one common plan that covers all funding streams: ESF, LDA, Europe and Train to Gain with all the logos across the top! Our teams go out with just that one piece of paper for all the partners.”

Partnership working: challenges and risks “For the private training providers in the partnership, it’s the paperwork trail,” says Stephen. “And some of them are having capacity issues, in terms of ramping up, because there aren’t enough assessors out there.

Nevertheless they want it to work and on the whole they are running well – generally they are very responsive, dynamic and committed to the process.” While there are capacity issues for the colleges in the partnership, Stephen does have a strong resource in terms of a multiskilled business team of 25 people. The unit has grown from 4 to 10 to 25 staff in three years. He also has at least 70/80 assessors and 20 or so consultants.

“For the colleges, it’s more of a funding issue. Most of them are not general FE providers, they are largely sixth form providers – so employer work can be seen as a ‘nice add-on that we do when we’ve got time,’ rather than being core mission.” All FE colleges have been given Category A core funding and are tasked with delivering a certain number of NVQs to adults.

“With the exception of ourselves, all the FE partners in the consortium are behind on those numbers. And because that’s their core business, this is what they’ve got to do first, otherwise there will be implications for their organisation.”

“The obvious risk is that we don’t achieve our targets.

We also have to keep an eye on financial stability, especially with regard to private partners,” says Stephen.

For CNWL itself, the partnership is working well. In Stephen’s view, this is because there are experts within the consortium and the college itself has strengths in terms of new product development, speed of turnaround and response. At the same time, CNWL recognises that it can’t physically do everything and it does need to work closely its partners. One of the key questions at the moment is: which partners, and why does it need them?

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement “Another risk is the high set-up costs,” says Stephen.

“Our commitment has been to go for growth, go for market share – and if you take that strategy you have to put the team in behind it. The Governors and SMT have been with us on this.”

The College itself has strengths in terms of new product development Consultancy support for growth As Stephen explains, consultancy work with Ashridge revealed two key areas of need: Strategic development, in other words: “Where are we going and why are we doing it?”

And, working in a complex, multi-project environment.

To address this need, CNWL received support through coaching, methodologies and models which it then adapted to the FE sector. Says Stephen: “All the projects were running at different speeds and they all had to ‘land’ more or less at the same time. Fusion won three major contracts, and we got 100% of what we were aiming for. We also developed systems that they could

put in place/tweak ahead of November start date. I wouldn’t have won the projects if we hadn’t done this.

We have won contracts to the tune of around £6.0–7.0M on the back of the work we’ve done with Ashridge.”

Building on the keys to success It is clear that CNWL has been able to develop some key pieces of work that are critical to success, namely: . A homegrown self-brokerage process . Account management . Partner review, with a check on common goals and objectives . Incentivising partners across the consortium and creating ‘hooks’.

For Stephen these have been informed by a simple strategic goal. “Our focus this year is on market share.

We want to be the biggest in West London, and we want to stay the biggest in West London.”

So for the future, three key areas will need to be addressed: •

Increasing capacity and buying market share

•

Converting that market share and increasing the conversion rate, in other words having two outputs for every input: the ‘2 for 1’ concept.

Says Stephen: “Out of every employer, I want two sales to that employer. It could be getting a work experience student to them and then repeating it, maybe with a different offer. It’s about evolving that relationship.”

“Out of every employer, I want two sales”

NOTES . .

College of North West London: www.cnwl.ac.uk Construction Industry Training Board: www.citb.co.uk

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Cornwall College Customer insight based on interviews with Ron Champion, Director, Cornwall College Business

Customer profile Established in 1929 to meet the training needs of local industry, Cornwall College now has around 45,000 students and is largest further and higher education college in the UK. Its mission is: “To provide Cornwall with a high quality student experience, celebrated through academic achievement, personal development and employability.”1 Cornwall College holds CoVEs 2 in four key industry areas: IT; Marine Engineering; Tourism/Customer Care and Food and Drink. The college is heavily involved in the economic development of the county and in particular supporting Objective One 3 projects in training and education. Cornwall is a key player in the devolved structure for the University for Cornwall (CUC – Combined Universities in Cornwall) and over 2,500 of its students are those on university courses.

Alongside its seven campus sites the College provides a wide range of help, advice, training and services for business and the community. These include a sizeable work-based learning operation, Cornwall College Business (CCB); a specialist centre for housing studies, based in Worcester, CSHS; a Devon/Cornwall-based recruitment agency, Concorde Recruitment and six learning shops in Devon and Cornwall.

Employer responsiveness at Cornwall College Cornwall’s business offer is routed to employers through Cornwall College Business (CCB), a relatively new brand launched in November 2006 following consolidation of several employer-facing units within the College. CCB, headed by Director Ron Champion, is a unit of some considerable size, with Apprenticeship business worth some £3.5M and a Train to Gain contract valued at just under £0.5M. On top of this, CCB values its corporate business at a further £2.0M.

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Cornwall submitted its proposal for Train to Gain independently. Partnership involvement in the programme is limited to sub-contractual work and to a handful of projects it has led through the local workbased learning provider network. Ron is confident that Cornwall College will hit its targets.

CCB has done two notable things in the last 12-18 months, both of which are starting taken to show impact. First, thanks to the consultancy support offered through Ashridge under the Train to Gain Development Programme, it has been able to focus on issues generated largely by the brand consolidation: structure; impact; business opportunities and team strengths.

And second, it has also been able to really get behind something that it calls the workforce development solution, which means continuously trying to encourage staff to look at the whole of the employer workforce and see where they can give value added.

Cornwall College Business: Simplifying the offer to the customer: Focusing the brand “Cornwall College Business is a relatively new brand that we launched to our employers in November 2006,” says Ron. “What Cornwall College Business was all about was bringing together a number of outward-facing units within the college, to try and make it easier for our customers to access and to understand us. There was Cornwall College Training, the work-based learning (Apprenticeship unit) that we have always had; Cornwall College Direct, our Business Development Team, and Cornwall Business School In-Company, a team delivering bespoke training on company premises. So what we did with the support of the consultant was to consolidate a number of parts so that they all came together as a new brand under my line management.

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

“The market is getting more and more confusing for the customer” “The market is getting more and more confusing for the customer,” he says. “There are the skills brokers on Train to Gain, there’s the business advisory service; we’ve got learning agreement pilots in Devon and Cornwall which means brokerage people going out from Connexions and there are lots of organisations on the back of Objective One. Our main objective was to try and make our presence simpler.”

Teamworking Within Cornwall College Business, Ron has Business Managers responsible for a team of Business Development Advisors, an Apprenticeship team and a delivery team for some of the in-house work. One of the managers also covers sales and marketing and one individual in particular focuses on Train to Gain. The Head of Administration and Quality brings together systems and processes as well as looking after CCB’s administration support staff.

Change management – the biggest challenge “There is huge change in the College because a new Principal was appointed just over a year ago,” reflects Ron. “At the same time, we’ve been moving forward and trying to join up this whole employer-facing thing, not only to be more accessible to our customers but also to position ourselves so that we can continue to maintain and improve our place in the market.

“Probably the biggest challenge is bringing all of those things together: restructuring; people’s jobs being changed; several months of change management which isn’t over yet, if you like, in terms of getting the whole new team back and buzzing. It’s all about keeping the business rolling while you go through that change.”

“It’s all about keeping the business rolling while you go through that change”

Ashridge Education and Skills Next steps Ron is very positive about the ways things have gone so far. “I think it’s clear that we’ve got a brand that is pretty well established to our external market in a relatively short period of time and a management team that have come together, again in a very short time, to form an evolving but already tight knit and effective group. The consultancy has been one of the things that helped that happen.”

Over the next few months Ron will continue to work with the consultant to help the new teams move forward and to think ‘as one’. As part of this process, Ron will try and encourage staff to come up with some answers for themselves, so that they buy into and own the solutions.

Cornwall College Business: The employer as customer The workforce development solution – a value added approach “To grow our business,” says Ron, “we need to provide a whole workforce development approach. What we are trying to push all the time is the workforce development solution. If someone is looking at an apprenticeship, it’s about seeing if the company needs anything else and then passing it on to Business Development. I think we still have some way to go on that and probably on the internal market too.

“To grow our business, we need to provide a whole workforce development approach” “Far too often,” he continues, “people go out from a ‘bit’ of a college or a ‘bit’ of a provider, and see what they can offer. So they go out wearing the blinkers of their department, whether that be engineering or construction or whatever. They don’t look at the rest of the company, the need for administration or whatever it happens to be.

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement “The College mission is one thing, but basically what Cornwall College Business is about is providing the skills to improve the GVA (Gross Value Added) of Cornwall. We’re about providing the skills to improve the economy, and in doing that both companies and individual will benefit. The employer is our customer, and yes, we can market apprenticeships to young people and try to attract them, but at the end of the day it is the employer that employs the apprentice, and the employer that will shout.”

The most valued customers “I‘ve got to say we value all our employers,” says Ron. “There’s always the odd one or two where you may think: “I’m not sure we want to do business with them because of their local reputation,” but basically the vast majority of those we do business with we value. We do have certain expectations of our employers, which are wholly reasonable in terms of being a good employer. If they don’t want to buy in to that, then that’s their choice.

“We do have certain expectations of our employers” “For many years, we’ve been working with an employer making luxury yachts. You’re talking £10.0M+ yachts and an internationally recognised employer. The bespoke apprenticeship programme won a Beacon Award in 2002 – now that’s a valued employer.

“Another one is a company in a traditional Cornish industry which is now a lot smaller than it used to be many years ago. In fact there’s a redundancy programme underway at the moment. But we have done a lot of training for them: some bespoke; some Train to Gain; some cash; some FE; some apprenticeship; some all sorts. The company has publicly valued what we have done for them and has done so within CBI circles, which is again of benefit in terms of the flack that colleges sometimes get.

“We are pleased to be working with one of the largest meat processing companies in Europe with 2,500 employees within Cornwall. We are working with them on a range of Food Processing NVQs as well as team leading and skills development programmes to support

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Ashridge Education and Skills their business more broadly. We’re looking at alternative methods of delivery to suit the company. Food processing is a big industry within Cornwall and we are pleased also to be working with many others within this area. With the expertise that we have built up, there is the opportunity to move further afield in the future.

“We have also just won another piece of Train to Gain business which I am really excited about: it’s in bakery retail, based in West Cornwall but whose shops spread far and wide. All the area managers are going to become assessors. That’s a big Train to Gain deal for 140 or so learners in the first instance.”

The ‘competitive edge’ “I do think we have an advantage in terms of the size of our whole work-based offer and in the footprint of the College as a whole,” says Ron. “Many years ago, you could have a operated a little apprenticeship contract on your own, with, say, 100 learners and made a tidy little living out of it. These days you can’t. You can’t on the values, and you can’t on the technical aspects of everything that’s needed.

“We’re big enough to have a situation where, in the broader College we’ve got some real experts in their particular area. Maybe even me in mine,” he reflects unassumingly. “But then within my own team, I have people who are very, very good at their particular roles, from the management information and data integrity officer through to the individuals I mentioned earlier.

I have some real skills there and I’ve got some welltrained people in the wider team as well. It comes down to the whole ethos of the organisation, within that the ethos in CCB and within that it’s about the staff and the management development of those staff. You don’t get them by accident,” he adds.

“The other thing is that we’ve done a lot on CPD (Continuing Personal/Professional Development).

That’s what’s made the difference to us in terms of say, apprenticeships, taking us from where we were a few years ago – with a not very good inspection – through to this year’s current framework achievement which is looking really good.”

Evaluation and impact Ron does measure evaluation and impact, and has done some research in this area as part of the College’s bid for Customer First 4 accreditation (Cornwall College Business was the first organisation in the South West to achieve this award.)

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement In Ron’s view, there is far more to be done in this area. “On the question of impact, obviously you can’t discount the ‘morale effect’ that development has on the workforce. But when it comes to doing the hard sell to business, of course you need more than just the morale factor and one or two good quotes. I want to move more towards using measures to demonstrate bottom line business impact. It should be feasible with a big customer to set a measure, evaluate it at the end and then evaluate it again, say six months down the line, without making it so complicated that it brasses people off and they don’t feed anything back to you.

“I think there is a lot more to be done in general. I’ve always been disappointed that there has not been sufficient use or action by IIP UK to use what should come out of Investors in People evaluation to actually demonstrate the bottom line benefit of skills development.”

Consultancy impact Ron has found the consultancy support from Ashridge invaluable. “This is a classic example. I now have a management team within Cornwall College Business who are interacting very well together, given that some of the structural changes happened after the actual launch of the brand in November.”

“I now have a management team... who are interacting very well together” One of the benefits has been the objectivity associated with having an external person involved. “The Ashridge consultant first started working with us whilst we were actually moving through the change process. He has been very helpful in terms of teasing things out with the team and getting buy-in from those who were more resistant to change. There have been times when it was far better to let someone else facilitate, for me to stay quiet and leave things to evolve. It’s been important for all the managers to recognise that there were issues there and to get those things out in the open. The consultant facilitated one or two events that brought

things out and got individuals really thinking and communicating.”

Ongoing challenges Ron sees developing a smarter and more flexible response as one challenge still to be addressed in some areas of the College. “We’ve got to encourage the vast range of people that we work with across the bigger College. Some are really great, but others need to buy in more to the employer as customer.

“There’s the whole agenda of HE moving forward as well,” he says. “We’ve done quite a lot of bite-size HE modules to business and they’ve been quite successful, but there is more to be done. And we need to get greater employer feedback into curriculum development, particularly foundation degree design.”

Something that Ron finds challenging within his own delivery unit is juggling viability and efficiency against having sufficient resource to be responsive to the customer. “It’s having the resource to be responsive but not having staff sitting around drinking cups of tea waiting for something to respond to.”

Managing growth for the future As far as the future is concerned, Ron believes it will be about consolidating and maximising the CCB brand in Cornwall, and continuing to provide core skills to improve the GVA. “I think it’s in Cornwall for a range and then where the market isn’t being served and where we have a specialism, it’s where we can respond to that demand.

One case is the farming community in Devon and maybe in the wider South West. Although there are agricultural colleges in the region, their numbers have been declining and they have been merging and so on, and there’s a community out there that actually feels it’s having difficulty accessing the skills and development it needs. If we can service that need, we have to respond.” But Ron is ever mindful of the quality factor, “We want to do it well, so we have to have the resource and infrastructure to be able to do that. If it isn’t ‘on our doorstep,’ as it were, then we need to be sure that we still have capacity.”

With a strong consolidated brand now in place and an effective management team driving out the message to the business community, employer-facing work at

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement Cornwall College seems to be well and truly thriving.

So how will Ron manage the growth, assuming things continue in this vein?

His reply is characteristically pragmatic. “Managing growth is a lot easier than managing decline, isn’t it? I’ve managed growth every since I’ve been at the college and in the first year it was very difficult. It was a small, unloved, low performing, small income unit where trying to make the sums add up was incredibly difficult and the position in terms of trying to get risk capital for growth was… well in some instances it wasn’t even worth trying, because it was a mess. But once you’ve got a firm foundation on which you can build sustainable growth, then you’re away. As long as you keep an eye on the finances, and an eye on the long term sustainability and the political and economic climate, then managing growth is easy.”

“Managing growth is a lot easier than managing decline”

NOTES .

Cornwall College website: www.cornwall.ac.uk

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The Centre of Vocational Excellence or CoVE scheme is part of a £100 million government initiative to develop high quality education and training in specialist areas.

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Objective One is one of three programmes set up to help reduce differences in social and economic conditions within the European Union. Of the three, Objective One is the highest priority designation for European aid and is targeted at areas where prosperity, measured in Gross Value Added (GVA) per head of population, is 75% or less of the European average. This includes Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. www.objectiveone.com

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Putting the Customer First® is the National Standard for Customer Service. www.customerfirst.org

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Ashridge Education and Skills

Omnia Training Customer insight based on interviews with Len Gair, Managing Director

There is something about former truck driver Len Gair, now Managing Director of Omnia Driving and Omnia Training Systems, that invites you to sit down with him and find out more.

But a larger conversation beckons.

Len’s story is about wanting to make a difference, not only to individual learners, but ultimately to society as a whole.

At the heart of Len’s journey, and deep within this remarkable man himself, is a fundamental belief that everyone should be able to access learning and training. Len’s values are manifested in a commitment to understanding his customers’ needs – the customer being the learner rather than the business – and to expertly tailoring his offer to match. At the same time, Len, who has experience of his own personal skills deficiency, is unequivocal about wanting to run his business in a transparent and ethical way, and using his experience and knowledge to counter social imbalance in his local and wider community.

This is not just some idealistic notion of Len’s, a pipe dream about giving people from all walks of life a better deal. Len has invested more than £1.0M at Omnia, building a complete staff development programme for the business and then replicating it with dozens of employers. Not only has this generated a Quality Manual and Skills Check, now recognised by the HSE as an entry-level award, but it has also helped Len put together a three-part Employer Engagement Tool – a comprehensive and flexible training system that is now being piloted with major providers in the UK.

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement Behind Len’s training and development programme lies a robust model for employer engagement [See Appendix (i): Employer Engagement Model], which he has used for several years as a “conversation opener” with large national employers. One of the model’s key strengths is its recommendation that providers use simple metrics to reinforce their business case for training and staff development.

Acting as Dads to lads and lasses As a former lorry driver, Len has covered a fair number of miles in his time, but to understand how far he has travelled in other ways, you need to go back some years to the time when Ind Coope, the brewery for which he was driving was taken over, and Len was made redundant, along with 17 others. Len and his colleagues rang round the companies they knew and offered themselves up for work as experienced drivers. “We were professional and smart, so we had a good product in ourselves,” says Len. “Right from the start, it was all about understanding our customers’ needs. Knowing their job, we were able to go in and learn exactly how to do the work, and we did that for them free of charge.”

“Right from the start, it was all about understanding our customers’ needs” One of Omnia’s regular customers, Express Dairies, asked if they could provide them with more drivers, so they started to train drivers and ‘act as Dads to lads and lasses.’ They took on more people, put together a crude training programme and found they could mentor drivers into the job. “The very first one we recruited went on to be the first milk tanker driver in the UK to be awarded an NVQ Level 2 in that discipline,” says Len proudly.

For Len it was more about understanding the crude process of taking individuals, supporting their learning and then putting them into employment than about

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Ashridge Education and Skills dealing with the complexities of NVQs. Len and his team designed their own portfolio, based on Len’s own experience of getting into a truck and mapping out the learner journey, employed 50 people and won a national contract with a major supermarket chain. “We had a good infrastructure going there, we trained the trainers and so on… .” says Len. In fact, they had actually educated the business into progression – with their first employee who’d come from the retail store, then into the warehouse, then trained onto transport. And there were significant business benefits as well. “I was given a brand new site, no money to work with, and asked if I could make this work. We estimated we could save the company £.5M in the first year. We actually saved them £.75M, just by training the workforce, and offering employment into the warehouse.” The cost savings came through accident reduction, fuel, lower fixed costs such as agencies, and so on.

An absolutely belting portfolio...

“Let me tell you about the very first one I ever did. Can you imagine trying to sell NVQs to a group of 29 lorry drivers on a dark Friday night in a work restroom in Mansfield? Nobody wanted to be there. Some of them were waiting to go home, some of them were waiting to go out on shift. But the company had decided it would be good if all the drivers came along in one block and this was how they were going to do it.

“I said to the drivers, ‘Look, we’re going to be working on a qualification, but the thing is, it’s literally about what you do and how you do it. Let’s take one module: let’s talk about dropping off a trailer.’

“Then it came to getting out of a cab. ‘How do you get out of a cab?’ I asked one of the drivers. ‘I climb down,’ he replied. ‘Why do you climb down?’ I said. ‘Because I don’t want to twist my ankle,’ the chap replied.

“And it just started like that... they got quite involved with it.

“I said ‘That’s all it is really, it’s about proving to me what you do and how you do it.’

“That driver said to me, ‘I’ll apologise to you, son. I thought, ‘if that Len tells me how to drive a truck… . Now, what do you want from me?’

‘An absolutely belting portfolio,’ I replied…

“And that’s how we’ve done it over the years.”

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement Gradually word got round, more businesses came to Omnia and so the business grew. The company started doing brokerage for the Derbyshire Employer Training Pilot (ETP) – one of only two companies who had broker-provider status in the country, giving them valuable insight into the problems facing stakeholders.

As the business grew, Len began to realise that while he’d built a staff development programme around Omnia, other businesses had similar problems, issues and concerns to his own. It became clear that if he could identify their problems as his own, he could then put a structure in place.

“Embed numeracy and literacy through health and safety” One of Len’s key findings while working on the ETP was that many issues stemmed from a common theme: health and safety. Of the 30 companies Omnia engaged, all identified the same problem: centralising information for employees which would save business time and give greater control over matters arising. From the 300 employees Omnia interviewed, the common view was that it would be beneficial to all if they had the information to improve their knowledge.

Back at Omnia, Len put together five key open and closed questions that he could ask around health and safety and equality of opportunity, to confirm levels of underpinning knowledge and understanding. Taking his own company as a snapshot, the closed question that Len asked revealed that everyone stated they had read the health and safety policy and statement, however the open question revealed a lack of knowledge and, of course, a training need. Len concluded that this could form the basis of the assess-train-assess model that the government were striving for. Driving the whole thing was one objective: improving business efficiency by improving knowledge and skills.

As Len says, “Any vocational qualification, whether it’s gravedigging or bingo calling, has health and safety in it.

It goes through it like Blackpool rock.”

Len started to design Omnia’s training programmes so that numeracy and literacy were embedded in health and safety. “What we were trying to do was engage people from all levels and of all ages on a common theme, to get them to come towards education.”

Everything is underpinned by health and safety. And of course evaluation is crucial.

Ashridge Education and Skills

“Any vocational qualification, whether it’s grave digging or bingo calling, has health and safety in it.

It goes through it like Blackpool rock” “Equality and diversity also need to be embedded” The other key theme embedded in Omnia’s assessment process was equality of opportunity.

At the introductory level, the system incorporates a blank paper exercise, simply asking learners: “What is equality and what is diversity?”

What validated this exercise was that it was based on Len’s own, painful learning experience. During one meeting, Len was asked to give his understanding of the terms ‘equality and diversity?’ and then to swap it with the person sitting next to him. Unable to write down his answer, Len found it an impossible task.

“How embarrassing was that,” he says, “and this was an exercise about equality and diversity.” So he asks (not tells) his learners to put their name at the top of the sheet, and to explain what they think is meant by the terms. Len explains that if the learner doesn’t want to take part because they have a learning difficulty, that’s fine too, and they should just put a cross on the page.

When it comes to health and safety, though, it’s a different story. “This time,” Len tells the employee, “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. This is the law. So please feel to challenge it, but you are equally responsible for reporting it.”

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

A distinctive employer engagement approach Identify training needs Len’s five-question approach, with a health and safety and equality of opportunity assessment underpinning knowledge and understanding, has evolved into a complete online assessment and training system known as the Micro-Macro (‘Micro’ to assess the individual and ‘Macro’ the business). Len uses this with every employer he approaches (after having proven it and used it on his own staff). By evaluating the responses to these five pieces of information, Len is able to assess every employee’s training needs in terms of weaknesses or gaps and to identify their preferred learning style (eg show and do, text or pictorial) so that he is able to give them personalised learning in the form of an independent learning plan (ILP), tailored to their preferred style and pace.

Identify with your customer’s employees Len points out that there are always differences in how to approach people. “If we say to people ‘you’re a learner,’ there’s a barrier,” he explains.

Len sees this as a metaphor from his own industry.

“We all drive on the same roads,” he says. “It’s about engaging with people at their level. You get some who are really grateful, while others profess to know everything but then you’ve got to level them.”

He illustrates this with a short story: “Take one group of very experienced and qualified petrol tanker drivers we worked with. They didn’t want to know about NVQs. “I said, ‘Look lads, we’ve got to cut to the chase here.

The company want you to do this. We all drive on the same roads, so let’s use something that’s generic: the road.’

“I collected a dozen theory test papers from upstairs. I passed mine, they failed theirs.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to be driving on the same road as you in your petrol tanker!’

“So they had another look at it, and that was it. Started!

It just needed that leveller.”

In fact, the way Len identifies with people really comes down to smart, sensitive and carefully targeted marketing. Len describes how he wanted to sell NVQs to a group of cement drivers at a quarry and needed to design a poster. He went with his training coordinator to

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“People buy with their eyes, they don’t read it, they buy by look and feel” the local supermarket, showed him how the frozen food was packaged and asked him to come up with a set of “serving suggestions.”

“People buy with their eyes, they don’t read it, they buy by look and feel,” suggests Len. The Omnia poster that came out of this exercise said nothing about NVQs, and instead featured a beautiful lorry and referred to a Professional Driver’s Qualification.

The poster was put on the weighbridge wall at the quarry, and Omnia was inundated with enquiries.

“Everyone wanted their lorry in the picture! … and that was how we got them to buy in.”

Use reporting systems for problem solving Len’s approach can be summed up in one key phrase: “Metrics are key to the business case. Everything’s got a cost and everything’s got a value.”

“Giving people the opportunity to raise problems, issues and concerns has many benefits,” says Len. “It means that they use an evidence-based system – maybe for the first time, and forces them think about the consequences of what they are doing. Identifying gaps or weaknesses takes them into problem solving, which in turn helps them to overcome any anger or frustration.”

To illustrate this point Len recalls how, in one national company he worked with, all the employees knew they had to fill in a hazard alert card. The cards went to a manager, but because, in the reporting structure, he wasn’t the person who dealt with the issues raised and he didn’t know where to send the cards, they never reached the company’s Health and Safety Officer. “He had kittens when he found out,” says Len. “But it’s not about embarrassing the company or embarrassing the learner. It’s about raising awareness. That company’s national manager has now had talks with his managers and told them they need to be more proactive around

Ashridge Education and Skills

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement what the reporting structure is. So now there are clearer lines of definition for what actually happens, as well as for the reporting structure itself.”

“One case alone cost a business £450K just because something wasn’t dealt with,” continues Len. “So this is a no-brainer to senior management. They want to know about problems like this, because it allows them to target what isn’t working in the system. It means they can identify the problems, the gaps, and the areas that don’t fall within the pattern and then address them by running a classroom session or a one-to-one for some candidates, or a tell, show and do session using simple language for others.”

Draw on your own experience Len also underlines how important it is to consider the learner’s perspective when it comes to reporting issues and concerns, and to adapt the system to fit. “Having a skills deficiency myself, I can generally spot it. As a driver, I was always problem solving, but the problem I had to solve every day was how to write out a defect report or an accident report. No chance. And that’s when the other emotions kicked in, like frustration and aggression. It’s not that I can’t write, because I can, but I was frightened of the spelling, the punctuation… I couldn’t get out what I wanted to say; I couldn’t transfer information to the small boxes on the form. The way I got around defect reporting was to carry an illustrated vehicle manual with me and then copy the picture or words for the mechanic to use.”

Develop your own team Len employs a team of administrators, trainers and assessors at his modest Omnia offices, sited, ironically, in a former brewery in Burton upon Trent. They are all at

“Metrics are key to the business case.

Everything’s got a cost and everything’s got a value”

different levels of the business, from junior administrator to senior Independent Verifier (IV). “They’re all here, either training the trainers that are delivering training to young people, or delivering training and upskilling people in the workplace,” says Len. Len holds fortnightly meetings with the whole team in which each member of the company has the opportunity to choose a theme, based on the state of the business and the stage they have reached in their personal development programme. Members of staff are again encouraged to take ownership of their careers and are encouraged, but not obliged, to take their development files home for added-value work in their own time.

The next milestones Quality Manual for the HSE Len reached a key milestone in November 2006, when he put forward a Quality Manual to the HSE (Health and Safety Executive), containing policies and reporting mechanisms based on his research with employers and learners and content taken directly from H&S publications such as Successful Health and Safety Management. He emphasised that while these health and safety materials were in the public domain, very few employees ever actually got to see them, since information came into businesses in the form of leaflets, posters etc. but 75% of the people he engaged with had a numeracy or literacy problem and may not actually be able to read them. Len was encouraged by the positive response he received from the HSE, who warmly congratulated him, saying that although they could not endorse the manual, they found it to be a very comprehensive product.

At the same time, Len sent the manual to the QIA, together with a Skills Check (screening tool). Len wanted ratification that it complied with the national strategy for improving adult literacy and numeracy point 2: the skills check on the learning journey, before offering it as good practice to be shared with employers.

The most important thing for Len was that he saw this as part of his contribution back to society. He says: “We saw this as our contribution to the community. There’s no ‘what’s in it for me?’ ” Sharing best practice: “The Ashridge Apostles” A further breakthrough for Len came in May, when he was invited to take part in a two-day employer

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement engagement event at Ashridge with a group of other training providers. The workshop went well, and a month later, the Apostles†, as they have become known, met again, this time to share best practice and discuss emerging themes, including strategic marketing; business development; quality and ethics.

As each provider gave an overview of their business, outlined their approach to employer engagement and asked for support in helping them address a chosen challenge or issue, Len found himself giving a flipchart presentation of his Employer Engagement Model to other providers in the group. This was a first for Len, and he admits it was a huge moment for him personally.

Ashridge Education and Skills

“My goal now is to ignite the fire of those in business and industry”

Within days of the Apostles event, and inspired by the positive feedback he had already received from providers in the group, Len had sent them his complete Employer Engagement Tool to trial online in their organisations: Skills Check, Individual Learning Record and a complete health and safety and equality opportunity assessment of underpinning knowledge.

The road ahead Len’s journey has combined professional and personal challenges to which he has responded in a deep and caring way. The road ahead is likely to continue to be a challenging and yet satisfying one.

“My goal now,” he says, “is to ignite the fire of those in business and industry with education and personal programmes, fit for purpose, to meet the expectations of the learner, of high quality and low cost which can be accessed through a charitable trust which in turn will fuel the fire of further development.”

NOTE † Developed in the mid-1990s at Harvard Business School, the Apostle Model has been adopted and refined into a powerful and flexible tool for segmenting customers and taking action to satisfy and retain them. It is also used as an overall performance indicator, with organisations establishing targets for the percent of their customer base represented by Loyalists or, more specifically, Apostles.

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Ashridge Education and Skills

Appendix (i): Employer Engagement Model A transport and logistics company This model can apply to any company Aims and desires •

My aim is to win and keep that business

•

I want to develop that business to become reliant on my knowledge and training management skills

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I want that business to see a return on investment

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I want to double my income without running around

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I can take a % return if I can’t provide for management and quality assurance.

Initial observations •

Take a holistic view of the site, signage, layout, security, domestics

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What is happening in the operations office?

•

How do staff address the manager or senior person?

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Look for signs of working systems around the office

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How is the manager’s office arranged?

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What personal items could be used as ice breakers?

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Is the meeting formal or informal? Have information to hand to accommodate both.

Initial questions •

What are their main issues with the business?

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How do they address them? With internal or external training?

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What are the positives or negatives in using internal or external provision?

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Have they considered working in partnership with external provision?

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What are the cost benefits to partnership working?

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Have they considered having their training managed externally?

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Are they aware of the cost savings staff development can bring to the business and aid in retention, thus bringing further savings?

I DON’T NEED THAT! Raise awareness of legal requirements Are they aware that employers in this sector are required by law to ensure drivers of LGVs are required to: •

Identify and maintain the legal, safety and operating requirements of vehicle and load

•

Obtain and maintain information on the load to meet legal, safety and operating requirements

•

Complete pre-driving checks to meet legal, safety and operating requirements

•

Comply with operating vehicle systems and controls to meet legal, safety and operating requirement

•

Operate the vehicle safely and efficiently on the public highway

•

Comply with the legal, safety and operating requirements for the carriage of goods.

Employers are required by law to provide evidence of staff training and development on an ongoing basis.

HAVE YOU GOT THAT? If not and you require confirmation of these facts go to: www.roadtransport.com and click on road legal 27

Ashridge Education and Skills

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

South Trafford College Customer insight based on interviews with Colette Kelly, Workforce Development Manager

Customer profile South Trafford is a medium-sized college offering a wide range of full and part-time courses to around 12,000 sixth form and adult learners in the North-West. Its mission is “to provide individuals with the opportunity to achieve in a supportive and inspirational environment.”

In Spring 2006, the College was the first in the country to achieve Grade 1: ‘Outstanding’ in all five areas of its Ofsted inspection. It has also achieved the QIA Beacon status accolade in recognition of the success and the best practice of staff and students. Soon to merge with North Trafford College, South Trafford has three CoVEs1: in hospitality; healthcare and sport and leisure industries, each providing employer liaison and training through a workforce delivery unit Colette Kelly is Workforce Development Manager at South Trafford and manages the College’s workforce development sector: Skills@SouthTrafford College 2.

Badged internally as a dedicated in-house consultancy, Skills@ is not a separate business unit but an integral part of the College, from where Colette and her team manage the contracts. Colette works closely with the College’s Curriculum Managers who deliver training through the three delivery units. Train to Gain comes under her remit, along with a number of other employer engagement programmes.

Partnership working: the background South Trafford is currently involved in two types of partnership. One is a Train to Gain consortium delivering NVQ Level 2 and led by North Trafford College. Two private training providers are also in this consortium.

The other is the Salford and Trafford Provider Partnership (STPP), consisting entirely of private workbased learning providers, each of whom is a partner in its own right, contracting directly with the LSC to deliver

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apprenticeships. “That’s one network that we’ve been part of for quite a long time,” explains Colette. “The STPP came together two or three years ago, when the LSC put money into a consultancy to share good practice and develop work-based learning. They did it by geographical area; Salford and Trafford were amalgamated, Manchester and Stockport each had their own.

“Only one or two partners, including ourselves, saw it right through to the end. We’ve actually taken it much further though, because our group has continued in its own right. We’ve now become a partnership, as opposed to a network, and have secured funding from ALP and other sources. We have a mission and objectives, our own logo and we’re working on branding.”

The two private providers in the Train to Gain consortium deliver in Trafford and also happen to be in the STPP, meaning that key relationships were already in place prior to the start of the Train to Gain contract.

Effective strategic decision making STPP and the Train to Gain consortium are two very different kinds of partnership, so it comes as no surprise to learn that they work in different ways, from strategic decision making through to risk management, quality and evaluation.

How are complex decisions made in STPP? “We meet monthly, and it’s at strategic rather than operational level,” says Colette. “Strategy is decided ‘round the table’. It’s all quite formalised – we have an agenda and minutes and copies are sent to the LSC. On average, we get about 95% attendance at the meetings, which is good when you consider the frequency of the meetings and the fact that all those attending have senior roles.

That obviously has a bearing on the decision making process and determines how we take things forward.”

The decision making process is quite different in the Train to Gain consortium. “Notwithstanding the fact that

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement STPP has been going a lot longer, and we know each other far better, I would say decision making in the Train to Gain consortium isn’t as easy as it is with STPP. There I would say I’ve got more autonomy. Unlike the two private providers in the Train to Gain consortium, who are at Chief Executive and Director level, we obviously have to take issues back to our senior management teams. But we too have monthly performance meetings, and our two Principals attend one meeting in every three, so we do bring in that strategic element.”

Managing challenges, risks and quality The obvious challenge for South Trafford lies in managing the change around its forthcoming merger with North Trafford College.

But another challenge they want to address is how to work more closely with brokers. Colette estimates that 90% of the College’s success in meeting its target outcomes is down to self-referral, although she says that referrals are now slowly beginning to come in.

“Our next stage is to build those links with the brokers.

We’ve always had a self-referral process in place, because we’ve always worked with employers; we did ETP (Employer Training Pilot) for four years before Train to Gain (Manchester was one of the main ETP areas), so we’d already built up those relationships. But I understand that the brokers are targeted to reach hardto-reach employers and they’re the ones that we don’t really tap into.”

“Our next stage is to build those links with the brokers” On the question of risk, Colette thinks that within FE in general, it can be difficult for colleges to perform well under Train to Gain. “They are given targets for core funding and targets for Train to Gain with identical eligibility criteria, so the question is, ‘Which pot do you fill first?’ It isn’t the same for private providers.

“The risks for STPP are very different because the partnership has a completely different function,” says Colette. “Employer engagement isn’t really a high

Ashridge Education and Skills priority, because we’re very individual organisations.

“I would say that the risk there is that we don’t pay enough attention to strategy. Everyone’s so busy… we probably need a bit of a kick once every twelve months or so. If you’re not careful, you can become a share in good practice and a talking shop, as opposed to moving forward. It’s at that point that people can lose momentum and eventually it all breaks down.”

And what about quality? “With STPP, quality isn’t an issue, because we don’t really work in that way,” says Colette. “In Train to Gain, we’ve each got our own quality system which we adhere to. But they are trying to tighten up our approach as a consortium.”

Evaluating partnership work In this area there are similarities, in that both types of partnership use a development plan to evaluate their progress.

“With STPP, we sit down each December and work out the objectives for the following year. We work towards a development plan and an action plan and we use those to evaluate whether we’ve achieved what we said we’d achieve.

“When it comes to Train to Gain, we use a Train to Gain Development Plan. That would be periodically on the agenda at our meetings, and we mark off what we have and haven’t done.”

Marketing offer With three of the providers working in both partnerships, one of the obvious questions is whether there is any scope for synergy and shared learning.

“I would say that the risk there is that we don’t pay enough attention to strategy”

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement “We do have a marketing sub-group in the STPP,” reflects Colette, “and although it’s in its infancy and there are some teething problems, we are trying to get a cohesive approach to marketing. We’re talking about needing a similar approach in Train to Gain. Instead of each organisation doing its own individual marketing, we need to have a consistent approach. We need to be promoting the consortium as a consortium, rather than for individuals. So that’s come from one to the other.”

Focusing on targets “We set the targets within the Curriculum Managers’ development plans. So everybody knows, right from day one: ‘These are your targets.’ We give them monthly reports, saying: “This is your target, this is your shortfall.”

That obviously has an impact on employers, because the Curriculum team are responsible for hitting those targets. Even though I manage the whole process, they own the targets. When their assessors are out, they’re selling and cross-selling, and that’s good for employers.

We are quite a proactive college and we know that as an individual organisation we will achieve our targets under Train to Gain.

“Communication within the organisation is very important. What’s worthwhile, and it’s taken a bit of time, is to raise awareness and get the strategic buyin. That makes a world of difference. Train to Gain is actually classed here as the same as ‘core’, which is an immense achievement.”

The most valued customers “Because we have CoVEs in healthcare, sport and hospitality, we already have good links with employers.

We work very closely with care homes and hospitals; and with both high revenue restaurants and SMEs, so it’s quite a good mix.

“Sport is a relatively new sector for us, but we have built up very good relationships with the local centres. We also work closely with the two large football clubs!

Smarter working practices Colette has brought in a number of changes to the College’s workforce development sector during the past 18 months or so. “We’ve recruited a workforce development consultant, and that’s been a huge step forward. We have also collated all the employer engagement databases in the College and produced

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Ashridge Education and Skills one system for the whole organisation. Even though the data isn’t yet 100% cleansed, it’s now all in one place.

For an FE college, that was a huge achievement!

“Although we’re classed as ‘workforce development’ internally, we have our own employer branding: skills@South Trafford College and have given employers a dedicated area on the website, with their own enquiry line and email address. We have a turnaround of 24 hours. We’re really looking at how we respond to employers,” she says.

Measuring the impact of training provision How does South Trafford measure the impact of its training provision on employers?

“It tends to be more anecdotal at the moment,” says Colette. “We do send out employer questionnaires, but the response rate isn’t great. We generally go by repeat business. And you know from speaking to an employer and to your assessors, when they’re happy with you and when they’re not.”

And does South Trafford know what sort of measures its employers are using to evaluate effectiveness?

“We conduct TNAs and we do have some Key Account Management. The workforce development consultant doesn’t just leave it with Curriculum to deliver; they’ll go out to see the employer, make follow-up calls and so on.

But it’s more hand-on than formalised evaluation.”

Supporting development South Trafford has embraced the opportunity to participate in a range of development activities, including peer referencing; attending workshops on Building Business Partnerships and Developing Responsive Managers and Organisations workshops; action learning and working with other providers at Ashridge. The College originally submitted its proposal for consultancy support with the intention of looking at service standards and having a consistent approach to the employer journey, both strategically and across all three CoVE delivery units. “We wanted to have the same protocols and standards for each of the three delivery units,” explains Colette, “so that no matter where the employer was coming from, they would have the same pleasant experience.”

Ashridge Education and Skills

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement The forthcoming merger with North Trafford has meant a slight shift in emphasis. “We’re in a transitional period, but business still has to go on,” says Colette. So while the focus is still on bringing together a diverse group of staff to look at the employer journey – some with experience of employer engagement, others without – there has been a shift from long-term planning to short-term action.

Despite the uncertainty around the merger, Colette believes the consultancy has already had a positive impact. “We wanted to bring the key people together. It isn’t easy to get all the key stakeholders singing from the same hymn sheet. That was one of the first objectives, and we have achieved that.

“The other outcome is that we’ve now got a diverse working group in place. The challenge is going to be keeping the momentum going through the transitional period. That’s going to be difficult, because obviously Train to Gain isn’t our only employer engagement programme; we do lots of other things.”

The future: growth through transition Clearly the forthcoming merger with North Trafford – and all the uncertainty that comes with it – is high on everyone’s list at the moment. But one thing is clear: through all the internal change that’s going on, employers will continue to tell the College what it is they need. “The business and professional sector will be a key area of growth,” says Colette. “We’re hearing from employers that there’s a demand for that.”

“We’re in a transitional period, but business still has to go on”

“It’s about keeping those communication channels open, planning towards targets and making sure we meet them”

So where, for Colette, are the short-term priorities?

“As an organisation, we want to grow our work-based learning contracts and work with employers on fullcost provision as well as Train to Gain. Really though, it’s about keeping those communication channels open, planning towards targets and making sure we meet them.”

NOTES .

The Centre of Vocational Excellence or CoVE scheme is part of a £100 million government initiative to develop high quality education and training in specialist areas.

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skills@South Trafford College: www.stcoll.ac.uk

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Ashridge Education and Skills

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Sussex Downs College Customer insight based on interviews with Gill Short, Executive Director Skills

Customer profile Sussex Downs is one of the largest general FE colleges in the South East and came into being as a result of two sets of mergers. The College has six learning brands, three are aimed at 14-19 provision and three aimed at 19+.

The Senior Management Team (SMT) comprises the Principal and four senior staff, including Gill Short, Executive Director Skills. Gill oversees Adult College which delivers to 19+ students (including employees); Training Solutions (the College’s employer-facing arm) and International College.

Recognising that early buy-in to Train to Gain would be key to its success, Gill set up a cross-college team of ten delivery managers, which she chairs, to sell the initiative throughout the whole organisation. Within Training Solutions (www.sdctrainingsolutions.com), the Head of Partnership and Employer Relations leads the team responsible for contract management and for bringing in the work, selling the initiative to employers through a sixstrong team of Business Development Advisors or BDAs (until recently there were only two), and a reinforced telesales team.

The Head of Adult Learning and the Head of Eastbourne Vocational College lead a separate delivery team, while others in the organisation hold key responsibilities for Train to Gain, including brokerage, information gathering and reporting to Central Sussex (the lead partner in the consortium of which Sussex Downs is a key member).

Train to Gain Sussex Downs College is a member of the Sussex Consortium. This comprises 21 partners, including FE Sussex (all the colleges) and SCTP (Sussex Council of Training Providers, representing work-based learning providers). The overall Train to Contract contract is worth £3.2M and the lead partner is Central Sussex College, based in Crawley.

At around £155,000, Sussex Downs has deliberately gone for a relatively small contract in the first year of

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Train to Gain. Says Gill, “I wanted to learn about it and get the infrastructure right first. It’s all delivered in the workplace, it brings in another level of bureaucracy… we can’t use our normal management information system to report back – we have to use another one… everyone has to have a unique number... there’s a lot to get your head round. It gives us a chance to get it right without being too ambitious.”

Partnership with Ashridge Sussex Downs worked with Ashridge on employer engagement in July 2006. It welcomed the opportunity to understand more about this area of the business. Gill reported that “I was particularly interested in finding out whether we were making the most of how we engage with employers. We’re an Action for Business College, so we were already halfway there and had developed a definite business-to-business type relationship with employers, but I felt that we could probably take it a step further. Working with Ashridge was a way of seeing if we could achieve this.”

The first part of the two-session consultancy project involved Gill bringing together all key staff in employerfacing roles across the College, together with the relevant delivery heads. In the next session, the partnership and employer relations team (from administrators right through to those engaging directly with employers) explored market segmentation issues. Finally, Gill and the Head of Partnerships and Employer Relations spent some one-to-one time with the consultant, looking more closely at how they approached employers.

“Working with Ashridge gave us that extra bit of confidence”

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

“We really benefited from having that external view on our approach” An important and timely backdrop to this consultancy was Sussex Downs’ work on branding – an area they were revisiting to ensure it was still fit for purpose.

Working closely with the consultants, they were able to identify a ‘front end’ to employer engagement. This was designed to ensure that once employer work was found then the College delivery process could respond.

Says Gill: “Working with Ashridge gave us that extra bit of confidence and reaffirmed our view that if we couldn’t buy the delivery from within the College, we would have the right to go and buy it elsewhere, because the need to be able to meet the employer’s requirement was paramount. We found this session extremely valuable. In many ways it felt more like mentoring or coaching.”

Gill feels the external support from Ashridge was useful for the partnership and employer relations team, because it reaffirmed that they were already reasonably good at what they were doing. “All the sessions were useful, whether they were designed for the whole group or just tailored to one or two individuals. But what really struck me was the consultants’ very quick understanding of where we were, and their ability to analyse across the whole College. We really benefited from having that external view on our approach… getting us to think about it, and so on.”

Another tool that the team worked on during the consultancy was the college’s Action for Business College Development Plan. Having successfully met their Year 1 targets, Sussex Downs are now well underway with the second year of the plan – an ‘umbrella’ that covers employer engagement, including Train to Gain and College of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) work. It looks at what is meant by employer engagement and at how Sussex Downs can improve in this area. In Gill’s view the plan is going well – it’s a funded initiative, involves the whole organisational infrastructure and is overseen by a college steering group. Evaluation is of course, ongoing, and reports are sent to the LSC on a regular basis.

Ashridge Education and Skills

Segmenting the market The session with Ashridge on market segmentation triggered the start of a sophisticated marketing initiative within the College’s Development Plan. Keen to get a better understanding of their employers and to tailor their offer accordingly, Gill and her team are now looking at ways of differentiating these customers, loosely based on who the employers are, what sectors they represent and what training provision Sussex Downs has in place with them. She has come up with a multi-tier system, grouping the college’s current employers into Platinum, Gold and Silver categories.

Under the scheme, a Platinum level employer might receive two visits a year from the College Principal, who would meet with their CEO to discuss partnership work, projects, franchising possibilities etc. They might also receive invites to networking events, awards evenings and so on, and a key account BDA would make contact with them on a monthly basis. A Gold level employer would receive similar benefits, but might be visited by senior managers, rather than the Principal.

Sussex Downs already has a well-established Employer Liaison Scheme in place, through which every manager has two or three employers with whom they are regularly in contact. Gill accepts that knowing how to differentiate between employers is not always easy and is currently exploring ideas on how to develop this critical area of the business.

Gill’s focus now is on understanding her market and on measuring impact and effectiveness. In fact she’s starting to look at effective practice in other sectors, not just in education. “This whole issue is about how we, as a business, relate to and engage effectively with employers. We know that so many employers don’t use FE – it has quite a poor reputation across the board and certainly with some key employers. I think it comes down to how we work with employers to try and change that perception, so that they can get the best from us.

We’ve certainly become smarter and more business-like over the past couple of years, but we think we’ve still got some way to go… .”

“We’ve certainly become smarter and more businesslike over the past couple of years” 33

Ashridge Education and Skills

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Tresham Institute of Further and Higher Education Customer insight based on interviews with Allison Hope, Director of Faculty

Customer profile Tresham Institute is a college of further and higher education based in Northamptonshire. It delivers a range of courses to around 16,000 full and part-time learners, both in college and in the workplace. Its mission is: “To deliver excellent education and skills training that meets the needs of learners and employers.”

The College has a long-established business centre, Business Solutions1 headed by an Account Manager, who works in close partnership with Allison Hope, Director of Faculty for Business, Humanities, Health and Social Care and Professional Courses. Allison also has additional overall responsibility for employer engagement in the College.

Based in a Corby business park, the Business Solutions team, which has been accredited by emskills 2 for its employer responsiveness, provides bespoke training to both large local employers and small businesses. It was this team that managed Tresham’s successful bid for Train to Gain.

Train to Gain consortium: background Tresham Institute is the lead partner in a six-strong consortium to deliver Train to Gain in Northamptonshire.

Allison describes how the partnership came together.

“The College went through a significant restructure about a year ago, and two senior staff who were responsible for employer engagement were made redundant. I said: ‘Who’s going to look after employer engagement? Because this is the way the College has to go… it’s one heck of a job.’ ” Needless to say, Allison was offered the position, and within a few weeks found herself writing a Train to Gain contract. “It was probably quite fortuitous,” she continues, “because we had already worked with

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some private training providers through ESF projects and so on. I contacted a couple of them, and we were approached by two more, one of whom I knew because they were an ex-employee of the College and had set up as a private training provider.”

It proved to be a winning combination and the consortium is now well underway. “We amended our contract,” says Allison, “and our partners are now contracted to deliver virtually anything. What this really means is getting them to find as many candidates to do a full Level 2 NVQ as they can.” In fact, although the partnership has delivered more care training than anticipated, (Allison thinks this has been the case nationally), Tresham has stuck fairly close to its contract and is not far off its original profile.

Building the partnership: a strategic approach In choosing to partner with people that she knew and had worked with in the past, Allison was already ahead of the game in terms of establishing mutual trust and confidence. “It’s worked very well because we had a long standing relationship with the partners before Train to Gain, and I was confident that they would be able to find the learners. I’m the only Northamptonshire-based provider that’s actually met the Train to Gain contract and done better, but I would say it’s because we’ve got the right partners,” says Allison.

With trust already in place, strategic decision making is largely down to Tresham. “We meet with partners once every two months but the attendance at that is patchy.

Of course we consult with partners, and we do have quite regular telephone conversations when issues come up.”

Another thing that was high on Allison’s list when putting together the partnership was capacity. It was no accident that she chose this combination of providers to

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement deliver Train to Gain. “To be perfectly frank, without them we wouldn’t have been successful with the contract,” she says. “Out of the six organisations, we as a college are the third biggest in terms of delivery, but we’ve got two other private partners that are actually delivering more than we’ve done so far.”

“The partnership is based on longestablished working relationships” Smarter partnership working Allison attributes the success of the partnership to a number of factors, including spread of provision; a strong communicative culture and knowing the strengths of each provider.

“I think we’ve got a good range of provision, which means that between us we’re able to deliver a variety of training for one company,” she says.

“The partnership is based on long-established working relationships. I would say the mood is quite buoyant – where partners have picked up things from other parts of the country, they’ve brought them to the table, so we’ve been sharing good practice like that as well.

“Each of us is doing what we know we’re very good at. So it’s high quality delivery, which leads to repeat business.”

Evaluating the partnership Tresham evaluates the partnership in a number of ways. Overall quality is monitored through retention and success rates, which at the moment are extremely good. “We also have to make sure each partner is generating sufficient activity, and, because it’s a small partnership, we’re mindful of how responsive they are.

Communication is crucial,” says Allison.

Partners are required to do a self-assessment report for each qualification they deliver. “I’m getting them in next week to help them write these reports,” she says. “I’ve

Ashridge Education and Skills been pretty instrumental in the College with our selfassessment process, so I think I can give them quite a lot of guidance on that.”

The big issue: capacity Allison sees capacity as being one of the College’s greatest challenges. “Even though we are delivering on Train to Gain and we’re earned ourselves quite a good reputation, certainly with the local and regional LSC, our private partners are sometimes delivering on a bigger scale than we are. The difficulty we’ve got as a college is being as responsive and flexible as them. At the moment I’m reducing my risk by passing work out to them, but ultimately, if this college is going to grow, and even survive, we’ve got to get this stuff right.

Allison finds this situation somewhat frustrating. “I’ve just put an ad in the local press for part-time assessors.

I think, ‘Well, if the staff here can’t do it, then I’ve got to go and find somebody else who can.’ I think every college is experiencing exactly the same problem.

Rather than using their existing staff, they’re having to bring in new staff that they pay in a different sort of way, to provide that flexible response. As far as I’m aware, it’s not something that anybody has been able to tackle particularly well. I can understand people wanting to protect their contracts. But ultimately they’ve got to get a more commercial edge to the way they are thinking.

“Having the business centre is a real strength. It means we’re used to operating in a commercial way… offering training at full cost and so on. But the downside is that when it comes to employer engagement, staff in the rest of the college think: ‘That’s one for Business Solutions to deal with.’ What we really need to do is to encourage staff to be more employer-focused, to be more responsive to external customers and to use the links they’ve already got more effectively. Business Solutions can help them, but they’ve got to make this work for themselves.”

“Having the business centre is a real strength. It means we’re used to operating in a commercial way” 35

Ashridge Education and Skills

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Ashridge: supporting the change process Allison has received consultancy support from Ashridge as part the Train to Gain Development Programme. She and her team have used the assignment to explore more effective ways of communication, first with the College’s external customers, then with then with their own internal audience.

“We started off by looking at the business to business conversation,” says Allison. “We talked about how we need to recognise that different people require different approaches.

“It’s all about the staff recognising the opportunities. It’s quite clear that while many staff have a lot to do with employers, they just don’t recognise the opportunities that are out there. Some of them feel uncomfortable about talking to employers. Really though, it’s often just a question of them saying: ‘Do you mind if I pass your details on to someone else in the College who can come out and talk to you?’

More recently, again as part of the consultancy work, Allison has been looking at how she can encourage staff at all organisational levels and in all areas of the College to start that all-important, first conversation with employers.

In mid-May Allison ran a World Café event, to which she invited a wide cross-section of staff. The invitation cards she sent out were the subject of much curiosity, detailing the time and place of the event, but with no title, only the message: ‘You are invited to help shape the future of the College.’

‘You are invited to help shape the future of the College’ “We called it this rather than saying it was about employer engagement, because nobody would have turned up,” says Allison, with a touch of irony. “But there were actually some very good conversations going on.

People are now beginning to talk about it a lot more.”

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The consultancy, in what amounts to achieving sustainable change in organisational culture, is already having a positive impact. “I think that those people who were involved in improving the business to business conversation are trying it out and implementing it,” says Allison.

“Internally as well, I think there is a greater awareness of how to communicate effectively. It happens to tie in with a recent senior appointment. We’ve got a new temporary Principal, and his main role is to try to improve communication within the College. I think that although we’ve still got a way to go, more people in the college are now buying in to the whole employer engagement agenda. 38 people came to the Café. Most people who took part in it were positive, and afterwards I emailed the slides to everybody that had been there.

Some people have really thought about it and sent back lengthy emails. We hope to repeat the event and keep the conversation going.

“I think in the end, everybody felt they had a part to play.”

One of the outcomes of the consultancy work has been the establishment of a unique support network.

Three of the 18 providers delivering Train to Gain in Northamptonshire have set up an informal support network. Tresham Institute, Northampton College, and Northants Training and Development Partnership (NTDP) are working together in what Allison believe is a unique initiative. TQ Training – a national training provider headquartered in Daventry – is also involved.

“We meet once every couple of months to share moans, groans, good practice and materials. It’s a good support mechanism for us all,” says Allison.

The way forward Allison sees customised management training and business improvement techniques (BIT) as two key areas of growth. “One thing that’s bubbling away quite a lot is bespoke management training. We’ve talked to lots of companies about this. We’ve been doing a small amount of management consultancy with the Sector Skills Council for Logistics and it’s gone very well. BIT is another area we want to develop.

“Whatever the future holds, one thing is clear: we need to change quickly to meet the new employer engagement agenda.”

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Ashridge Education and Skills

Employer focus: Fairline Boats

One of Tresham’s most valued customers is the luxury yacht manufacturer Fairline Boats (www.fairline.com), whose main base is in Oundle but who has a further site in nearby Corby. The company, which turns over £120M per year and employs around 1,200 staff 3, says: “We have been impressed by Tresham’s

flexibility, the quality of their training and the effective communications at all levels.”

Tresham started working with Fairline 18 months ago, providing NVQ Level 2 and Apprenticeship training.

“They’re very positive at a national level about the relationship they have with the College,” says Allison.

“We’ve shown that we can be very responsive. And the cost savings are huge. They say that a combination of external consultancy support and Tresham delivering NVQs in Business Improvement Techniques has led to them cutting 900 hours off the production of a boat.”

NOTES .

Business Solutions. www.tresham.ac.uk/businesssolutions

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The emskills project aims to determine agreed best practice benchmarks to support the development of a regional brand that employers recognise as being a standard for excellent provision in employer engagement.

It has now been operational in the East Midlands for over two and a half years. www.emfec.co.uk

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Source: SEMTA website. www.semta.org.uk

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Ashridge Education and Skills

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Westminster Kingsway College Customer insight based on interviews with Nicole Barber, Head of Services to Business

Customer profile Westminster Kingsway College1 is a large general FE and HE college in central London, enrolling around 20,000 learners each year. The majority of its students are part-time adult learners, although it also offers fulltime 16-18 year old provision. Recognised as “Central London’s College”, Westminster Kingsway has CoVEs 2 in hospitality and public administration, as well as a specialised digital media centre called 01zero-one, based in London’s Soho.

As at May 2007, the College has a dedicated Services to Business unit (Service S2Business), which was set up four years ago and is headed by Nicole Barber. As co-writer of the college’s bid for Train to Gain, Nicole is responsible for ensuring that delivery targets are met on this and other contracts in her area including ESF and franchised delivery.

Train to Gain consortium: background “The College is very experienced and comfortable with taking a leading role when working in partnership,” says Nicole. “So when Westminster Kingsway put together their Train to Gain bid in May 2006, the College took the innovative decision to engage with five private training providers rather than with other FE providers. “At the time, some may have thought this to be a risky move,” says Nicole. “However, we chose to approach private sector providers and work with them as we realised that this would be an ideal opportunity for all of us to work collaboratively and learn from one another.”

The Train to Gain contract started at the beginning of August 2006, but it took a few months for partnership activity to get off the ground. “Without a doubt, the private providers were away like a shot,” reflects Nicole. “Three months earlier in May, whilst the Vice Principal and I were writing the bid, two of the private providers were actively involved in engaging learners.

By 1st August, when the contract began, they were ready to enrol and start delivery. I think that’s a really

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interesting and important point, because their work in laying the foundations and creating the early enrolment opportunities was one of the main activities leading to income generation.”

Getting people in the right roles Nicole works closely with a number of project leaders in her team who liaise with employers and learners on Train to Gain, but identifies three roles in particular as being critical to the success of the contract: the Train to Gain Project [Contracts] Manager; a manager whose remit for the quality of the S2B provision includes Train to Gain; and the Train to Gain Administrator. All three have other responsibilities in addition to Train to Gain.

Nicole explains why she sees these roles as being important. “The Administrator’s role involves ensuring all audit documentation is collated per learner and the data is then recorded accurately on the Independent Learning Review (ILR). If the administration is incorrect, there can be enrolment delays and a serious impact on funding. In terms of the quality manager’s role, we take particular care at Westminster Kingsway to assure the quality of our training intervention – if it isn’t up to scratch, we not only risk damaging our brand but also risk the experience being less than 100% positive for our learners. Finally, the Contracts Manager has a critical role in making sure that as lead partner we engage with our other partners. This means we work collaboratively to deliver against profile and work with brokers and employers to identify ‘best fit’ training solutions.”

Sharing learning across the partnership In Nicole’s view, the College made a wise move in choosing to collaborate with private sector providers.

Interestingly, this group of providers includes some competitors. “Right from the start, it was about developing relationships. There were potential opportunities for both parties in terms of sharing learning, which meant that the employer and candidates

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement would benefit. The private sector had much to offer FE in terms of running a business, managing systems and processes. Equally, as a large FE college, we were able to share some of the quality issues and agendas, for example our quality assurance systems. Some of the providers are now bringing Ofsted-type quality management to their provision, and they in turn benefit from having their name attached to a brand like ours.”

“Right from the start, it was about developing relationships” Clear strategic decision making Westminster Kingsway holds monthly steering group meetings at their site, and the Contracts Manager meets with each of the partners in between the meetings and feeds back key points to Nicole which are then reported to the College’s Executive Team. The College takes the lead on complex decisions with its senior executive team and then disseminates and discusses that information with the other partners in the consortium.

Meeting the risks and challenges As at May 2007, Nicole sees delivering her 600+ target outcomes as being one of the biggest challenges facing the partnership. “It makes for a tense working environment, so we have to be able to help and support one another. We deal with this through collaborative working: regular communication, building up relationships, and making sure we have a no-blame culture. After all, we’re all out there trying to meet targets and make a difference to employees in the workplace.”

Of the six partners in the consortium performance is variable. One issue affecting this has been involvement in the IT sector which seems to be a problem in other parts of the country. Most of the people who want IT training are not eligible to receive it under Train to Gain because they have a qualification higher than Level 2.

What about the risks of partnership working? “Between now and July,” says Nicole “and thinking about the next academic year, a key question for us is how much

confidence our partnership can have in our projections.

Both internal and external changes can affect how realistic these are, even over a short time scale. And of course there are cost implications as well.”

Quality and evaluation The manager whose quality remit includes Train to Gain has an important role in the team. She has met with each of the consortium partners and disseminated the College’s own quality assurance systems. “We encourage our partners to undertake self-assessment reports and curriculum reviews, and engage in lesson observations, much as we did with our franchise partnerships. We believe this has been useful and provided support for our partners.”

The level of target outcomes is one obvious measure of the partnership’s effectiveness. But as lead partner, Westminster Kingsway monitors other factors: •

Do partners value the steering group meetings and are they attending them?

•

Are partners meeting their targets?

•

Is there good communication within the partnership?

•

Are partners working collaboratively?

•

Have we got evidence that we’re sharing information?

To help measure the impact of training, the College conducts student surveys – sometimes midstream, sometimes towards the end. “Obviously we undertake our own impact analysis after a training intervention, but it’s a two-way process and we expect the employer to give us their feedback as well, in the form of an employer engagement survey,” explains Nicole. ‘Did the training meet their need? Where and how do they think there has been an impact?’ ”

“We expect the employer to give us their feedback”

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement “For one of our training and development interventions we work with specialist consultants to undertake a productivity needs analysis where we gather productivity data ‘before’ and ‘after’ the delivery of the NVQ underpinning knowledge to the workforce and generate an impact analysis report for the employer.”

Consultancy support Ashridge supported the College through working with the five project leaders within the business services department (BDU). This took place as action learning sets in the true sense of the word, being delivered over a period of four months. Action points were given and agreed and at the beginning of the following session updates were given. The benefit of this was vast, as the project leaders were carrying out similar roles and therefore sharing pockets of good practice that were then taken, adapted in some cases and implemented.

Comments included remarks such as “We don’t have the opportunity to sit down and support each other as we are very busy getting the job done” and “I didn’t realise that I could carry out that task in that way – it’s been made easier.”

It became clear that there were a number of management issues and changes in working practice that needed to take place in terms of seeing some of the internal processes in a demand led way. For example, how assessors were allocated, case load allocation and the deadlines involved so that the customers’ needs were met, etc. Some of these issues were covered during the action learning sessions, but where more time was needed a sixty minute one-to-one coaching session was offered. This was taken up, again, with actions that were followed up via ‘phone.

Effective employer engagement at Westminster Kingway College Nicole cites the NHS, for whom Westminster Kingsway provides a number of training and development solutions including bespoke management development, as being one of the College’s key employers. Why? “They would say it’s because we react and respond… we have the flexibility to customise solutions to meet their need.”

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Ashridge Education and Skills Getting the right structure in place and engaging with the employer from the start are significant factors in this process. “We always start by making sure we’ve got the foundations in place to develop the relationship.

An Account Manager is introduced, and that person is involved in the initial discussions and negotiations.

We invest our human resources and skills from an early stage – if we fail to convert negotiations into an actual training and development contract there is a cost implication for us. However, experience provides us with evidence of high conversion rates and I believe it is our ‘hands-on’ and responsive customer service focus which is the critical success factor.”

“We always start by making sure we’ve got the foundations in place to develop the relationship” Westminster Kingsway makes it clear to employers that there is an expectation that they will engage in regular monitoring of progress meetings, usually every six weeks as part of the service level agreement. “If the employer is not prepared to sign up to this, then we question whether or not we should be engaging in the contract with them,” says Nicole. “It might sound a bit risky, but it does mean there is evidence of their commitment to support the candidates and work in partnership with us to meet the expected outcomes. We also encourage the employer to make arrangements for candidates’ line managers to attend a pre-delivery presentation which we provide for candidates. In this way, line managers are also aware of the role they have to play in working in partnership. So it’s not just a question of them finding the students and us turning up with an assessor.”

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Ashridge Education and Skills

What does the future hold?

One key growth area for Westminster Kingsway will be in new products to meet the workforce needs in London.

Nicole believes there is an abundance of providers offering Train to Gain Level 2 NVQs in Customer Service and Business Administration and that employers are equally interested in different interventions which provide a productive as well as a service oriented impact. To meet this need the College has now developed, and is offering, an NVQ 2 Business Improvement Techniques workforce development solution as part of its Train to Gain portfolio.

As far as the Train to Gain consortium is concerned, Westminster Kingsway College is aware that some of its partners will be ‘going it alone’ in 2007/8, whilst at the same time new partners have approached the College to join the consortium.

“We’ve taken a business decision. It has all been done amicably – for various reasons. The success of the Services to Business team has resulted in increased growth and awareness of the work that we do. As a result, we will be launching a new brand identity in Autumn 2007 to move this work forward for us and our partners.”

Needless to say, Nicole is in no doubt at all about the immediate task facing her and the ServiceS2Business unit. “It’s going to be about meeting targets, both financial and learner numbers,” she says. “I would like to be sitting here in twelve months’ time saying ‘We pulled it off. We rose to the challenge and achieved our goals.’ ”

NOTES .

Westminster Kingsway College. www.westking.ac.uk/s2b

.

The Centre of Vocational Excellence or CoVE scheme is part of a £100 million government initiative to develop high quality education and training in specialist areas.

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Ashridge Education and Skills

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Yeovil College Customer insight based on interviews with Adrian Bromfield, Assistant Work-based Learning Manager

Customer profile Yeovil is a popular tertiary college based in Somerset.

Formed in 1974, its aim is to provide high quality inspirational learning opportunities in the community, offering a range of full and part-time courses from entry level through to AS/A level, vocational courses and degree level. The College has two CoVEs1, one in Advanced Engineering and the other in Tourism and Hospitality. It benefits from a combination of high quality industry recognised training, resources and excellent partnerships with local employers.

The College’s first point of contact for business is Yeovil College Training (YCT), whose informative website is reached in a single hit from the College’s home page, www.yeovil.ac.uk. Headed by a Director, YCT offers employers a range of training provision, including Train to Gain, through its team of experienced Business Training Managers. The Director reports to the College’s senior management team, and is supported by Assistant Work-based Learning Manager Adrian Bromfield, who looks after the day-to-day operations of Train to Gain and also has responsibility for recruiting young people and employers onto the Apprenticeship programme.

Train to Gain consortium: background Yeovil College is one partner in a three-way consortium to deliver Train to Gain in Somerset, the others being Strode College in Street and Richard Huish College in Taunton. The partners work both to their own strengths and in close collaboration, dividing a similar curriculum offer geographically where it makes economic sense to do so. Although the partnership came together with the rollout of Train to Gain in August 2006, Yeovil already had experience of employer engagement, having spent three years working on the Employer Training Pilot (ETP) in Wiltshire. “We were

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prepared for what to expect, having ironed out quite a few of the teething problems that the Level 2 initiative had highlighted to us in Wiltshire,” says Adrian.

Yeovil delivers Train to Gain in four main areas: Health and Social Care; Hospitality and Catering; the whole of the Manufacturing Engineering sector, and the new ITQ. It delivers apprenticeships in all these areas. The breadth of this offer means that of the three colleges, Yeovil has the single highest number of profiled starts to achieve. Adrian estimates that it currently accounts for around 75% of the consortium’s learners.

Unless there are any unexpected changes, the College expects to exceed its contractual target by the end of the first year, though as Adrian says, “it’s very difficult to predict what’s going to come in, and where it’s going to come from.”

Flexible, demand led delivery in practice Among Yeovil’s most valued Train to Gain customers are three local employers: a print company; a brush manufacturer and a hotel. As Adrian explains in the case studies that follow, though taken from very different sectors, each is an excellent example of demand led provision. The pieces demonstrate quite clearly how Yeovil has been able to work in close partnership with company management and deliver training provision within the workplace on a wholly flexible, 24/7 basis to suit the employer.

Case study A:

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Case study A: A large print company A ‘hard to reach’ employer This employer was originally introduced to us through our links with the AMICUS2 Union Learning Reps (ULRs) and their project workers, who became aware of the funding that was available through Train to Gain.

Through the manufacturing sectors, margins are extremely tight, so the chance to get some fully funded training was a real opportunity. Again, this is in an area that the Government sees as very much ‘hard to reach’, even though the company itself is a very big employer. A lot of the workforce do not have any formal qualifications at all and a number of employees have worked there for twenty or thirty years.

Company downtime or employee opportunity?

The union originally approached us on the basis that we could potentially start with six or seven learners to see whether or not it was going to be viable to provide training, bearing in mind that the management see any downtime as lost production time, and it’s very difficult to quantify the benefits. I went down to meet the company’s Union learner rep, who’s a very proactive individual, and outlined the options and eligibility criteria. We were then invited to start with 12 learners, which we thought was fantastic – a very manageable group – but over a period of six or eight weeks the numbers just grew and grew, because more and more people wanted the

opportunity to gain a qualification linked to their job role, and they could see the benefit of it. After five months we were up to 30!

At the start of this year, the LSC announced further funding for Apprenticeships, and we were able to bring a few more onto the programme. So we currently have 33 employees working towards qualifications in the company, which took us back a bit! And there are more waiting to come on, once we start moving some of the quicker ones through later this year. So from that point of view it’s been very good.

A transformation in the workforce Because the union were driving it, the management took more of a ringside seat, just to see what was going on. But recently they have become far more involved, and have given us a lot of support with materials and so on. They’ve already noticed quite a transformation in some of the workforce, in their attitude, their enthusiasm… and very small things are changing, that perhaps they weren’t even aware of, and that’s actually making the whole atmosphere in the company much better. The Production Director has admitted that he’s seen a change, and he’s very positive about it.

Management commitment to company-wide training Management have now agreed to commit to this in the longer-term, so long as we can negotiate to secure some of the funding, obviously through Train to

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Gain. They have said they are prepared to sponsor some of their other employees who don’t meet Apprenticeship or Train to Gain eligibility criteria, because they don’t wish them to be disadvantaged.

The company have now said that they would like to sponsor the current Train to Gain learners through the higher level Technical Certificates which the Apprentices are going to achieve anyway. So they have managed to find the budget to help those employees gain a second qualification later this year, because they believe it’s going to be of far greater benefit to them. When we initially started training, this is something that we did not think was going to happen. We’ve got more Level 3 learners in there than we have Level 2 because of the nature of the job roles.

Something else that’s happened is that the company also has a sister company locally, and they would like us to go in there later this year and replicate what we’re doing.

We now hold regular meetings to review the progress there. It’s a role model for us as to what can be done as a collaborative partnership, working with the unions, with the management of a company, and also delivering it in the workplace on a very flexible basis.

Source: Adrian Bromfield, Yeovil College Training

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Case study B: A brush manufacturer Overturning the culture This company is one that we originally engaged through the ETP in Wiltshire as a result of a broker enquiry. The key issue for this company was that even though it was at the forefront of its own market, it wasn’t at the forefront of modern-day technology. It was in a rural location – which wasn’t a problem in itself, except that its systems and procedures were very antiquated. But with relatively little perception of what went on outside the actual factory, it was difficult for employees to understand the problem, and any change to existing company practices would be seen as quite revolutionary. .

Case study C: A small hotel Introducing training We’re currently working with a small local hotel which until now has never given very much consideration to training. Yeovil has CoVE status for Hospitality and Training, so with the launch of Train to Gain we were able to go in and talk to them about the opportunities that might exist.

Simplifying the choice for the employer One of the things that became very apparent from talking to the hotel management was the confusion that exists among employers, particularly about what funding is available to support different courses.

Again, cost is a major implication

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Ongoing management support Going in and delivering the initial training was challenging in a way, because many of the employees were very sceptical about the benefits, asking what they were going to get out of it, and questioning the ulterior motive of the company. But the management were very supportive through this first phase of training. Towards the end of it, they identified another cohort of learners for us to take on, in a different occupation area, which again went well.

Training as part of the culture Now, training has become embedded in the culture of the company and the employees decide how they want to build on their Level 2 achievements. Train to Gain has allowed us to offer Level 3 as well as Level 2… I think one of the criticisms we had of the ETP was that we were only able to offer Level 2.

within the sector, and it took quite a long time – around half a day I think – to actually sit down and look at each individual to see which qualification was appropriate, and what funding we could attract for them. It was also a question of looking at the some of the bespoke courses we could offer that would meet the needs of the workforce.

We delivered quite a lot of one-off bespoke training for the hotel in January and February – obviously a quieter time of year for them. The Train to Gain delivery is ongoing.

We’ve had an extremely positive response from the workforce, some of whom are Polish. They’ve been very keen to gain the qualifications and they can see the relevance and benefits of training.

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Some of the manufacturing processes in the company have changed now, and the employees certainly have a much better idea of what’s going on. There are still employees in there, though, who are quite reticent and who find it difficult to see the benefits of change. That’s the group that we’re working with at the moment, to see whether or not we can offer any training to them, even if it’s bespoke training that doesn’t attract any funding.

By working with this company, we’ve been able to show that training can be quite flexible, and by doing all the delivery in the workplace we can minimise the disruption to everyday production; it’s not a question of coming to college and sitting in the classroom for four or five hours.

Source: Adrian Bromfield, Yeovil College Training

Training to suit Again, it’s been an opportunity for us to do some workplace delivery, but because of the nature of the qualifications, some of the staff have had to come into college for practical training. So the employer has been able to evaluate the difference between a structured day here at college, and some of the more flexible delivery on the other qualifications, where we can deliver in the workplace.

The feedback so far has been very positive: different strands of training can take place, but it can still fit in with the employer’s requirements.

Source: Adrian Bromfield, Yeovil College Training

Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Building and maintaining the relationship with the employer For Yeovil College, smart delivery equals demand led delivery, which means building – and holding onto – a focused relationship with each employer. “It’s working at what the employers want and doing it that way,” says Adrian. There are some recurring themes in the way Yeovil engages with its employers.

Working with the unions Yeovil has a strong track record of developing training for union learners and their companies. In June it was one of only two providers in the South West and ten nationally to be awarded the Quality Kite Mark for Unionlearn3, for its provision in Skills for Life, IT and NVQs. As he explains in the following case study, Adrian believes the union can often play a pivotal role in opening the door to an employer. “In companies where there’s quite a strong union representation and they do have union learner reps, it does make a difference. It allows us not only to meet with the management but also the workforce.”

Visibility in the workplace “With some companies,” says Adrian, “it’s got to the point where our relationship with the employer is so strong that our staff are looked upon almost as company employees and accepted as ‘one of them.’ This is important for two reasons. First, it’s opened a lot of communication channels… people don’t feel inhibited about going up to the tutor and asking what they may consider to be a silly question. That can make a huge difference… I suppose it’s taken away the fear of gaining a qualification – they don’t see it as that. Second, it means there’s an open door policy there for us.

We can move around the workplace, and everybody knows who we are and what we’re doing. For example at the print company, we set two training days a week, so people know exactly when we’re onsite.”

Quality of provision Adrian believes that as the employer-facing side of the college grows, maintaining the quality of its offer to employers is crucial. “In some areas we’ve got capacity, we’ve got staff, in other areas we’re having to recruit extra people, but I think it’s important that we monitor how we grow, because we don’t want to grow too quickly. It’s all about maintaining the quality of our provision and I think that’s very important. It’s about more than just hitting our contract; it’s a question of making sure we get the right learners as well.”

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Case study D: A company with union representation The first meeting I had with this employer lasted two and a half hours and was quite formal, involving both management and the unions. We looked at the training that we could offer, the costs involved, the way we proposed to deliver – bearing in mind that this company was on a 24/7 shift pattern – and all the issues relating to that… how we could work around that. It was quite a grilling. At the end of the meeting, it was agreed with the union that we could go back in; in the meantime it was left to the ULRs to canvas the workforce and in effect, to see who was interested.

The next meeting was held on a very informal basis; the management were nowhere to be seen, the door was shut, and we were able to give a presentation to all the individuals who had expressed an interest, to let them see what was involved, and talk openly to us about their concerns and their issues.

We already had a follow-up meeting planned with management, just to give an overview as to how many people had come in, and what the reaction had been. During that third meeting, they turned round and said: ‘Well if that’s the case, we want to do the training… when can you start?’

Four months on, they could not be happier with the way everything’s going. They can already see a benefit in the attitude of staff. It’s not one they can actually attribute a cost to at the moment.

But one particular individual who’s been there quite a long time is coming towards the end of his qualification and it’s acted as a spur to some of those who’ve been a bit more sceptical about it. Those employees are now saying: ‘When can we come on board? Is there going to be an opportunity for us?’ Again, I think it’s about convincing companies that we can be flexible about delivering in the workplace.

Source: Adrian Bromfield, Yeovil College Training

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement Sustaining the employer relationship When determining his response to employers, Adrian finds it helps to think in terms of a phased approach.

“On Train to Gain, with a lot of these employers we’re

‘It’s important that we monitor how we grow’ still at Stage 1, where we’re offering them basic training.

Next year we’ll be looking to expand the contract, and then build relationships with employers into Stage 2 and Stage 3 of the training, maybe having account managers in to manage some of those bigger clients. So far, it’s been apprenticeships or bespoke training.

“I think with the brush manufacturer, we’re now getting to somewhere around Stage 4. This is the point where, having benefited from the very basic training, they’re starting to identify particular needs for particular individuals.

Ashridge Education and Skills So what, in a nutshell, is demand led all about?

“It’s about looking at what employers want, and not trying to force upon them something that you’ve got or that you want to do. It’s about keeping them online, telling them about any new initiatives and trying to find the appropriate way forward for them.

“You’ve got to treat every company as an individual, and you’ve got to look at their issues: where they’re situated geographically, the numbers they’re proposing, what they perceive to be the training need. Then, it’s about trying to mix and match your offer to find the best way forward for them. “And that”, says Adrian, “is not something that can be done overnight.”

“Mix and match your offer to find the best way forward”

“At that point, you’re really moving away from Train to Gain into a different realm, introducing a different team of individuals to them. Of course the company also has to understand that this type of training is going to be very different from, say ten employees going through an NVQ Level 2 within six to nine months.”

NOTES .

The Centre of Vocational Excellence or CoVE scheme is part of a £100 million government initiative to develop high quality education and training in specialist areas.

.

Amicus is the largest manufacturing union in the United Kingdom, with over one million members in the public and private sectors. www.amicustheunion.org.

.

TUC Unionlearn Quality Award. www.unionlearn.org.uk

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Ashridge Education and Skills

Postscript

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Provider Insights into Employer Engagement

Ashridge Education and Skills

Postscript These customer insights represent individual snapshots in the employer responsiveness journeys of a small group of experienced and committed providers. The studies are the product of research carried out over several months, involving telephone and faceto-face interviews with the colleges and private training providers.

From a personal perspective, the interviews were challenging, enlightening and, without exception, immensely enjoyable. It is to the credit of all those involved that they were so frank, honest and open with me during discussion, since this has resulted in exactly the kind of insight we had hoped to generate. Once again I would like to take this opportunity to thank each provider for their valuable contribution

and for taking time out of their busy schedule to participate in the project.

As policy develops at national and regional level, so the responses of the sector will change. All providers face times of turbulence and times of stability. But among those to whom I spoke, it seems that what really matters to them is their commitment to the customer – both employer and learner.

They want to talk to their customers, understand what it is they want and be able to respond. And it is knowing they have done this well that gives them the buzz, the drive and the motivation to deliver, come what may. This is also a challenge to policy makers – to what extent do policies and systems encourage innovation and creativity in this work?

Performance depends on what happens on the ground. This is one of the reasons why research such as this is important to the work of Ashridge Education and Skills (AES). Supporting the flow and exchange of experience and learning across the sector, and using this to inform our own practice, are keys to success.

If you want to take part in developing and sharing you own insights then please let me know.

Ali Abington Research and Development Manager, Ashridge Education and Skills alison.abington@ashridge.org.uk

Acknowledgements Producing these insights has been a real team effort by AES staff and consultants. We wish to acknowledge the work of the full time staff – Julia Boyce, Jude Karnon and Lucy Town – for their support in making the development work actually happen!

Thanks also to our consultants – Stephen Adamson, Wendy Briner, Ed Green, Kate Green, Laurell Hector, Janey Howl, Vince Jones, Bryan Newton and David Scott Collins – for their work with the providers featured in this publication. Stephen and Ed also played a key role in additional editorial work.

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Ashridge Graphics department have worked in a flexible and professional fashion to realise the results of our work.

Thanks above all go to Ali Abington, our Research and Development Manager, for her sustained work with providers and for capturing their employer responsiveness journey.

Some of our work with providers was made possible through our work in the Development Programme for Train to Gain, funded by the Quality Improvement Agency.

Finally, our thanks go to the featured providers for their willingness to take part in ongoing interviews and share their experience – we hope this publication adequately reflects their journey so far.

Graham Shaw Programme Director, Ashridge Education and Skills

a Ashridge Berkhamsted Hertfordshire HP4 1NS United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1442 843491 Fax: +44 (0)1442 841209 www.ashridge.org.uk Registered as Ashridge (Bonar Law Memorial) Trust.

Charity number 311096.