Perhaps these RTO’s don’t understand enterprise learning best
practice? Or they don’t want to align their training to enterprise learning practices? Or maybe it’s that they don’t understand their customer’s needs for learning in
an enterprise-based model?
But I think it may be a combination of all three, brought on by a loss
of skill sets to interpret the learning needs of business enterprises.
However, this is
good for my business as I have many enterprise business clients that contract
my company to re-align their current and future training to enterprise learning
best practice and then work with the RTO to ensure the enterprise’s needs are
met. For an explanation of Enterprise-Based Learning please see my previous
blog post “The Enterprise Learning Model”.
I was recently
speaking with an energy retailer, who had signed off on a new training program
for their call centre customer service agents based on the Certificate III in
Customer Contact. This organisation wanted a workplace skills-based program but
what they got was essentially an off-the-job training program and a rehash of
their old program with a little bit of tinkering at the edges of sales and customer
service training.
But I'm afraid that
this organisation is going to be just as disappointed with this new program as
it was with its old program, because nothing has changed as it’s a training
program to complete a qualification rather than to enhance the functional job
role of employees. A typical example within this “new” training program was a
section on personal effectiveness that utilised Stephen Covey’s time management
matrix and quadrant descriptors. The only problem was that in the process of writing
it into their training materials, Covey's quadrant matrix was converted into a
Cartesian coordinate system! That's right; someone had applied a low-high scale
of importance and a low-high scale of urgency on an x-y axis, turning the whole
quadrant matrix into nonsense.
But that wasn't the
worst of it; for the previous two years this RTO's trainers had been
facilitating this nonsense to the organisation's employees and not one trainer
had noticed the error. And even if that wasn't substandard enough, when the
error was brought to the attention of the RTO their stock answer was that their
client had signed off on the program; apparently it was better to go with an
error after training in it for two years than to admit a mistake and correct
it!
Is it any wonder
that business enterprises have become disillusioned with the ability of the
majority of RTO's to offer enterprise-based learning practices that support the
functional job roles of employees? That is, training that is provided as
skills-based delivered within the workplace in a formative learning
methodology. Where learning is a continuous process that happens on-the-job and
assessment is actual workplace performance at the required level.
I think the main
problem is that many RTO’s have lost the skills and ability to conduct an
enterprise-based TNA (training needs analysis) and then translate this
information into functional job role complex skill sets, map these skill sets
to competencies, but then design learning materials and programs to the skill
sets not the competencies. Thus providing training to the needs of the
employer’s functional job roles rather than training just for a qualification.
The Stephen R Covey Time Management Matrix on YouTube: What
Stephen R. Covey Taught Me About Time Management
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODyG5lKbH08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODyG5lKbH08
