AOC Research and Action Planning Project

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AOC Research and Action Planning Project

• DMC Consultants

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Aim To canvas the views of key stakeholders in
the region on their awareness of how colleges
contribute to increasing the economic
competitiveness of the region and of individual
companies/organisations.

• Objectives
• conduct structured interviews with the key
  stakeholders in the region as identified by the
  AOC Regional Director, Steve Sawbridge
• analyse the results of those interviews

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QUESTION 1Do you think your members identify
training and development as a key business
activity?

• Key themes
• Yes key when linked to investment to produce
  business benefits
• Yes in liability areas where it is regarded as
  a cost
• No buy in ready made expertise eg overseas
  employees.

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Key themes continued

• Leadership and management training was recognised
  as important.
• Note
• There is little recognition that training and
  development of the type provided by colleges will
  deliver a business benefit
• There is still a belief that once trained
  employees are likely to leave and move on.

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QUESTION 2How do you think your members identify
and find suppliers for their training and
development needs?

• Key themes
• Would use colleges for training that benefits the
  individual and low level skills training (NVQ 2)
  day release type activity
• When looking for training, organisations would
  use Business Link trade and professional
  organisations recommendation and the web.
• Note Everything is just too complicated
  simplify the business support package. Those
  interviewed would welcome a central web based
  gateway to information.

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QUESTION 3How willing are your members to pay
for training and development support?

• Key themes
• Will pay for compliance training
• Will pay for consultancy that delivers business
  benefits.
• Will pay for higher level and specialist
  programmes.
• Note
• Often will pay independent training providers
  for short course provision and are not aware of
  the out of hours delivery and flexibility offered
  by colleges for things such as Food Hygiene.
  Would not think of colleges as meeting that sort
  of need.

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QUESTION 4What do you think members would want
from colleges?

• Key themes
• Colleges must demonstrate that they are
  businesses, operate as a business, field credible
  people, be purveyors of best practice and
  demonstrate best practice in dealing with
  companies.
• Need long term relationships that follow through
  and evaluate, not only the programme, but
  deployment of the learning and training and its
  immediate and longer term benefits to businesses.
• Want modular flexible adaptable short
  programmes but not necessarily qualifications.
• Want providers to be credible trustworthy
  recognised with a clear message and recognisable
  image.

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QUESTIONS 5 and 6What do you and your members
understand to be the governments steer with
regard to colleges working with employers?How
far do you think colleges in the area that you
cover have responded to that agenda?

• Key themes
• Very little awareness of government skills policy
  
• No linkage was made from the current Train to
  Gain campaign to colleges.
• Joined up activity not evident, for example
  between AWM LSC Brokerage providers.

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QUESTION 7Can you talk about examples/case
studies that you are aware of where good practice
has been demonstrated in supporting the needs of
employers.

• Key themes
• Although individual colleges/individual
  programmes were recognised as good or excellent,
  this was regarded as the exception rather the
  rule and the wider recognition of the sector as a
  business support service is lacking.
• Some excellent examples almost all could quote
  positive experiences when prompted, but this
  perception is not embedded and is not the first
  reaction when considering impressions of colleges.

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QUESTION 8What would influence your members to
try working with a college? (The answers to this
one were always more about what they didnt want
and it was very difficult to get interviewees to
express what they would want to see.)

• Key themes
• Become part of the stakeholder fabric
• Be proactive in the market place, but not touting
  free training and being driven by the funding
  model.
• Offer more than NVQs with little discernable
  business benefit (T2G is more of the same)

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Key themes continued

• Publish measures of performance differentiated by
  specialism
• Link to a strong brand image for the sector.
• It would help if there was a measure of
  performance and of what a good college is.
• Note
• There was an acknowledgement that representative
  bodies have a role to play to help their members
  be more proactive about training and development

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So What Next?

• Collaboratively
• Consider working together at the higher levels of
  marketing and awareness raising of the sector
  there are issues of image and brand awareness.
  Lack of joined up activity to maximise the
  benefits.
• Consider undertaking projects to develop good
  practice, particularly for impact measurement and
  benchmarking performance. Gather feedback and
  analyse results and learn from them.

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Individually

• Believe and commit to this culture shift
• Resource the infrastructure
• Embed the processes
• Define a marketing strategy
• Be able to clearly identify the outputs achieved
  for the customer both individually and as part of
  an anlaysis of results.
• Be models of excellent business practice.