Each year NCVER publishes a paper as a prelude to its annual No frills conference. The conference itself, this year held in Perth, has come and gone. This year’s paper, authored by Joanne Waugh and entitled ‘VET partnerships powering a dynamic workforce’ focuses (according to NCVER’s media release) on addressing workforce demands and equipping the workforce with necessary skills through targeted education, training and partnerships.
As NCVER’s new Managing Director John King notes in the media release:
“Strong VET partnerships are becoming increasingly important for skilling a dynamic workforce. These partnerships may involve delivering high-quality VET training, responding positively to industry skill needs, and supporting workers – including those from traditionally disadvantaged cohorts – on their career journeys.”
Like much of the present rhetoric the paper focuses on VET’s contribution to “delivering the training needed by industry where and when it is needed, and in ensuring access for traditionally disadvantaged cohorts.”
As the paper also points out:
“the focus on bite-sized training has been building for many years now, with the delivery of short courses and skill sets considered to be an important function of VET, one that complements rather than competes with full program delivery by providing tasters and stepping stones to further study…” Thus, “partnerships are ideal responses to the demand for such ‘micro credentials’ and bespoke training and enable RTOs to address employers’ needs for custom training. That said, employers need to be willing to initiate engagement with RTOs, and the VET sector in turn needs to be sufficiently resourced and skilled to respond to employers’ needs.”
VET providers have always collaborated and consulted with industry, particularly at local and regional levels and, as the paper tells us: “in the new draft Standards for RTOs, providers are required to engage effectively with industry, employers and community representatives.” One way to facilitate this is through partnerships. As the paper suggests:
“Partnerships between RTOs and employers offer a way to ease the difficulty of meeting a longstanding requirement for VET trainers to be dual professionals: experts in their field and in the delivery of training and assessment. Additionally, VET partnership activities offer a way for the VET sector to more effectively meet the needs and expectations of employers, as well as to target specific cohorts.”
There are benefits for employers too, but:
“… employers tend to come to partnerships with different motivations from training providers. They may be seeking customised, flexible training; more reliability and dependability in training provision; access to training staff who have become very knowledgeable in their area; or assistance navigating the VET system.”
However, satisfaction with nationally accredited training “has declined from 84.6% in 2011 to 74.0% by 2023. Two of the top three reasons for employers’ dissatisfaction were ‘relevant skills are not taught’ and ‘training is of a poor quality or low standard’.”
Employers have also “expressed a desire for training providers to develop better skills for engaging with industry, a better understanding of workplace environments and industry relations arrangements and the ability to deliver training and customised assessment in the workplace.” As we have already pointed out, much of that gets back to providing training in forms that employers actually want.
Key features and benefits of effective partnerships
One of the key features is to give clients, especially employers, what they want as well as what they need, but to be effective RTOs must get something out of the partnership as well. These include developing business-sustaining engagement with employers and industry; building increased satisfaction and confidence in the RTO and having high employment rates of graduates and work-placement students. They can also help secure repeat business for RTOs and recommendations to other employers. “Additionally, the choice to draw community groups into VET partnerships proved invaluable to outcomes, for example, facilitating the inclusion of difficult-to-reach cohorts such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.”
So, what makes partnerships work?
According to the paper four pillars for success in RTO-employer partnerships have been identified:
- quality training and service delivery
- customer focus through agile and flexible delivery of training and customisation on demand
- strong communication and collaboration when working together, and
- long-term, trust-based relationships.
Quoting directly from the paper, success factors for partnerships include:
- Values alignment: the RTO and the employer share a set of values, which enables the parties to communicate well and understand each other’s expectations.
- Trust: trust is typically built up over a long period of time and is a particular characteristic of long-term partnerships.
- Personal connections: the establishment of trust in a partnership is often the result of personal connections between key players.
- Communication: a key element is regular communication between the RTO and the employer. This communication does not generally need to be formalised.
- Single point of contact: it is critical that there are clear channels of communication between the two players and that, preferably, a single major point of contact is established by each partner.
- Flexibility: this refers to the willingness of the RTO to alter delivery methods and to customise content to suit the specific needs of the employer.
- Understanding of business needs: RTO staff need to know about the employer’s industry and be keen to learn more about the business. Improving understanding of the business is also considered by many RTOs to be an invaluable source of development for their staff involved in training.
- Government funding: funding facilitates partnerships in the initial stages, although it appears to become less important over time. Generally, employers affected by funding reductions try to maintain the partnership through self-funding, but this may prove difficult.
In conclusion
“VET partnerships are already widely recognised as mutually beneficial to all participants, and vital to training quality, student success and employer satisfaction.” However, “challenges remain in the lack of resources and influence for RTOs, employers and others to seek out partnerships. Not all potential parties in a collaborative venture feel equipped to pursue partnerships…”
Moreover, “…there remain regulatory and other systemic barriers to establishing partnerships across states and territories, between education sectors and where training programs are stymied by industrial award conditions.”
Thus, “the under-explored territory in VET now is how to enact effective support to promote partnership activity more widely. That support should be holistic and consistent and complemented by a VET system that rewards the establishment of partnerships. Partnership activity could be promoted through the provision of resources to develop the relationship-building skills of the VET workforce and funding to establish partnerships that address specific needs.” Such targeted investment in partnerships, the paper suggests, “will further improve VET’s flexibility to meet Australia’s emerging and rapidly changing workforce needs.”