Robin Shreeve CEO, Skills Australia 28 October 2011

High Performance Workplaces – some issues and potential research questions for VET ?

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What is High Performing Workplaces?

• High-commitment management (Arthur, 1994; Pfeffer, 1998) • High performance work systems (Becker & Huselid, 1998) • High-involvement management (Guthrie, 2001) • Four types of work organisations: – – – – Discretionary Learning Organisation Lean Production Taylorist Traditional •

Discretionary Learning Organisation

outperforms other work organisations Source: Leadership, Culture and Management Practices of High Performing Workplaces in Australia , SKE 2011 2

Selection of staff is important for HPWs

Human capital

advantage results from having better employees than your competitors

Organisational process advantage

comes from having more effective ways of working Attracting, engaging, and retraining the best employees is vital Aligning people to goals and values; and collaboration, training and effective skills utilisation

Source: Leadership, Culture and Management Practices of High Performing Workplaces in Australia , SKE 2011

There is a growing body of evidence that strategic Human Resource Management plays an important role in creating HPWs

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Skills utilisation

Is about how well employers harness and develop their workers’ abilities and talents to gain maximum value.

Skills Australia, 2011

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN BETTER USING EMPLOYEE SKILLS Strong leadership and management support (including middle management) Open communication Culture and values Good HR practices Transparency and Accountability Integrity and trust Sustainable and continuous improvement Partnership and collaboration Respecting and cultivating difference

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Leadership in High Performing Workplaces

Prioritise people management Enable staff to fully use skills and abilities at work Involve people in decision making process Leaders in HPW

Source: Leadership, Culture and Management

Practices of High Performing Workplaces in Australia: The HPW Index.

SKE 2011

Encourage responsiveness to change and learning orientation Are responsive to customer and stakeholder needs

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Selection and recruitment of the right staff is important to HPW

What do we know about this in VET / TAFE?

1.

Productivity Commission Report on Vocational Education and Training Workforce (2011) 2.

NCVER report on “Careers in VET” by Michele Simons, Roger Harris, Val Pudney and Berwyn Clayton (2009) 3.

NCVER Report on “Human Resources Management in Australian registered training organisations by Andrew Smith and Geoff Hawke (2008) 6

Productivity Commission on Recruitment and Selection • No widespread shortages – difficulties in specific locations and occupations / industries • Looks principally at the “attractiveness” of pay and conditions as a means of recruiting and retaining staff in VET • Get pay and conditions right – “and they will come” • Recognises the fundamental issue that VET professionals are “dual professionals” – with capabilities in education and industry • Recommends greater autonomy to allow individual Institutions the flexibility to vary pay and conditions to respond to regional and specific industry variations 7

HRM in Australian RTOs

• • • • • • High-quality, well-integrated and strategically focused HRM is key to organisational success and improved capability

HRM is not strategic in TAFE institutes

HRM is a well-established function in TAFE institutes, but operates within tight constraints by state government HRM policies/ procedures

Governments need to relax their grip on HRM polices/ procedures

HRM in private RTOs is informal – While they have higher degree of flexibility, private RTOs need to develop more effective HRM polices/ practices to ensure their successful future growth With rapid growth in their businesses, private RTOs face the challenge of formalising HRM, but at the same time they need to find ways to avoid excessive bureaucratisation of this function 8

Smith and Hawke on Recruitment and Selection • Describe HR management in the TAFE sector as professional – detailed job descriptions, rules for selection panels – but not strategic in terms of being a key business partner • Subject to Public Sector Rules about process – including where to advertise • Resulting in an emphasis on uniformity, equity and procedural fairness • Contrast this to best practice in the private sector that use a variety of selection and assessment techniques 9

Government of WA, Public Sector Commission Rethinking Recruitment

Tips for creating an Employer Brand

    Do your research Review your website Advertise wisely Consider statements or values that

genuinely

describe culture of organisation

Consider the ‘type’ of candidate you want

     Where do candidates generally come from?

Does job description accurately reflect the skills/ characteristics needed to do the job?

Where are candidates found?

What motivations of candidates can we appeal to?

What are the current motivations/ background of current workforce?

TAFEs are subject to State Public Sector Rules

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For TAFE teachers the most usual entry point is via a casual contract appointment • Productivity Commission Report found that, “.....job mobility data indicate that, of the permanent or ongoing employees now in the VET workforce, three-quarters joined as casual or fixed-term employees originally” (P. xxxv) • NCVER Report on Careers in VET found that, “Recent estimates found that approximately three in every five TAFE teachers were employed on a casual basis and that this varied considerably across states/territories .The number of teachers employed on a non permanent basis in New South Wales was estimated to be as high as 78% of all teachers, while it was approximately 50% in four other jurisdictions —Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory (P .12) 11

A casual career entry point as the norm - it was not always thus.....

Date of entry into TAFE teaching

1964-1974 1975-1985 1986-1996 1997-2006

Percentage whose entry appointment was permanent on-going

68% 50% 27% 23%

Source – Careers in VET, NCVER (2009) Table 10, p 29

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Is there a link with funding - VET Government Real Recurrent Expenditure – All Governments Source:

ROGS Edition 2011 13

Well known advantages and disadvantages of casual engagements

Positives Negatives

• Flexibility to respond to changing industry demands • Uncertainty of employment for individual • Trainers with contemporary industry experience • Poorer rewards for individual • Suit some individual’s lifestyle choices • Less ability to participate in staff development and program management • Greater output in terms of AHC for same $ (efficiency) • Greater workload for remaining permanent staff 14

What is important for VET students?

 Teachers with contemporary industry experience  Flexibility in the provision of training methods  More focus on practical skills  Better access to training in regional/ rural areas  Better alignment of skills taught & relevance to job  Higher quality and standard of training  More tailored/ specific training that is relevant to job  VET training is too expensive

Source:

Employers’ use and views of the VET system,

NCVER 2009 15

Some issues that may need investigation?

1.

Is the public sector recruitment process too passive or reactive in recruiting potential VET teaching staff from industry? Responding in a very stylised way to an advertisement in a newspaper or on web-site (however well targeted) is not a common way of recruiting in some industries .

2.

If a casual engagement is now the standard entry point – is VET missing out on good industry staff as not everyone can afford the time to acquire some casual teaching experience as well as do their main job?

3.

Does several years service as a casual teacher mean that teaching staff are already “socialised” into conventional ways of doing things in TAFE before they achieve permanent status and does this make cultural change in the sector more difficult?

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HPW’s have an emphasis on quality and continuous improvement • New National Regulator – Australian Skills Quality Authority • New National Skills Standards Council • Australian Quality Training Framework 17

VET quality concerns

Quality across the VET sector was a major focus of the

Skills for Prosperity

report • Key recommendations included: – Building robust national VET regulation – Implementation of mandatory external validation of assessment – High-quality and rigorous delivery of the Training and Education Training Package – – Growing a professional and skilled VET workforce Information transparency and increased outcomes focus 18

VET quality concerns

Quality in the VET sector has also been an issue in recent research reports, e.g.

• The Productivity Commission Inquiry Report

Caring for older Australians

– Concerns were raised about the variability in quality of accredited training in the aged care sector – The Commission recommends an independent and comprehensive review of aged care courses 19

VET quality concerns

• The

Strategic Review of the Student Visa Program 2011

report raised concerns about Australia’s international reputation as a quality provider of education – Report stated that

“in recent years some low quality providers entered the sector particularly, but not exclusively, in some parts of the private VET sector”

– Australian ‘brand’ depends on quality – Compromises in quality can also tarnish Australia’s reputation for quality beyond the education sector 20

The AQTF Audit process

Audits may also occur at other times, such as monitoring or strategic audits, or when an RTO wants to extend its scope of registration

The

FOCUS ACHIEVED

of an

AUDIT

is

ON

the

OUTCOMES

by the Registered Training Organisation 21

Preparing for an AQTF Audit

• Dates are negotiated • Agenda sent beforehand giving details of: – – – Type of audit Membership of the audit team Indication of what ‘evidence’ auditors will want to see • Evidence may include: – Results of data collection from stakeholders and use in continuous improvement – – – Training and assessment strategies and materials Resources relating to each qualification on scope of registration Student and staff records 22

English system of regulation and inspection

Organisation Regulates or quality assures

OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) Skills Funding Agency Ofqual (Office of Qualifications and Examinations regulation) UK Commission on Employment and Skills (UKCES) Awarding and examining bodies in Further Education and Skills Sector (such as City and Guilds or Edcecel) Regulates and inspects publicly funded provision in Further Education and Skills Sectors Funds public provision in Funding and Skills Sectors. Sets contract guidelines and Minimum Levels of Performance (MLPs) Regulates examining and awarding bodies in School, Further Education and Skills Sectors Licenses Sector Skills Councils who are responsible for Occupational Standards Externally verify examinations and assessments conducted by providers 23

OFSTED – Common Inspection Framework Looks at 5 key questions: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Overall effectiveness Capacity to improve Outcomes for learners Quality of provision Leadership and management Four point grading scale (Outstanding, Good, Satisfactory, Inadequate ) 24

OFSTED Process

• Periodic inspections and annual monitoring visits • Great emphasis on provider annual Self Assessment Report (SAR) • Two key metrics - Qualification success rates - Lesson observation profile 25

Provider Self Assessment Reports • Bottom-up from Section to Faculty to whole Institution • Address key questions of Common Inspection Framework • Judgments have to be data driven • Penalties for over-estimating grades 26

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Inspectors comments on achievement in a Grade 4 provider 30

Inspectors comments on achievement in a Grade 1 Provider 31

Inspectors comments on teaching and learning in a Grade 4 College 32

Comments on teaching and learning in a Grade 1 provider 33

Training importance and satisfaction

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Employers’ views of VET system

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Satisfaction and training relevance

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Thank you

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