Continuity and change: employers’ training practices and partnerships with training providers

Benefits of partnerships to RTOs

The nine partnerships showed recurring themes in terms of the benefits that RTOs reported from their partnership activities.

Firstly, all the RTOs stressed the importance of the financial benefits of their partnerships. The spur to undertake partnerships with industry for RTOs was to increase the financial returns to the business. But the partnerships examined in this project involved only quite limited financial returns, in terms of profit, for the RTOs. In most cases the financial size of the partnership was only a few tens of thousands of dollars in any one year. In many cases, respondent interviewees could not accurately recall the financial size of the partnership or the employer and RTO interviewees often disagreed about the finances of the partnership. Thus, although the RTOs identified the financial returns as a key driving factors in the establishment of partnerships, the actual size of the return was often far smaller than might be expected.

All the RTOs mentioned the importance of the partnership in developing the skills of their teachers and trainers. The experience of working closely with industry partners provided an invaluable learning and development opportunity for their teachers. Teachers were able to get out of the institution and work with employers on their own premises, whether training was delivered on site or not. The teachers enhanced their industry currency and learned about aspects of the business which were clear to them as teachers. Apart from importing the industry knowledge and experience of the teachers, improving the provision of training as part of partnership arrangements also enabled teachers to experience new and more flexible forms of training delivery. In many cases, training curriculum and delivery had to be substantially customised to meet the needs of businesses that operated on a national rather than a local basis. This experience of customising training allowed the RTOs to change the older cultures of delivery that often pervaded the ranks of long standing teachers and trainers.

Partnerships with industry were also highly beneficial to the reputation of the RTOs. Partnerships with a large and well-known business had the potential to significantly raise the profile of the RTO in the industry, to enable the RTO to attract other business partnerships and claim expertise in an area of training delivery. In some of the cases (e.g. 1, 2, 5, 6) RTOs had partnered with large national or state-wide employers, thus giving the RTO significant national exposure in the industry area.

Benefit of partnerships to employers

The benefits to employers were slightly more diverse than the benefits to RTOs from partnerships.

The key benefit to employers was the opportunity to upskill and develop their staff. In all cases examined, the partner employers were keen to provide training to their employees and were committed to the notion of workforce development. In some cases, partner employers provided training despite the fact that the training or qualifications were not strictly necessary for employees. An example of this situation occurred in the pathology organisation of the State Health Service (5) that worked with a private RTO to provide the Certificate IV in Laboratory Technology to their pathology workers and to upskill to a Diploma. The attainment of the qualification was not necessary for the workers to work in the industry, but the training allowed the organisation to ensure that knowledge gaps were filled and this enabled workers to access further promotion in the organisation.

A key benefit of customised partnerships with RTOs for employers was the flexibility of delivery and of curriculum that the partnership enabled. In many cases, the partnerships examined in the project had originated in previous arrangements with other RTOs where training had been less than satisfactory to the employer, particularly in terms of flexibility of delivery. The partnerships allowed employers to arrange the delivery of training and to customise the content of the training to meet the specific requirements of their business in a way that no other arrangement was capable of. A good example of this was the partnership between a TAFE provider and an Antarctic expedition organisation (3). This partnership provided training in specific skills sets for a range of trade staff that accompanied Antarctic expeditions. The irregular nature of expedition timings and availability of staff meant that the TAFE Institute had to be highly flexible in the delivery and content of training.

Many of the partnerships in the study had been active for a long time. The longevity of the partnership was a benefit to the employer because the business could depend on the RTO to deliver training that addressed the needs of the organisation exactly. Over time, RTOs and the companies reached a stable relationship based on mutual trust and respect. This situation gave confidence to the employer and freed the employer from having to consider finding another RTO to provide the training. In some cases, successful partnerships had been built from unsuccessful attempts in the past, but these problems had been overcome, often when new staff in both organisations played a role. A good example of this renewal of a previous partnership by new staff was the pulp and paper mill partnership (1). This partnership had originated between the company and one of the predecessor institutions to the TAFE Institute, but the partnership had faltered. With the formation of the new TAFE Institute in 2014, the partnership was renewed by different staff in both parties to the partnership, and at the time of research was operating well.

Employers mentioned the knowledge of, and access to, training funding that partnerships with RTOs afforded as a key benefit. Often the RTO acted as a navigator for the company around the training system, alerting the company to possibilities for government funding to underpin training programs. The RTOs operated as experts in the training system for their partner employers.

Other benefits mentioned by employers centred on the RTO staff developing a deep understanding of their businesses. This is a corollary of the benefit identified by RTOs about the development of industry knowledge by their trainers as a result of the partnership. Opportunities for staff development of managers and others arose through the close relationships and joint activities.