Building confidence in your RTO's services – how learner and employer feedback can help

Building confidence in your
RTO's services – how learner
and employer feedback
can help
This guide looks at using learner and employer survey data for demonstrating
the quality of your training operations.
Building confidence in your RTO
What can you claim?
Training and assessment services are delivered in a competitive
If you are confident in your results, you could claim - on your
environment. Many RTOs are vying for training and assessment
website or perhaps in a brochure - to have high levels of employer
business. Learners and employers are looking for quality training.
satisfaction and learner engagement.
Your learner and employer survey results can be a key factor that
But comparisons with other RTO results must be made very
influences the decisions of learners and employers about where to
carefully. That's why the Code of Practice for the learner and
spend their training and assessment funds.
employer surveys says 'Data from the learner and employer
Your survey results can help build and maintain your market
surveys is not suitable for making simplistic unqualified cross-RTO
position as a quality training provider. Your results can build
comparisons.'
learner and employer confidence in your RTO. There are business
It's important to understand why it's not a good idea to make
decisions you need to make about using your data to build
such comparisons in case you want to explain differences in results
confidence.
between your RTO and other RTOs.
Releasing your data
Let's look at some employer survey results. (Similar things apply
when you analyse and report on learner survey results.)
The first thing to recognise is that your learner and employer survey
results belong to you. What information you release, and how you
Making thoughtful comparisons
release it, is your decision.
There are seven scales in the Employer Questionnaire (EQ), the
It's a business decision and you need to take a number of things
survey instrument developed for use with employers. Here are the
into account.
employer survey results from four of those scales for My RTO.
Because you ask employers to complete the employer survey
each year, you might expect some will ask to see the results. Your
EQ scales per cent agreement
existing learners, and perhaps potential learners, might ask to see
learner survey results. How you respond to such requests may have
EQ scale
My RTO
an influence on the confidence of employers and learners.
Trainer Quality
78
Other RTOs - your competitors - could make their results available
in some form.
Overall Satisfaction
83
Your business decision can be proactive. You might release
some results on your website. You might release detailed results,
Effective Assessment
67
and your analysis of them, only to learners and employers who
Effective Support
65
complete the learner and employer surveys. You might provide
results to prospective clients only - employers you plan to strike a
business arrangement with.
On two scales - Effective Assessment and Effective Support - My
It's worth taking a long view about the evidence you provide about
RTO's results are much lower that for the other scales. But looking
your training quality. Your survey results are only reliable if you
at one RTO's results doesn't tell you how its competitors are going.
get a sufficient number of respondents every year. A good way of
encouraging learners and employers to respond to surveys is to
My RTO provides training in two areas: security services and
give them feedback on your results and on the changes you make
investigative services. My RTO's main competitor - Safe&Secure
in response to the survey results.
- provides training in three areas: security services, investigative
services and first aid.
Your quality improvement plan can be a
Look at the results from the same scales, but with more data for My
confidence builder
RTO and Safe&Secure.
What your results are, and deciding what results you release, are as
important as having a definite plan for improving your results.
Your quality improvement plan can build confidence in your RTO
and support your business development effort. Convey to learners
and employers that you see your learner and employer results as a
direct input to your quality improvement plan. Confidence in your
RTO's services can build from your results and from your plan to
improve them.

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EQ scales per cent agreement
Safe&
Safe&
Things to do
EQ scale
My RTO
Secure
Secure
RTO1
RTO2
1. Decide how you will release your survey results - where,
in what form and to whom.
Trainer Quality
78
85
67
2. Explain your quality improvement plan to employers.
3. Make sure your data collection is well-planned, well-
Overall Satisfaction
83
86
66
administered, and that you analyse results thoughtfully.
4. Read the three page AQTF 2007 Code of Practice:
Effective Assessment
67
79
60
Learner and Employer Surveys.
Effective Support
65
80
62
5. Be clear on what claims you can make about your results
without comparing your results with other RTOs' results.
Notes:
6. Consider benchmarking with other RTOs. Benchmarking
allows you to show clients how your results compare
1. security services, investigative services and first aid
with other RTOs' results. Benchmarking agreements
2. security services and investigative services only
would cover the terms for releasing the data of your
benchmarking partners. (See the enhancement guide
For the Effective Assessment Scale, Safe&Secure's results for all
about benchmarking.)
qualifications are better than My RTO's results - 79 per cent versus
69 per cent. But look at the results in the grey columns, which are
just for security and investigative services. It looks like Safe&Secure
does a great job in first aid training, but is not as good as My RTO
in security and investigative services training.
Every RTO is different. Meaningful comparisons rely on thoughtful
analysis.
About this guide
This Continuous Improvement Guide forms part of the AQTF 2007 Quality Indicators Resources Package. This package contains
information and materials for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) to use to collect, analyse and act on data about their training and
assessment.
The Australian Quality Training Framework 2007 (AQTF 2007) Quality Indicators are part of the AQTF 2007 Essential Standards for
Registration for training organisations that wish to deliver nationally recognised vocational qualifications and competencies. Three Quality
Indicators have been endorsed by the National Quality Council (NQC): Learner Engagement, Employer Satisfaction and Competency
Completion. These are designed to help RTOs conduct evidence-based and outcomes-focused continuous quality improvement, and
assist Registering Bodies assess the risk of an RTO’s operations.
Visit www.training.com.au for further information on AQTF 2007 or the Quality Indicators Resources Package.

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