Best Practice in Industry Engagement
Industry engagement goes beyond the requirements of the Standards for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) 2015. Meaningful engagement with industry can give your students direct access to employment outcomes and ensures that your training reflects current industry best practice.
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Industry engagement should not purely consist of a few consultations to review your Training and Assessment Strategies. Industry engagement should be an evolving relationship between a training provider and key employers, industry members or peak bodies. These relationships should inform the way in which providers train their students. From input into delivery methods to ideas on new practical elements to ensure job ready graduates, industry engagement is far more crucial than just meeting the requirements of the Standards. Meaningful engagement with employers can mean employer support and preferred enrolment for your courses as well as increased employment opportunities for students.
Engagement can come in various types:
Quarterly meetings
Surveys
Best practice forums
Industry breakfasts or luncheons
Meetings with employers during practical placement visits
Ad hoc phone check ins
Training organisation expo with industry invited
Employability seminars
Training organisations should choose a way of measuring industry engagement and industry feedback. This way performance can be measured year on year and issues and comments can be highlighted. This is also a way of defining success for your organisation.
Industry engagement does not have to sit within one area of your business. It can be a decentralised and dispersed approach to fully capture the different elements and feedback of different industry voices. For example, your executive team may have high level contact with the owners and leaders within organisations, but trainers may have contact with staff on the floor who provide a different level of insight. This also empowers all staff to recognise the importance of industry collaboration and encourages them to put this at the forefront of their “business as usual” activities.
For assistance with capturing Industry Engagement evidence for your RTO - refer to our Industry Engagement Suite of templates in our Products for RTOs section.
