RTO Standards Series: Part 1 - A Deep Dive into Clause 4 on Governance with Lauren Hollows and Katya Holker

Unlock the full potential of your RTO's leadership with our latest conversation where we join forces with Katja of Hawkeye Consultancy and Angela from Vivacity. Together, we dissect the fresh governance standards that could revolutionize how Registered Training Organizations (RTOs) operate. This enlightening discussion promises to equip you with the know-how to drive inclusivity, integrity, and a safe space for First Nations staff and learners within your educational institution. With the expertise of Katja and Angela, we peel back the layers of these new requirements, revealing the significance of leadership in creating a culture of success and the practical challenges of proving compliance when audit time rolls around.

Feel the pulse of modern educational leadership as we navigate through the implications of standard 4.2 and its effect on the heart of organizational culture. Hear firsthand from my guests Katja and Angela as we trade insights on the need for cultural awareness and proactive policies to shield against harassment and discrimination. This session isn't just a roadmap to adhering to the new standards – it's a treasure trove of expert perspectives, strategies for implementation, and a collective acknowledgement of the leadership landscape's evolving terrain. Tune in to transform these insights into actionable steps for your RTO and lead the charge in setting a gold standard in governance and culture.

Transcript

Lauren Hollows: 0:00

Hey guys, my name is Lauren Hollows and we are continuing our RTO Standards series, getting into the weeds today with Katya from Hawkeye Consultancy and Angela from Vivacity. Katya, please introduce yourselves to our audience.

Katya Holker: 0:28

I am from Hawkeye Consultancy. Hawkeye Consultancy was established in 2017 and we're based here on the Gold Coast where I am now not so sunny today and we offer a range of different services to RTOs and universities Anything from due diligence packages, change of ownership, validation, professional development workshops so this goes on. Yeah, very excited to be here to join you, ladies.

Lauren Hollows: 0:48

Good and Angela.

Angela Connell-Richards: 0:51

Hi, I'm Angela Connell-Richards. I am the owner and director Vivacity Coaching and Consulting. We've been helping training organisations to get compliance, save time and save money since 2009. And we've been working in a range of areas, including initial registration, addition to scope and ongoing registration requirements, and been diving into these new standards. So and I'm loving this series, Lauren.

Lauren Hollows: 1:19

All right. So today we are going a little bit something a little bit different. We are talking about some of the new requirements for governance within RTOs and, specifically, we're talking about the leadership of the RTO. So this is actually something that is, I'm going to argue, is completely new. People can disagree with me, that's fine, but leadership is effective in building and promoting a positive organizational culture. The RTO demonstrates the governing person's, foster an inclusive organizational culture where diversity is recognized, ensure integrity, fairness and transparency in the delivery of services, ensure cultural safety for first nations staff and learners, and protect learners and staff from harassment and discrimination. So so I think this is really it's a very interesting standard. I think there's so many key words in this. I just want to start by getting your guys kind of just general initial thoughts on the standard, what you thought when you first read it. So, angela, let's start with you.

Angela Connell-Richards: 2:24

Okay, it reminded me a lot of the old framework that we had many, many years ago before ASQA. So, and before we got the legislation and the framework had a lot of information in there about diversity, ethics, integrity, all of that that that were. That was back then a requirement to have in our policies and procedures and then it got taken away with the legislation so when we had the new standards implemented. So for me it reminded me a lot of, you know, going back in time, what we used to have had my RTO and we had to have those in our policies and procedures. It's also interesting to see that they've brought First Nations in.

Angela Connell-Richards: 3:12

When we consider a lot of legislation has changed in a lot of different areas and people would know that through a lot of the training products, where there are now Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander units that are within different training products. So I think it's good that they've brought that in as part of the legislation. And then NDIS and disabilities and making sure that we're covering those areas as well. So, yes, it's something new from the standards, but it does take me back in time absolutely all right, Katya, what were your first thoughts?

Katya Holker: 3:52

um I thought, yeah, I, I, I welcomed it. To be honest, I did think it potentially might be a bit hard for organizations to properly implement, and when I look at leadership or think of leadership, it always starts from the top and it seeps its way down. Um, and just in some of my I suppose ongoing relationships with some RTOs, the CEO isn't necessarily at the operational level, like all of the staff who undertake the you know, day-to-day operations of the RTO. So I thought, well, that might be a bit tricky, not that it's not important, but it will be a bit tricky, potentially managed. And and look, they sign off a declaration each year. They should be aware of the standards and what the implications are, but they're supposed to be nitty-gritty and I thought that might be a little bit difficult. And to even just evident, like how do we, how are we going to evident these things and when it comes to an audit, and but yeah, I definitely really liked around the First Nations and the inclusion of that.

Katya Holker: 4:52

As Angela mentioned, there's a lot of shift towards including that in legislation, which was good, and anything around harassment and discrimination too. I definitely welcomed that too. There was nothing really there, and I know that some providers were including it in. You know. You know they might have sexual harassment, harassment or anti-bullying, discrimination policies and so. But I think to actually legislate it and makes you know providers have to do it is probably really good. It's going to safeguard our staff and learners. So, yeah, I welcome most of it, but there are some areas I think it definitely needs to. Yeah, maybe give a bit more guidance as to what they want to see, um, how can people ensure integrity and what does that look like? And to ensure consistency as well, when providers what they think is integrity might be completely different, um, to another provider. So I think that probably just needs to be streamlined a bit or more, provided just given. I think the other major change just needs to be streamlined a bit or more, provided just given.

Lauren Hollows: 5:52

I think the other major change is going to be the cultural awareness training that you're going to need to implement within RTO I think that's going to depend a lot on the training packages and the cohorts that a lot of people deal with, um, you know, I think that that's going to become a big component of it. I think this is one of those interesting standards because, you know, very similar to many other areas of the standards. I think everyone looks at that and goes there's nothing in there. I disagree with right. I absolutely agree that we should foster inclusive cultures. We should be, we should have integrity, we should be transparent, we should be fair, have integrity, we should be transparent, we should be fair. We should ensure cultural safety, we should protect our staff.

Lauren Hollows: 6:36

Um, I think the question is that beyond a policy, how do we evidence this? Um, you know, and I think this is one of where, where we get to some of these particular areas, this is where I always find it, I think, for a lot of RTOs, I think they find it really challenging to understand what does this mean beyond a policy, right? So, you know, I want to just start like let's just break these down one at a time. So, foster an inclusive organizational culture where diversity is recognized. Now we're going to have access and equity policies. You know we're going to have disability access and inclusion plans. You know we're going to have a policy that says we foster an organizational culture. Beyond that policy, what does this look like for an RTO to be able to demonstrate that the governing persons are doing this?

Katya Holker: 7:34

should I start or until you want to.

Angela Connell-Richards: 7:37

Yeah, I've got thoughts on it. So I think, um one is going to be changing the position description requirements of CEO and senior management within RTO to make sure that not only there is a diversity and inclusive policy and procedure but they're implementing it. And what does that procedure look like? What would be part of that process? And one of the things that our team identified when we did the pilot program was a cultural awareness training. So implementing a cultural awareness training for staff and governing persons to enhance their understanding and appreciation of diversity. And that's what we saw in there Not only cultural awareness training for their existing team, but incorporating that into their induction process, not only for their staff but also for their students.

Katya Holker: 8:32

And I think what's really important, the training it's good that you're doing at the start, but then is there any guides or any further documentation that can actually assist staff to continue with that? A lot of times they can read it, something you know that they, they read it and then it's forgotten about, or they're provided training and they might not you know, they might not remember the importance of it. So is there any follow-up process or any guidance or networking opportunities for and staff to just kind of refresh that as they go on? I think is really important too. But I definitely agree with Angela's suggestions in terms of cultural um training very important, but then having that extra layer of also making sure there's additional support mechanisms there for them, I think this is going to look very different across.

Lauren Hollows: 9:25

You know different RTOs. You know what I mean. Like if this is going to look very different in our tradie RTOs than it is going to look in our, you know, our community services. RTOs, where you know some of these concepts and some of this terminology may already be a little bit more embedded within, like the organizations that they're working with, um, I think, within some of our tradie sectors. That's probably where some of the stuff is going to be a little bit more challenging to management and staff, and most probably even to students absolutely, and resources too.

Katya Holker: 10:05

there's smaller providers there. Is this going to be an additional cost that they need to factor in? And we undertook a cultural training one day and it you know, it was two thousand dollars for our team. Like, there's some providers that may not potentially have the fees available to be able to spend that, and so they probably need to be aware of that, and that's where it's very important that it is suited to each of the different providers out there.

Lauren Hollows: 10:33

Yeah absolutely.

Lauren Hollows: 10:34

All right, we will come back with 4.2b in just a moment. Guys, my name is Lauren Hollis from Aniwaya Education Services. We are talking everything 4.2 leadership today with Katya from Hawkeye Consultancy and the lovely Angela from Vivacity. If you guys need any of their information, you'll be able to find all their contact details so that you can follow them on all of their socials just below.