8 Critical Drivers to RTO Success

In this episode I’m going to give you a rundown on the 8 Critical Drivers you need to grow as an RTO. These are: quality & compliance, financial viability, marketing & sales, systems & practices, leadership & team, training products, students & clients, industry & networking. 

There is so much to get through! But by the end of the episode you will be up to speed on the most important aspects of each, and you’ll know what to do next to make them work for you. This episode is for any RTO who wants to thrive in a rapidly changing industry. After this, you will know how to position yourself when we have to adjust to Vocational Education and Training (VET) Reform and life after COVID.

In this episode you will learn:

• Each of the 8 critical drivers
• What you can do to improve your quality and compliance
• How to assess students competently
• How to prepare yourself for the VET reform
• The importance of setting annual goals
• How to improve your industry engagement
• Government funding you might be eligible for
• How you can improve your “customer experience”
• What your retention rate might tell you
• Why you should identify your ideal client avatar
• The benefits of the rockefeller habit
• How to find your own critical drivers
• How automation can transform your organisation
• The importance of a good website and good digital marketing strategy

The 8 Critical Drivers are the strategies we have identified for RTOs to put into place to grow and scale. We also offer a Monthly Masterclass on the 8 Critical Drivers, which Angela delivers on the second Wednesday of each month. The Masterclass focuses on one Critical Driver per month. Go here for more information: https://8criticaldrivers.vivacity.com.au/

Transcript

Unknown: 0:03

Welcome to the critical drivers to RTO success. So in this podcast, I'm going to give you an overview of the eight critical drivers to RTO success. It's something that we've identified that a lot of training organizations need. Because we can't survive on compliance alone, there is so much more to business in an RTO than just being compliant, we need to be successful, we need to be able to make money. And there are so many things that we've identified that can improve your practices. And this is the reason why we came up with the eight critical drivers to RTO success. So the eight critical drivers are driven around eight areas, of course, so looking at focus areas within your organization. And this includes students and clients, training products, leadership and team systems and practices, marketing and sales, financial viability, quality and compliance, and industry and networking. So with these critical drivers, we've identified that there are a number of areas that we need to focus on in order to improve and grow your RTO. So when we look at quality and compliance, what could you do to improve your quality and compliance within your organization, and this includes with your team. So firstly, you could conduct an internal audit. And this is a way to identify whether you were the non compliances are within your RTO. It's also best if you're able to get a third party to come into your RTO and conduct an internal audit, because they're not going to be part of the culture of your organization. So they're not going to be biased in any way. And they're going to be looking at your RTO from a top down and really looking at the compliance issues within your RTO. Another way you could do this is through reviewing assessment tools and identifying Are there any gaps with your assessment tools, is it are the tools collecting sufficient evidence to demonstrate that a student is competent. So we've also got a look at the training package requirements and what the changes are within that, in order to assess the student competently. So the best way to do that is to conduct an assessment validation. also reviewing your policies and procedures on a regular basis, now we have the tip reform coming up soon. So there's so much that's going to be changing when it comes to the standards. So this is a good opportunity for you to review your policies and procedures right now. And in particular, identify any gaps that there may be, because, you know, we could give our feedback with the with the vet reform that's happening at the moment. And when the new standards come out, you'll have the opportunity to be able to provide feedback on the draft standards before they're actually distributed, out and met and become live. So this is a great opportunity for you to review your policies and procedures and look at how you're implementing the standards within your RTO. The next one is ensuring that you have a range of team members who are undertaking that professional development. So that's professional development within the vocational education and training sector, and making sure that they're getting sufficient professional development in order to have a good understanding of compliance, changes in the industry, and how they can be part of that those changes within the industry. In particular, when we look at right now with the vet reform and all the things that are changing going to change with the legislation and how we're audited. So there's quite a few projects that you could work on when it comes to quality and compliance. And so some of the things that we do it for varsity is we get all of our members to set annual priority goals. So we did that at the start of this year where we got all of our members to attend a strategic planning retreat. And at that strategic planning retreat, they set goals for the year and I really recommend that as an RTO, that you do this as well, because this is what's really going to push your business forward and move that lever within your organization. So it's looking at projects that are going to help you grow and scale and your business. So there's I've just given you quite a few examples there. But other strategies that you could put in place is implementing regular Q and C meetings, holding PD in internally within your organization, undertaking professional development, such as the training that we offer the velocity in that professional development, and those other things that we said around assessment, validation, internal audit, and the other one is that you should be doing on an annual basis is updating your training and assessment strategies. So moving on to industry and network, what strategies could you implement to improve your industry engagement. So there are a number of strategies that you could do. And they are just industry surveys, there is so much more that you could do with improving your industry engagement. Have you ever thought about partnering with another RTO or partnering with industry and business and identifying know what you could do to actually target their requirements within their industry, so great opportunities there, we have a number of members who are partnering with other members, other artios. And they're building their network that way, they've got access to job trainer government funding, and they're able to expand their market, not only in New South Wales, but into other states as well with the offering of the government funding that they've got. And it's a great way to collaborate with other professionals within that sector. Other industry engagement strategies that you can put in place is working with job active providers. So the job active providers are the ones that will go, they're the ones that are placing their students into a job. And they are looking, they are looking for training providers to be able to place their students with, hopefully getting employment outcomes. So it's a great way to network. Even if you don't have government funding right now, I would highly recommend because over the next three years, there's going to be a massive impact in the training industry. If you do not have job trainer or government funding, you will be impacted as an RTO. So right now is a really good time. If you've never thought about doing it before, or it's not something that was on your radar, I definitely would go into looking at government funding and applying for it. There are a number of skill shortage areas where there isn't sufficient prac training providers currently out there who can deliver the training to meet the future needs of industry. So what could you do to be creative to meet those industry needs? And some of those is looking at micro credentialing. So looking at shorter courses that you could put together that are going to meet industry specific needs, and how can you do that. Another area that are highly recommend that you get into is traineeships and apprenticeships because this is going to be the game changer. The government is really focused on re energizing and recovering Australia from COVID-19. And one of the areas that they've identified on where they'll be putting a lot of funding is apprenticeships and traineeships. So if you've never offered apprenticeships and traineeships before, I highly recommend that this is an area that you get into because there's so much that you can do with apprenticeships and traineeships and what you can make and this is also looking at what are the other training products that you have on your scope that you could price on to your scope that would make future industry needs, and be that in an industry that you're currently working with or perhaps even a totally different industry. If you know my background I own formerly owned and operated my own RTO. And in that RTO when we started we only had eight qualifications on the scope. But when I sold it three and a half years later, I had over 35 qualifications on the scope. And we expanded from we were just doing business and hospitality and aged care. And we ended up in disability community services, childcare, hairdressing, beauty, tourism event management, we did a whole spectrum of qualifications ranging from certificate to the diploma. And when I had my RTO was when we had the last recession, which was when productivity places program came out and there was so many opportunities then to be able to access government funding, but also apprenticeships and traineeships and we did a lot of work in that area to meet those needs. Next is students and clients. So what strategies could you implement to improve your student engagement and get more students in your organization? So there are a number of strategies that you can put in place and a project possible projects that you can work On is looking at how can you improve your customer experience? How can you look at how you're serving your clients right now and improve your services to meet their needs moving into the future. And in particular, it's looking at that high unemployment, and how you meeting those needs. And that's where collaborating with job active providers is an awesome way to be able to build your student profile and and get more students on board. Another strategy is looking at your retention rate, and what are you doing to retain your students within your RTO. And looking at, you know, this is your commencement and completion rates, and also looking at return customers and referrals? What could you do to get more referrals from current students who would refer you to future students, and it's actually having a proper strategy in place for doing that, not just relying on word of mouth, it's actually giving the students a way a mechanism to be able to refer people to you, it can be some sort of incentive that you can pay them for it, or referral. There's nothing, nothing in the standards that says that you can't do that, when it comes to referrals. The other area is looking at opportunities for improvement on how you can improve note not only the student experience, that how you're working with your variety of clients, it could be working with industry and employers, and looking at those different strategies that you can put into place to you know, these are all strategies you can put in place in order to grow and scale your business with getting more students on board. The next one is training products. So what could you do to improve your current training product offering? When was the last time you did in addition to scope? Have you really identified? What are the current and future needs of the employment workforce? The way we work right now has changed forever. And it's never going to be the same again, how have you adjusted your training to meet the needs right now, but also the future needs of industry and their workforce? So you really should be looking at your core product offering? What are the training products that you're offering? And what other training products could you add to your scope? micro credentialing is going to be huge. So micro credentialing is all about adding, putting together a cluster of units that is meet specifically and industry needs. So it's actually going out to industry and asking them, what are your requirements? And how can we meet your needs, with looking identifying a cost that we could put together, I'll give you an example of what I did when I had my RTO. We were approached by the wineries at that time I was my RTO was in Newcastle. And we had a number of clients in the wine region of the Hunter Valley, who we were working with apprenticeships and traineeships. And one of the problems that they had is with their Cellar Door staff, they had identified that there was no training that was really suitable for those selador staff. And what they really wanted was that like all of their selladoor needed RSA certificate, but they needed more, they needed to be able to operate an F POS machine, they were also required to have excellent customer service and engagement, have an understanding of the wine. So one appreciation. So we put together a cluster of units. And we put it forward to the government state training authority. And we actually got funded because it was meeting an industry needs. And we put together this short course that actually met the selladoor requirements. And we called it the selladoor course. So there is lots of different ways that you can do this. And it's only through engaging with industry that you really identify what their needs are. And then you'll get them coming to you. The other one is looking at the industry and technology within the industry. Is there a training product you should be putting on your scope that is meeting the needs right now and the future needs of technology in the workplace, and what they need. And another project you can work on is identifying your ideal client avatar. So who is your ideal client? Where are they from? What is their demographics? And how are you meeting their needs? And then once you've really honed in on who is your ideal client, then you can really market to that ideal client. The next one is leadership and team. So what projects could you help could you implement that would help you with growing your team and improving your leadership. So there's a number of areas that you could focus on Here, one of them is looking at your team rhythm meetings. So how often are you meeting? Are they valuable meetings, we use the Rockefeller habit where we have our morning huddle, once a week huddle, when we have a monthly meeting, then we have a quarterly, quarterly priorities, and then annual priorities meeting. And it's where at all of these meetings were really focused on what are our annual priorities? And what are the goals that we wish to achieve? And everyone's on board then because it's all the team members that are doing this? You could also look at affinity mapping. So how are you working together with your other teammates? within the organization? It could be also external, you might have suppliers who come in as well. And how could you work more effectively together? Have you got company values, or there are so many training organizations that I know that don't have any company values, and what happens then, when you don't have those company values, is you're not able to recruit or work with those values. I found when I implemented company values, which was, you know, eight years ago now, I found it was very different within our organization, because a lot of the values were around me and my personal values. But I also, with my quality team members, I asked them, What are their values? And what do they believe should be within our organization with how we work? And we identified now what are the best values, and we have some great values that we work with within our organization. So this is a great area, and I recruit on those values as well. Looking at team training plan, so how are you ensuring that your team up to speed with the latest requirements, business requirements, and how to drive their business and even things like looking at critical drivers within your organization. The next one is systems and practices, what would be the ideal project that you could put into place to drive your systems and practices? So what I mean by that is, you've got your student management system, but you might be thinking about going online and moving some of your training online. Or you might want to move all of your training online. What is the process? Know what platforms are out there, there are so many that are available, we work with a number of them. And it is going to be the way of the future with education in the training industry. Also looking at flowcharts and your internal system. So what is the process within your organization? And how are you meeting? Now this also goes with student engagement, leadership team, so these all time with those. So what are your processes for onboarding a new client or new student? How could you improve those practices could also be an onboarding process for new staff members, like for in our team, we have online learning for our new team members. And it makes it so much easier when you're inducting, a new team member? How could you automate some of those mundane tasks that you may have within your organization, there's so much software out there right now that you could use for automating your systems and practices. And this is an area that I highly recommend that you get into because it's it's will save you so much time and money within your business. And yes, it will cost you money to set it up. But the amount of time and money you'll save in the future, you'll be so thankful that you put that automation process in place. And that's a student's systems and practices. So systems and practices. The next one is marketing and sales. So what are the best strategies that you could put into place to drive leads to sales? So looking at know, our referral system once again, so how can you get students to refer to you or even businesses and other organizations? Looking at your sales script? And what is your process for onboarding clients? So what is that process? Do you do an interview process? Do you know? How do you identify that they're the suitable student to come through your organization? So it's looking at that whole sales process? And this includes, you know, even your sales process with contacting job active providers, marketing with state training authority? employers, how do you get apprenticeships and traineeships on board? That's part of your sales script process. And big area that you really should be optimizing is your website and your search engine optimization and including Google ads. It is so competitive being in the training industry. The only way You're going to get on top of the list, when you look at your competitors in the industry is really optimizing not only through Google Ads optimizing there, but also optimizing your organic search engine in the backend of your website. And this is an area that I highly recommend, like a really a good website sells well. So and where you have good information on there about your products and services and what you offer, it's a great way to get out to market, but how are they going to find you, if you haven't optimized your website, and that's putting keywords into the backend of your website that people are googling. As you may have guessed, marketing is actually my background. And it's an area that I'm very, very passionate about, and in particular, helping training organizations with getting their branding and getting out there. What is your digital marketing strategy? How are you connecting with others on social media? And how are you making getting people aware of what you do and the services that you provide? What is your unique selling position, what makes you different from the other artios that are out there, this is a project that I highly recommend that you have a look at. Because you really need to be able to stand out above the rest. marketing collateral is another area. So it's looking at with your marketing collateral, it's not just what you sell. It's what you give away to gain trust so people can get an understanding of who you are, and gain trust with why they should work with you. And you can do that through your marketing collateral, such as no ebooks, free short courses, there's a number of strategies that you could put in place that would help people build trust in who you are. Finally, we're looking at financial viability. So what could you do to improve your bottom line, one of the things that we recommend is hire a bookkeeper and accountant, it gone other days when the CEO should be still doing their accounts went once you hand this over, you are going to save so much time. And you really need to think about the time that you spend in doing your accounts. What could you be doing to build your business? And that's where you should be should be working on the business, not in the business. It also government funding opportunities, and there's so many out there right now, what could you do to get access to job trainer apprenticeships, traineeships and other areas to get government funding within your organization? Another project you could put in place is looking at the cash flow forecast of your business, what is the forecast for the next 12 months? And then you can then set budgets to align with and make it and makes it much easier on your cash flow when you're working with that having an exponential growth plan. So that growth plan of Where are you going to go where what is your 10 year, moonshot goal? What is your three year two year one year goal financially? What are those targets that you want to reach? Because if you've actually identified what the monetary outcome is of what you want to achieve, then you know what you're working towards, and what then what things you'll need to put in place in order to meet those. The other one is looking at the lifetime value of a client. So what is the lifetime value of your client? Do they come back? Are they referring you? Are there other strategies that you can put in place for reengaging students such as upskilling, or cross training into other areas? Okay, so that's the eight critical drivers to our to success. We came up with this as part of our mastermind. So all of our members are part of our mastermind, where I spend one hour a week coaching our clients through these eight critical drivers but also keeping them accountable, who keeps you accountable, and that's what you need to do this you should have a coach or business owners should have a coach and the reason why is someone needs to keep you accountable as a business owner and make sure that your business is moving forward. We've had amazing results with our clients. They have just gone above and beyond. They have nailed it when it comes to job trainer last year we offered job trainer training, we will teaching you how to optimize at getting access to job trainer funding and our clients have absolutely smashed it the other areas Are is looking at that building and the growth of your organization. Transitioning to online is another one. We did education and isolation last year as well. So these eight critical drivers to RTO success is going to be something that you should focus on within your organization to grow and scale. We're now offering a monthly masterclass on this. And we're going to be focusing on one critical driver per month to help you with getting a better understanding of how to improve your business and identify different strategies that you could put in place to grow and scale your business. So each masterclass, it goes for 90 minutes. It's on the second Wednesday of each month at 10am. And you can go to diversity.com.au. And you'll see it's on our website and you'll be able to access details about the master class. It's only $44 to attend the master class, and you'll learn so much and get so much content out of it to help you grow and scale your business. Thank you very much. This is Angela. I'm looking forward to catching up again with you soon and have an amazing day.