Higher Level Skills Demand Led Training, Risk Management / 2011 /
Higher Level Skills Demand Led Training, Risk Management /
A South West Higher Level Skills Pathfinder Report /
This paper focuses on the key lessons learnt, through the pathfinder projects and other higher skills initiatives in respect of identifying and exploring failure and success factors for engaging in the development of new employer led training courses. In particular, it explores the inherent common risks, their indicators, their financial and reputational impact and the probability of occurrence through the provision of an exemplar risk register. /
Deborah Winwood /
10/31/2011 /

Contents

Section 1 - Introduction

Background

The rationale for the focus

Methodology

Section 2 - Risk Context

Benefits and Success

Benefits Management

End Benefits

Project outputs

Project outcomes

Recovery of development costs

Recovery of delivery costs

Section 3 – Risk Analysis

The risk analysis

Background

Assumptions

Categories

Proximity

Risk statements

Impact analysis

Probability analysis

Risk Rating

Overall risk rating

Risk Appetite

Risk Response Management

Priority

Risk Maps

Accountability

Summary

Key Risk Factors

Key success factors

Quotes

Risks

Benefits

Appendix 1 – Data Collection Tool

Appendix 2 – Example of first stage cause-consequence mapping

Appendix 3 – Example of early analysis of impact and probability

Appendix 4 – Sample of inherent probability data

Appendix 5 – Glossary of Risk Terms

Section 1 - Introduction

Background

Engaging with the provision of demand led higher level skills courses is a high risk activity. Between 2006 and 2011 three regionalHigher Level Skills Pathfinder Projects (HLSPP), funded by HEFCE, enabled significant employer led higher skills course developmentby mitigating the financial risk for HEIs through the provision of funding. This provided a test bed to trialthe demand and response processes in a manner that encouraged the activity to become embedded more firmly in the region’s HEI strategies.

The three HLSPPs had an overarching remit to stimulate the HEI response to employers higher level skills needs. Whilst each of the three pathfinders had different operating mechanisms they all funded and controlled a number of individual projects for their regional HEIs to produce employer led higher level skills training courses.

The training courses developed ranged in duration, accreditation, level, delivery mechanisms, subject area, sector and learning hours. However, every one of them has provided information and lessons about the principles and parameters relating to the production of employer led provision.

The debate about the use of the words “skills” and “training” in this context, is long over, therefore, in the context of this and associated documents the following terminology is used:

  1. Higher skills – any learning and development of an individual, at level 4 or above equivalent, which is directly related to industry or business workforce competence.
  2. New training course – used to describe any manner of learning developed for delivery, in response to specific employer workforce development demand, regardless of size, level, delivery style or content. Learning may be developed from scratch (bespoke), or through modification of existing materials. Delivery may be anything from one day workshops for standalone CPD, to major new ventures such as a full Masters level course.
  3. Development Project – the whole life cycle required to obtain, clarify, and agree the demand for specific workforce development through to the point of delivery of the new training course. For the purposes of clear explanation within these documents this is divided into stages, and breakdown of which can be found in Table 1.
  4. Feasibility
  5. Start up
  6. Initiation
  7. Development of training course
  8. Delivery of training course
  9. Closure

Through this paper the use of the term HEI (Higher Education Institution) should be read to include those FECs (Further Education Colleges) whose remit includes the provision of higher level education.

This paper is concerned with focussing on the key lessons learnt,through the pathfinder projects and other higher skills initiatives in respect of identifying and exploring failure and success factors for engaging in the development of new employer led training courses. In particular, it explores the inherent common risks and their indicators that have been identified, their financial and reputational impact and the probability of occurrence.

It is envisaged that it will assist HEIs or FECs who have the opportunity, through employer engagement, to develop and provide new demand led training courses, to more consistently evaluate their probability of success. It will enable them to evaluate whether the proposed development project for a new training course falls within their “risk appetite” as it stands, what controls and/or actions could be taken to reduce the risk to within “risk appetite”, and as a consequence assist with the decision making process regarding whether to authorise and/or fund such a programme. Success, in this instance, means:

  • Delivery according to plan;
  • Return on investment;
  • Sustainability;
  • Contribution to HEI strategies;
  • Customer satisfaction.

The rationale for the focus

Whilst the majority of the new training courses developed were considered a success, a number of them could be considered to be failures, either partial or total. Failure constitutes those development projects that did not meet expected quality, cost or time criteria. Since the purpose of the pathfinder projects, above all, was to experiment with processes and to provide funding to mitigate the risks associated with cost, those projects that did run over budget, ran over time or had low learner numbers on delivery were not classified as failures. Only those that failed to complete were classified as failures. However, the potential financial and reputational impact is high and in a commercial context, where funding is HEI internal or by the employer these factors should be considered a failure. Indeed a number of the development projects that were allowed to continue despite their status, would in a commercial context have been closed down.

As in any project context, the main causes of course development failure are:

  1. Insufficient attention to checking that a valid business case exists for the production of a new training course;
  2. Insufficient attention to the quality at the outset and during development;
  3. Insufficient definition of the required outcomes, leading to confusion over what the project is expected to achieve;
  4. Lack of communication with the stakeholders (employers, other educational parties, awarding bodies, industry associations, external funders) and interested parties (potential future customers, employer trade associations), leading to a higher skills training course being delivered that does not meet the original employer needs/demand;
  5. Inadequate definition and lack of acceptance of project management roles and responsibilities, leading to lack of direction and poor decision making;
  6. Poor estimation of duration and costs, leading to projects taking more time and costing more money than expected;
  7. Inadequate planning and co-ordination of resources, leading to poor scheduling;
  8. Insufficient measurables and lack of control over progress, so that projects do not reveal their exact status until too late;
  9. Lack of quality control, resulting in the delivery of learning products that are unacceptable to the employer or are unusable.

HLSPP experimentation has provided the means to collate quantities of data relating to the risks and issues that arose, their impact and the lessons learnt. Issues that arose centred on

  1. Feasibility and business development
  2. Development project management
  3. Risk management and identification of success criteria

The issues that arose around how to successfully conduct feasibility have been addresses by the SW HLSPP through:

  • Production of an Employer Engagement Toolkit that defines the processes, documentation and procedure for engaging an employer, conduction ONA (Organisational Needs Analysis), producing an outline training specification and accessing appropriate HE resources.
  • Provision of a training package for staff employed in a business advisory role for higher level skills.
  • Publication of three employer engagement reports:
  • Report 1 - Higher Skills Literature Review;
  • Report 2 - Employer Engagement with Higher Education;
  • Report 3 - Strategies for Effective HE Employer Engagement.

Project management risks and issues should be addressed through the adoption (and appropriate training for staff) of recognised project management methodologies such as Prince2.

However, there are no clear publications or tools to assist with or reflect upon the risk management associated specifically with development projects producing new higher skills training courses. Risks will impact on finance and reputation and may have serious consequences if not adequately managed. Therefore, it is the lessons learnt about risk management of this work, coupled with an analysis of the risks that arose or were identified and their impact on the success criteria that have been explored, analysed and expanded.

Methodology

Qualitative and quantitative data was collected arising from the 28 SWHLSPP and the 13 SW LCHS (Low Carbon High Skills Project) new training course development projects in the form of the progress and closure reports. Further quantitative data was collected from 65 projects, using a data collection form specific to risk analysis. These projects included input from the NW HLSPP, NE HLSPP and other national co-funded projects and HEI’s own project work. The data collection form was designed specifically for the purpose of producing this paper and its associated documents, and is available at Appendix 1. Appendix 1.

This data was evaluated as part of a CC (cause – consequence) risk impact analysis to identify:

  • Success criteria;
  • Risk factors;
  • Risk indicators;
  • Probability of occurrence;
  • Impact of risk on success criteria;
  • Proximity of risk factors;
  • Chains of events;
  • Possible action to reduce the risk either the likelihood of occurrence or the impact;
  • Potential contingency action that could take place should the risk occur.
  • Where there were no apparent ways to treat the risk and it could be tolerated;

Samples of the cause – consequence analysis map can be seen at Appendix 2.Appendix 2 – Example of first stage cause-consequence mapping.

The information and findings have been provided in the form of:

  1. This paper;
  2. Exemplar risk register (used in conjunction with this paper, and as a reference tool with the toolkit);
  3. Toolkit - Template risk registerspreadsheet;
  4. Toolkit – Risk management user reference guide.

Section 2 - Risk Context

Benefits and Success

Benefits Management

In order to fully analyse the potential impact of risks that may affect the development project for a higher skills training course it is necessary to clearly define the expected outputs, outcomes and benefits.

The research report “Strategies for Effective HE-Employer Engagement” Bolden et al, Feb 2010, was completed as an output from the SWHLSPP. This report finds that active engagement with employers is regarded as a core aspect of the academic mission within all types of HEI; and that it is regarded as contributing positively to all forms of education, not just CPD and workforce development. The impact of successful employer engagement is seen to reach into strengthening the work experience and employability of all their students, the teaching and learning, progression routes, research activities and their brand image. In addition, the success and international recognition as researchers of their academic staff was stated as a priority in some instances.

Therefore, if employer engagement activity is undertaken by an institution with the intention of responding to employers’ workforce development needs through the provision of higher level skills training, it is important to appreciate how it effectively contributes to the academic mission through benefits realisation.

End Benefits

Figure 1 below, shows the typical benefits that could be expected by an HEI as a result of engaging an employer(s) with the intention of producing and delivering a new employer led higher skills training course, together with the strategic objectives to which they contribute. The sequence required for benefits realisation, together with the business change/processes necessary for support are mapped. Complex interdependencies are identified, therefore, overall success relies not just on managing the risks throughout the development project, but on careful change management once the new training course has been achieved.

It was apparent from the available data that a number of the SWHLSPP new training courses were not sustained beyond initial delivery, consequently, making no significant contribution to overall strategic objectives. This was attributed, by the development HEIs, to the fact that:

“Marketing and sustainability was not built into the development project”

“Confusion about where in the university the course sits after production, and whose responsibility it was”

“No provision was made to integrate it into mainstream activity or with other E-E activity”

“We lost our main employer contact due to restructuring and because we had pitched too low down in the organisation there was no executive level support to continue”

Figure 1

Project outputs

Success of the training course project outputs can be measured in terms of:

  1. On time;
  2. On budget;
  3. To the defined quality criteria (level of learning, size of learning, type of learning, planned accreditation achieved, delivery mechanisms);
  4. Projected number of learners on first delivery achieved.

Project outcomes

Expected outcomes from a project can be defined as:

  1. Income generation from skills training activity, measured as:
  2. Recovery of development costs;
  3. Recovery of first delivery costs;
  4. Income generation from sustained delivery of new training course.
  5. Enhanced relationship between businesses and the HEI to encourage a broader range of joint activity, measure as:
  6. Employer satisfaction with new training course;
  7. Learner satisfaction with new course;
  8. Take up of new course by other employer businesses;
  9. Readiness of employer(s) to discuss and consider other E-E activity.
  10. Enhanced academic engagement with industry.

Recovery of development costs

The HLSP projects funded the costs associated with the development of new demand led higher skills training courses in the majority of cases, as did the Low Carbon High Skills Project. In several cases the projects went “over budget” due to scope change or poor initial costing/financialplanning, but the funding was sufficiently flexible to be able to cover the additional costs. Therefore, the risks to the HEI associated with an overspend were of low impact in that context, but could not be considered low if the funding had been internal or from an employer.

However, in the SWHLSPP once the development fund had been consumed, all further work associated with developing new courses was funded by the employers. In this situation control of costs and timescale were a much higher priority, since recovery of development costs was built into the training delivery price. Therefore, overspend was a much higher risk.

Development costs associated with the SWHLSPP funded development projects were analysed in depth, as a separate piece of work. The findings are available in the report “Employer engagement: the costs of the development and delivery of work-based learning experiences” available to download from the HEFCE website as a public report.

Recovery of delivery costs

For those course for which the employer or learner paid in full for delivery of the training, delivery costs ranged from £25 per learner day to £390 per learner day, with the average price being £157 per learner day. The higher price paid was for a one off bespoke leadership course, priced per course, rather than per learner. The majority of bespoke courses commissioned by an employer were priced per course and included the cost of any development /revision of curriculum materials.

When broken down by course length:

Section 3 – Risk Analysis

The risk analysis

Background

Risk can be defined as uncertainty of outcome, and risk taking is inevitable when developing a new course. Risk management seeks to manage the projects exposure to risk, such that risks are identified, evaluated and potential exposure to undesirable effects are minimised. In managing the risk associated with a development project the risk impact analysis will provide an overall risk rating as well as individual risk scores. To arrive at a risk rating each risk factor must be identified, evaluated for impact and probability, assessed for possible action and considered for proximity.

In order for the institutional risks to be fully analysed in terms of impact, it is first necessary to understand the desired outcomes and expected benefits to the institution of realising a success. The benefits map at Figure 1 shows the outputs, necessary business support processes, intermediate and end benefits, together with their interdependencies and realisation sequence.

Assumptions

In analysing and evaluating the risk associated with new higher level course development the following assumptions have been made:

  1. The development project is not part of a funded test group and as such the emergence of risks resulting in overbudget or significantly over time would not be tolerated.
  2. The work is being undertaken on a commercial basis.

Categories

To enable clarity of risk analysis and subsequent risk management the risks associated with responding to employer demand for higher level skills training through the development of a new training course have been allocated to seven high level categories. These are: