What was your business need that drove this collaboration with SWSi? We’re building more and more developmental pathways for our staff. We have, for the first time, brought on trainees this year at two levels, and we are now conducting a Certificate II, Certificate III, Certificate IV and now a Diploma in Water Operations. Up until late last year the approach was ad hoc. While there’s an obvious need to grow our technical, operations and scientific skills, we wanted to infuse into the organisation some of the other competency areas such as leadership and continuous improvement, because there is a real business need for succession planning. The design of the diploma was driven by the need to enable people to become more rounded in their approaches as leaders and managers.
Once we awarded the project almost immediately we began communicating with SWSi – in long phone conversations and in lengthy emails – around options for delivering the diploma. We unpacked the proposal with SWSi and discussed how we were going to go about contextualising the content and how we would plan the delivery. Through that process, and through those long conversations with Kristie O’Brien [Business Consultant, SWSi], we clarified expectations. SWSi understood that we wanted them to be really conscious of the workload of
Originally SWSi quoted for a group of ten participants but we then had 16 managers express interest, from several different disciplines, so SWSi worked with us on reviewing and finalising the electives. That was a good example of how both organisations were able to cooperatively modify the program to achieve an excellent result. Kristie O’Brien, SWSi’s business consultant, and three of the lecturers, came for two days at the end of July, and we clarified the scope again, mapped out some of the principles around how we wanted the process to work, and SWSi was clear about how we wanted that done. Armed with information about its role, the SWSi team was able to get a good understanding of each of the participants even before the group came together. And then we all got together – 16 participants, the four SWSi people and myself – for a three hour session where the participants became very clear about what the program looked like and how it would run. There was also a lot of demystifying of the Moodle, because that could have become quite an intimidating idea for our people. As it turned out it’s become the opposite, it’s become their friend. When we had that gathering of the 16 participants, the emphasis was on ‘let’s have a real conversation about how we see it running’, for instance, about how SWSi staff see their involvement as lecturers. The participants needed to be reminded that they were in an adult learning environment: they were highly professional, highly skilled people and the program was also about sharing learning and extracting the richness of their work areas. The feedback I get from the group is that they’re treated like professionals.
“We regard the project and the connection with SWSi as a really good example of best practice in partnering.”
41 SWSi innovate: the model of systematic innovation
How did the SWSi staff find out about your needs?
the program participants, and in particular their seasonal workload. Those sort of basic needs were quickly understood by SWSi.
TAFE NSW – South Western Sydney Institute
over South East Queensland and yet they can still learn. And they have options for how to do their research, and how to submit their assessments. That’s been an innovation which is well supported by SWSi.