How to balance study and community services work: a guide for employers

Do you employ team members who are starting to study this year?

Then this is the guide for you.

There are 101 guides to help students with study, but what about employers? How can you best support your team to achieve great results, while still leading them to kick goals in the workplace?

Many employers worry that when their team starts along the journey of study, the distractions of balancing competing demands will take a toll on work quality or availability. So as an employer or team leader, what steps can you take to make sure your work environment both:

• empowers your team to study and ultimately improve your quality service provision?

and

• still supports your clients to an excellent standard?

If you’re asking this question, nice to meet you, and thanks for stopping by. We love to connect with like-minded employers who are keen to develop their teams and ensure high standards of service delivery across community services. But we also get that you don’t want it to come at the cost of the business bottom line and roster headaches for the next 12 months.

So here’s our handy guide for employers on balancing study and work.

First, funding.

You want to make sure that things are looking healthy when it comes to budget. And because we believe in empowering community services providers, we love being able to inform businesses of funding opportunities for training.

Don’t start with stress and hassle – start smart. If you’re keen to learn more about possible funding opportunities for your business (and how we can help with the paperwork), read more here, or get in touch with one of our skilled trainers.

Stay informed

When your team is enrolled in a training course, one of the big mistakes employers can make is to ‘set and forget’. Vocational education and training works best when it’s supported… vocationally! So before your team kicks off, get prepared by asking your training provider a few quick questions:

• How can I stay informed about each student’s progress along the way?
• What strategies do you have in place to support struggling students?
• What kinds of specific supports do you recommend our organisation implement in the work environment?

Our experienced trainers and assessors will keep you up to date with each student’s journey throughout the training process, as well as getting in touch at the first sign of any issues, so that we can work together to provide as much assistance as possible.

Why the blended approach works

If COVID has taught us anything, it’s flexibility. We need to be agile enough to respond to needs as they arise in a way that doesn’t compromise our long term goals. That’s why our training services feature a blended delivery model.

The blended approach doesn’t pin the employer down to a list of ‘do-or-die’ training days that every team member is obliged to attend. Instead, we combine several delivery modes to cater for your specific needs and minimise time spent off site by staff. It’s the answer from above that many service providers have been looking for for years.

With our expert trainers, we can deliver a single qualification via a mix of online learning, workplace assessment, and workshops. Perhaps phone and email support works best for your team, or maybe you want to level up your people with coaching or mentoring from our experienced community services specialists. Whatever your needs, employers who put their staff through training feel more supported with a flexible delivery model.

Don’t do the trade-off…

Your commitment to a skilled, quality workforce shouldn’t come at the expense of a healthy functioning organisation. We really believe employers don’t have to choose – and we want to empower you to achieve both.

We do this through our team of highly skilled and experienced community services professionals, and we do this in a way that helps you not only survive your team studying in 2021 and beyond, but to organisationally thrive.

If you’re contemplating a training course for your community services team this year, get in touch today and let’s make it happen!

Over to you

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