TAFE Practitioner providing Workforce Development Services
Neil Milton leads a double life. On the one hand, Neil is Head Teacher (Manufacturing) at Orange Campus (TAFE NSW Western Institute), while on the other hand he manages teaching, learning and assessment for Manildra Flour Mills (MFM), one of the biggest flour mills in the world. To be more exacting, Neil and MFM HR Manager John Chilcott, speak of Neil as the ‘Training Partnership Manager’ which echoes his external contractor status. So Neil is, in a peculiar sort of way, both internal to the MFM family and external to it too.
- As a Training Manager this TAFE Practitioner’s contribution is not just operational, it’s strategic.
- They’ve embedded training into MFM’s overall business strategy.
- For part of what they do at Manildra there is no Training Package – there’s a gap”.
- They’ve written their own program, with their own content and their own assessable criteria but it's not out in the public domain because the course content is their intellectual capital and their competitive edge.
- It’s not accredited because MFM is not prepared to put it out there in the public domain – the intellectual capital is MFM’s competitive advantage”.
- For this TAFE Practitioner it has involved strategy meetings, design of systems and lots of research.
- He co-ordinates training across a broad spectrum of occupational domains.
Learning as Business Strategy
Collaborating with John and his team, Neil has made substantial strategic contributions to MFM's operation. His contribution is not just operational, it’s strategic, because training is seen as a way to develop MFM’s competitive edge within the industry. Neil doesn’t just co-ordinate training, it’s more complicated than that. John and Neil have embedded training into MFM’s operations and into MFM’s overall business strategy. John explains: “Everything is integrated in what we do, there is nothing that is done in isolation, there is nothing done without thinking about the impacts or ramifications on other areas within the plant”. For Neil, it’s not about selling accredited TAFE courses; rather it’s about continuously improving the workforce capability in the MFM plant. Says Neil of his role: “Manildra is after people with a set of skills on their equipment, in their environment and those people need to be competent there - at the mill”.
John describes the system they’ve created as unique in the industry. Initially, (in collaboration with MFM’s enterprise union) John was interested in improving the new recruits' wage structure, but as discussions advanced he started wondering, “How do you progress it further, from a trainee level through to fully skilled?” With that question in mind, John and Neil identified a number of skill levels and then aligned pay scales to those levels. They then developed assessment criteria that were meaningful, objective and of benefit to the organisation. For Neil it involved strategy meetings, design of systems and lots of research.
John explains: “All that happened over a 2-3 year period. All of those aspects were put into play and we’ve been refining the process ever since. It’s part of the enterprise agreement, so it’s all signed off. The unions are happy with the fact that people come in and they’re trained. There’s training, pay increases, job satisfaction”. Neil adds: “It also satisfies Manildra management because it gives the business, people who are competent in their job and not just coping with their job. They have the better skills, their work is safer and all that reflects on other areas as well”.
They designed their own training certificate
While MFM purchases a range of generic training from TAFE NSW Western Institute, its core training has been designed on-site by Neil, John and the entire production team. John explains: “There are training packages that cater for all sorts of things like quality assurance, communications, occupational health and safety, all that generic stuff … but they really don’t cover exactly what happens here. The skills needed by the people are far in excess of what the training packages deliver. For what we do at Manildra there is no TAFE training package, there is a gap”.
So what John and Neil have done is to write a specific MFM training program with MFM content and MFM assessable criteria. Neil’s developed a collection of operations manuals, which not only tell a person what they do, but also why they’re doing it, and how to do it properly. Neil started to flesh out the manuals with content by interviewing people on the workshop floor. Everyone in the milling area has made input into the development of those manuals.
They’re not orthodox operations manuals, they’ve additionally got a training component that’s designed to ‘ingrain the learning’. There’s week by week progressive targets that have been designed in conjunction with the people on the workshop floor. In the end, they get the Manildra Flour Milling Certificate. It’s not VETAB accredited because, as John explains: “We looked at that, but we’re not prepared to put it out there in the public domain – this is our competitive advantage”.
They teach their own training certificate too!
But it doesn’t end there. Not only have they designed their own training package, it’s the MFM supervisors who deliver the training! Says Neil: “We sometimes talk to people and they say ‘we don’t do any training’. That’s not right, what we don’t do is very much formal training”. Instead, training is largely left in the hands of the supervisors, on the job.
On-the-job assessment
Neil does organise for TAFE part-time assessors to come in and do formalised assessment. That assessment actually occurs on-the-job too, it’s very much observation and 
questioning based. They assess side by side with the person doing the task and then they back that up with supervisors' reports as third party evidence. Neil is of the opinion that it is very hard to judge somebody’s competence just from one single assessment. Competence should be judged over a period of time. Hence he uses the supervisors report to answer the question: “Does this person perform this task at the required standard, consistently and regularly?”
On-the-job Assessment
- They assess side by side with the person doing the task and then they back that up with supervisors reports as third party evidence.
- Cultural senstitivty is important. Some of the people would not respond extremely well to a set interview, they’d be much more comfortable just having a conversation to explain how they do things.”
Sometimes there are parts of the process where a worker needs to be taken off the job for a short period. In those instances Neil will negotiate a short release “to slip that person off and just do a little bit of one to one training with them”. But Neil and his TAFE Assessors have to be sensitive to the fundamental purpose at MFM, which is production. Says Neil: “We can’t be in there making demands. We can’t say you must stop because I’m the teacher or I’m the assessor, rather, we need to fit in.”
Neil’s sensitivity to the MFM culture runs deep. He contends that the interview process is best done informally because: “Some of the people would not respond extremely well to a set interview, they’d be much more comfortable just having a conversation to explain how they do things.” For Neil it’s all about adaptability – it’s a key attribute for the ‘workplace pratitioner’.
The Training Consultant Role
An important aspect of Neil’s role has been ‘strategic thinking and collobaration’. He’s a manager not just a workplace trainer/assessor and that means more than just co-ordination and delivery. To accomplish his role as Training Manager, Neil identifies four main functions:
- Research with training needs analysis: There has been ‘training needs identification and analysis’. Neil spent a about two years going about interviewing people on the job. He captured on paper all of the skills and the expertise that was in the plant. While there are lots of food processing trainees at the plant the learning requirements are much broader. Explains Neil: “Part of it is about forklift training and confined space training; we’ve developed the dust explosion training and we’ve also done training for the locomotive drivers as well”.
- Design and development: A large part of Neil's job has been the preparation of operation cum training manuals. After working on it for a couple of years so far, they’re still refining it. The learning is very authentic because Neil developed the manuals in conjunction with the operators. It’s well and truly grounded in the workplace - “So what I did was, I went around and interviewed the people and then went back to them with the draft and said ‘Is this right?’. So I actually captured all of the skills and the expertise that was there from a whole range of people, not just one person. In the end we got a consensus that what went in the manual was the correct way that the procedure had to happen”. Before they engaged in this process very little of this intellectual capital had been captured on paper to the standard that they should have. It’s been a progressive process although chuckles Neil: “At one time I actually had three Ops Manuals under construction at the same time.”
- Liaison with MFM’s HR Manager: Neil meets with the HR and OH&S managers regularly. Often after hours, sometimes for hours on the phone. Says Neil: “Probably a good part of the partnership is the relationship between John and I. If it was fragile or confrontational it would never work”. John chimes in: “There are no hidden issues – it is open, and it’s frank and it’s honest. If it’s not that way, it won’t work. That is a really important factor. We can say what we like to one another, there is no offense taken and it’s taken as it’s meant to be – how do we improve the process for everybody in this place?”
- Co-ordination: For Neil, it’s not about teaching and assessing within a single faculty or occupational domain. He co-ordinates training across a broad spectrum of occupational domains. It started out with food processing but now he’s co-ordinating the training of supervisors, trainees in laboratory skills, water industry skills, waste management, asset maintenance cleaning, office administration, road and rail transport - all areas outside his own particular occupational domain.
“Part of my day is walkabout. I ask –‘How you going? How you going with your assessment? Don’t forget we’ve got to do operator or packaging assessment next week.’ ‘Yeah’, they say, ‘Okay, fine’. ‘Are you ready for it? – Yeah, think so’. Do you think you’re right? Yeah, boss reckons I’m going okay’.
Program evaluation
It’s apparent when John Chilcott and Neil Milton talk about the Manildra Program, it gives them a lot of satisfaction. Says John: “One thing that I’m quite proud of is that the training is taken up 100%”.
Food products in general and flour in particular, are critical to any nations health and wellbeing. Flour is a staple food in many national diets, so there’s a heavy focus on quality. In 2007, MFM, with its long list of domestic and international customers, averaged 1.3 customer audits per week. A well trained workforce is comforting to international customers. Multiple levels of accreditation impress the clients and the auditors but beyond that the statistics impress too:
- Amongst their permanent staff, MFM has “something in the order of 1.6% staff turnover per annum” which says John – “is unheard of in most organisations”. Employee retention is one really good litmus test.
- As part of the audit process there is always the TAFE training provider in there. That’s reflected in the low levels of non-conformities because people are trained.
- OH&S competency means that incidents are down and confidence is up because people are skilled and aware of the risks.
Overall, having an embedded training program makes managements job easier because people in the business all have a common theme
TAFE flexibility
Adminsitrative flexibility is a key: “I work for some really good people at TAFE who are aware of what the needs and demands of industry are. They give me a little bit of latitude I guess.The reality is that if we’re going to make workplace training effective and efficient, we (TAFE culture and systems) need to be responsive to the needs, (problems and culture) of industry.
The way of the future (and he loves it!)
Neil’s not against classroom, campus- based teaching. Indeed he says: “I enjoy the classroom as well, but I think the reality is that workplace delivery is the way of the future. How else do we give them the skill sets that industry is looking for? They’re after people with a set of skills on their equipment, in their environment …”. Neil works in and across two workplaces, two systems, two cultures – TAFE and MFM. That creates for him new work roles and new demands but he says: “I love it. I’m a part of the family at Manildra. I can walk through, I can talk to people and people will wave to you and people will pull you up down the street. That quality of relationship doesn’t happen in classroom situation”.