Industry and Customer Engagement Makes 2018 a Huge Success

Welcome to 2019.

Firstly a huge thank you to ACCM College clients, students, referral partners and staff for everyone's contribution to another successful year.

In particular thank you to all of our clients and students for your valuable feedback through our formal survey and industry engagement processes and also the many informal catch ups. The  information we gather from those events is key to helping us identify and prioritise opportunities to improve.

It is opportune to review the positives that we have achieved over the past year.

Process Reviews

Some of our wins with process changes over the past year have been:

• clients love the 24/7 access to their employees progress reports and now have increased information;
• students have greatly benefited by us achieving our goal to have assessments marked within 2 days;
• more efficient CT and RPL processing;
• online approval of Training Plans (for the states that allow this); and
• maintaining the personalised approach with a dedicated Student Adviser for each student and trainee.

Progress Reports

Employer involvement is key to the success of any traineeship. ACCM's updated progress reports allow employers to closely monitor their employees progress in real-time. This ensures that employers can offer support and reward when required. In addition to this, employers can see which subjects their employees are completing and can provide workplace tasks to reflect this.  We have refined the system over the last year and based on requests - have a hit list of items to add in 2019.

Marking Milestone

At ACCM, we understand the many factors which play a role in a students engagement and progress. A key one is the turn around time to mark assessments; with students easily getting demotivated by lengthy waiting times for feedback and results.

Although we already had industry best turn around times; in 2018, ACCM College implemented systems and procedures to reduce the marking turnaround time with the goal of same day or maximum of 2 days turn-around. We are proud that we achieved our goal in 96% of instances.

This resulted in: students often resubmitting work on the same day;  students calling and being able to talk to us about problems while the assessment is fresh in their mind; employers getting up to date reporting - with a maximum 2 day gap between a submission and result.

This significant change has taken a huge investment from the College and staff; but has resulted in higher levels of student engagement and completion rates.

Credit Transfer and RPL

College staff identified that the time delays from our more centralised RPL processing system was impacting students. So we invested some time into changing our computer systems and processes and now allow each Trainer/Assessor to immediately process and record evidence of RPL. Taking out the "middle women" has freed up their time and sped up the system.

 Another win - meaning better outcomes for students.

Training Plans - Online Approval

Every state/ territory in Australia allows electronic signature use as a way of supporting a modern world of e-commerce. At ACCM College we have used this approach on a range of documents; and in 2018 extended this flexibility option to the signing of Training Plans. 

We immediately noticed that the average time to have a Training Plan signed and in place went from 3 weeks to 3 days! And employers in particular have contacted us to say how happy they are that this option is available to them. (We are working with the relevant jurisdictions to try and get approval for the few remaining areas that insist on paper).

Personalised Approach

ACCM's continuing success means that we are attracting more trainees and private students.

The easiest and more cost effective way to manage this increase is to allocate more students per Student Adviser. Although this may reduce cost, it also reduces quality of the support being offered.

That is why ACCM College continues to increase staff numbers as student numbers rise. We also have kept to our winning approach of employing industry experts on a permanent (vs contract) basis, who can deliver individual and dedicated support to our students. 

We have lots of plans to make 2019 as much of a success as 2018, and look forward to receiving more input and providing regular updates.

Thank you again for your support.