Developing staff without compromising a business’s productivity is an eternal challenge for HR professionals, but a scheme that serves the employer as much as the employee is steadily growing in popularity, as Ejaz Qureshi, head of regional business development at the University of Derby, explains.

When Lord Leitch published his long-awaited review, Prosperity For All In The Global Economy – World Class Skills, last year, it was a welcome state-of-the-nation piece of literature that confirmed fears about the UK’s dire need of a systematic and unified approach to furthering its workers’ skills.

Its conclusion was no surprise; it is up to companies to invest more in training, a familiar call which, while not exactly falling on deaf ears, is coming up against a familiar hurdle – the need to balance the staff development with the pressures of competing in a market place.

Few employers can be happy with sending staff away on courses whose benefits cannot be measured in terms of pounds and pence, but it may be that in having to redouble their efforts to find different solutions, they will discover a staff development programme that fits the bill.

Among those programmes ready and waiting is Learning Through Work (LTW), a work-based initiative serving companies’ higher level skills agendas.

Higher education qualifications

Born from a link up between the academic and commercial worlds, LTW involves employees working on a project that increases their company’s profitability while developing their own skills and gaining them higher education qualifications up to postgraduate level.

In higher education, we are now in a situation where learning is regarded as life-long and the workplace is just as much a place of learning as a lecture theatre.

Helped by the huge strides in ICT, distance learning has become a robust alternative to sitting in lecture theatres, meaning that nowadays you do not have to attend a university campus to get a university education.

This is the key to LTW. It was introduced in 2001 by learndirect, in partnership with a number of universities and higher education colleges, including the University of Derby.

Framework of learning

It is not a course in itself as such – rather, it is a framework of learning, and companies are involved every step of the way.

Applications can be made by an individual employee looking to further their education or a company looking to develop their business by developing members of their workforce.

If an application comes from an employer, an LTW team will meet them to find out exactly what they are hoping to achieve. They will help to analyse the business itself, to find ways it might be able to improve and move forward.

They will also consider the potential participants’ individual learning histories, their skills and what qualifications they might aim for and enjoy success.

The task for the LTW team is to then to put together a curriculum centred around the learners’ own work situation – a bespoke plan involving the learners devising and developing a project that will benefit their employer and will earn them qualifications at the end of it.

There are times when attendance at university might be desirable or necessary, but in the main, study and development work takes place within the company, except if some extra research at home is called for.

Practical experience

What is important is that learners are assessed on what they make of a situation, rather than what they can be taught, and are graded on their ability to increase their understanding, and to take theories and apply them to their own company, working towards improving processes while enhancing their own skills development through practical experience.

All learning is done part time, either with groups or individuals, and can begin at any time, because LTW is not bound by the constraints of the academic year.

With LTW, every case is different and past projects have been extremely diverse. Yet they have made real differences to a host of organisations – from SMEs to the NHS, the RAF and engineering giants Alstom – who have seen staff undertake new initiatives, including developing new training methods, carrying out evaluations of team performance, writing contracts of employment and drawing up health and safety policies.

As the programme unfolds, learners are given access to up-to-date business expertise via their tutor, they are encouraged to analyse their own performance via portfolios, learning logs, journals and diaries, as well as assess their project’s progress alongside their employer.

LTW’s success is growing, and at Derby we now have almost 1,000 learners (60 per cent undergraduate and 40 per cent postgraduate) currently signed up and last year our team won the Times ‘Higher Education Supplement’s Most Innovative Use of Distance Learning’ award.

Yet before employers look further into LTW, there are a number of considerations to bear in mind. There is the cost, naturally, but also the company’s ethos.

Employers do not have to have identified the potential learners before finding out more, but what businesses should consider is their employees’ willingness to develop themselves in tandem with the firm. Such partnership is a vital requirement if LTW is to be a success for all.

For more information, please visit: www.learningthroughwork.co.uk