Workplace Assessor

Myth: People who demonstrate skills in a training or simulated business environment is just as good as doing it in a real world business.

Fact: The Core Skills for Work (CSfW) framework used as a guide to issue qualifications says that skills are not automatically transferable to the real world, and assessors can accept a lower stage of performance for skills demonstrated in a simulated business environment.

The learner may be competent (capable, as in could they do it), but proficiency (when they did it) in confirmed when it is done in the real world in a real business. If a training provider says it is the same, ‘passing off’ is misleading advertising (See ACCC). This is that case for any formal, non-formal (L&D), or informal (ad-hoc, self-guided) learning opportunities. 

Myth: You need the full TAE40116 qualification to work for an RTO.

Fact: The Standards for RTOs say you can do training for an RTO with only a presenting or mentoring skills set (2 Cert III units), or Assess competency of people trained by others if you hold the Assessor Skill set (only 4 units of TAE40116).  for industry experts still working in their industry to do training and proficiency assessments for RPL as another pathway to a qualification.

If your RTO wants you to do the training and assessing for the same students as part of the RTO’s employment policy (normally not industry based trainers), Then you will need your full 10 units of TAE40116.

Yes, but there are conditions under the Fair Work Act.

Interns can do productive work, and If the purpose of the arrangement is to give someone work experience, it’s less likely to be an employment relationship.

Activities less likely to indicate an employment relationship are:

• observation (seeing how business owners deal with client)
• learning (including how to monetize technical skills)
• skill development (improving proficiency to meet client expectations, to get referrals)

We have done trials with marketing interns placed in Small Businesses doing 5 hours per week on an 8 week program. All of the interns in the trial who completed the induction training (2 week course) were offered ongoing employment or found other employment before the end of the 8 week free Intern program. 

To restart the program, we need to train workplace based assessors how to train and supervise interns to protect small businesses from claims that the internships were not focused on developing skills, or business were using interns as slave labour taking away employment opportunities. This includes overseas students or migrants looking for local work experience as part of visa requirement.

It is normal, even for people with high expertise, to question which skills they have. 

We have created a skills audit to help you identify what skills you have. The Audit firstly ask you to identify which of the five core skills required to get work done you feel you have. Then, the audit asks you to select tasks you like doing (in or out of work) that use skills that are transferable to new context. If you can identify 5 out of the 31 tasks that you love doing, this is a good indicator where you have strengths, and what skills you have.

humans naturally have to work harder to learn things they don’t like doing, so they are likely to have less skills in this area too and question why they need to do it at all. The opposite occurs if you do what you love. Even if people tell you that you are not good at it, people that do what they love are likely to have skills in the top 1/3 of the population as they are more motivated to learn more.

We have found that people who struggle to find 5 tasks they love doing on this list also struggle to find a job they are happy with, and tend to have money as a primary motivator. So if this sounds like you, we suggest working on your “mindset”, and think about if you didn’t need money, what would you do? then complete the skills audit again.

Absolutely. Instructional design principles work on identifying the needs of your learners. Education is about answering the question “how do you know what you don’t know?”.

This is transferable to customer service as through marketing you have to educate potential customers how you can solve their problems. Sales converts them into customers by educating the customers on the benefits of buying products and services from you. This includes selling the idea of buying from you, which leads to referrals, even from people who have not yet made a purchase from you.

You learn and do this as part of the training you get for both the Assessor only and Assessor + Business training programs above.