When people think of managing training programmes, they think of teaching, curriculum design, and student engagement. What they don’t think about is the hidden, colossal, workload associated with administration. Every enrolment in a training program generates work. Every class has to be scheduled and attended and learning outcomes registered. Every student who completes their training must be recorded and certified. Most of the administrative work that lubricates this machine comes as a surprise to new training organizations who thought it would all be about teaching. The administrative workload nobody talks about in education
This doesn’t just exist but grows exponentially as you add students. What was a significant amount of work when you had 20 students quickly becomes overwhelming when you have 200. The workload creates bottlenecks, burns out staff, and even leads to the degraded quality of education when those who are supposed to be teaching are forced to spend half their time doing administrative work.
Admin Work that Never Stops
Enrolling a student in a training program creates much more work than most people realize. Someone needs to answer questions about enrolment. The application process needs to be completed. Financial arrangements need to be verified and documented. Student profiles need to be created in whatever system the training organization has chosen to use.
For training organisations that haven’t yet invested in good systems, each enrolment can easily take at least 30-60 minutes of admin work by various staff members. If they have enrolled dozens or hundreds of students, this figure adds up quickly.
It doesn’t stop there, though. After a student has enrolled, there is a never-ending stream of admin work that needs to be completed while that student is enrolled in a program. Changes in scheduling, payment issues, transfers between classes, documents that need to be corrected, these are the types of things that takes up training organisations time.
Keeping Track of Attendance
Training organisations need to track who attends classes and how many complete their programs. These records serve a variety of purposes checking attendance, tracking the wellbeing of students, compliance with requirements and more.
Manual tracking of attendance requires collecting attendance sheets (for those who still use paper), entering it into spreadsheets or databases, checking for patterns in absences and following up on these with the relevant parties. For one class this might take 10 minutes of someone’s time. For an organisation that runs several programs, it requires an investment of hours each week.
Being able to track progress of the students means that someone needs to record when students complete modules, pass assessments, etc. This information needs to be kept up to date in a record that trainers can access as well as admins and sometimes even the students themselves. This can become cumbersome if you don’t have a system to do this.
Assessment and Certification Documentation
Students need to complete assessments throughout their training programs. Assessments document and track who was assessed, what was assessed, when it was done and what the results were. These documents need to be kept in places that satisfy any audit processes and can be retrieved years later if necessary.
Then there is the processes of documenting certification assessments. In this case, accuracy is vital. Issuing a certificate with incorrect information can create massive headaches for training organisations and students. The documentation processes related to certification assessments involve verifying that all requirements have been met, generating the certificate document and issuing a record of the document being issued. Many of these processes require systems that interface with third party organizations that officially recognise the certificate.
Training organisations that operate under various regulatory frameworks such as RTO’s have severe requirement of assessment and certification documentation. Platforms that assist RTO’s utilise advanced rto student management systems to automate the processes of certification documents.
Reporting Requirements That Waste Hours of Time
Training organisations are subject to several stakeholders needing organizations needing reports. Funding organisations such as the government need training providers to provide evidence that they are spending funds correctly. Regulatory bodies need detailed information on enrolments, programs completed, demographics and outcomes Boards want insight into how funds and effort can be better spent on Training programs that work.
Generating these reports takes a substantial amount time and effort. Organisations can easily spend anywhere from 10-20 hours per month just generating reports.
Things get even worse if the information is collected across multiple systems that don’t talk to each other. This means that one database might contain information about one student while another could contain other vital information about them. It takes hours just to gather this information before generating a report.
Communication Takes Up a Lot of Time
Training providers communicate constantly with students regarding schedules, class lists, assignments, deadlines and administrative requirements. They also constantly communicate with trainers regarding class lists and student issues and questions. Then there are the number of people inquiring about enrolments in their programs each day.
In the absence of systems that can assist with this process, people lose messages easily, people’s emails go unanswered and phone calls go unanswered. Staff members spend hours answering questions that could easily have been avoided if people had information accessible to them.
The Cost of Administrative Inefficiency
All this work takes up a lot of resources. Staff members spend valuable time doing busy work that could be used to enhance the quality of education they can offer to their students. Training organisations either need to employ people who do admin work or they accept that their educational staff members will spend a large portion of their time dealing with admin work.
Burnout is another factor in this cost. A large proportion of the burnout comes from dealing with inefficiencies in systems that staff did not sign up for when they chose a career in education.
Making Admin Workable
The workload created by admin tasks related to training providers is an unavoidable consequence of educating people but how much of a burden it is depends largely on the systems that assist staff in managing it. Training organisations that work on integrated platforms that automate a lot of the admin busy work can comfortably manage double the number of students when compared to those who work on systems that require attention to individual tasks.
The goal should be to focus your organisation on its primary objectives by managing administration well so it does not feel burdensome to your staff. With smooth processes running in the background, staff can focus their energy on helping each student succeed.
