NOTE: MPLAN is not offering any awards at this time. Please contact the board for more information – info@mbplar.ca. Thank you.
The MPLAN ExemPLAR Award recognizes significant achievements in RPL/PLAR.
In contrast to the PEARL Award, those successes should be of the type that, when viewed by potential newcomers to the field, are seen not as being overwhelming but as being achievable or doable with a reasonable commitment of staff time and money. That is, they are examples of authentic and important RPL successes in terms of their results. However, they did not require the unusual commitment in terms of time spent and/or challenges overcome that is required to be eligible for the PEARL Award.
In short, ExemPLAR celebrates real success in RPL and looks to the future because it makes clear real success in RPL can be achieved with a reasonable amount of time and effort.
An example will help to illustrate:
- In a little over a year, a small employer improves its productivity and profits by successfully incorporating RPL into the workplace as part of its ongoing Human Resource policies and practices.
2015: The College of Physiotherapists of Manitoba
The MPLAN ExemPLAR Award is given to organizations for achieving success in the Recognition of Prior Learning/RPL in a way that can stand as an example for similar organizations who may be new to RPL. (More about the ExemPLAR Award)
Background
The College of Physiotherapists of Manitoba is a relatively small regulatory body – about 900 members (one third of which are students) and 2 full time staff. The College is responsible for:
- Setting standards of practice
- Registering only qualified physiotherapists who wishes to practice in Manitoba
- Ensuring that complaints of malpractice, misconduct or incompetence involving physiotherapists are thoroughly investigated and that appropriate action is taken
- Maintaining a Continuing Competence program that requires members to demonstrate that they have engaged in activities to maintain and enhance their ability to practice
Setting the Example
The College completed a six month project in 2013 to dramatically improve their website so that Internationally Educated Physiotherapists/IEP’s would more easily be able to learn about and follow the College’s RPL and Registration Processes. By their own admission, their website included a complicated list of things and forms to download and they wanted to achieve Office of the Manitoba Fairness Commissioner recommendations. Conspicuous Improvements include:
- Plain Language is used throughout.
- Consistent labels have been given to key elements of the processes that were formerly referred to by different terms.
- What had been a difficult to follow description of what is a very complex process has been removed. It has been replaced by a chart written in plain language in which the individual steps are now laid out clearly and in sequence.
- In addition there are occasional “Tips” in the margins to help applicants avoid wasting their time or money. While not frequent, they are very valuable and help to lend a friendly and non-threatening tone to the website.
Results Achieved
- Since the improvements were put online, there has been a noticeable decline in the number of questions phoned in by IEP’s. Questions can be answered more quickly as the callers clearly have already visited the website and understand the process.
- The College strongly believes the well organized and clearly written web content has sped up the registration process for IEPs.
- An IEP emailed to tell the College that they were very impressed with the website. The writer said that it was very clear and provided the best information on Physiotherapy registration for IEP’s they could find online in Canada. CPM says it has also have received positive comments from a few physiotherapy regulators who like our site.
Acknowledgement
The College’s desire to improve access to their RPL processes is clearly genuine. It is clear that the Registrar acted proactively and saw this as an opportunity to do the right thing and make the registration process as transparent as possible. The College used to have different registration forms for each category of registration, but now have only one registration form that everyone uses, regardless of origin of education.
ExemPLAR 2014: Cadorath Uniflyte
Background
Uniflyte, part of Cadorath/Uniflyte, is an innovative small to medium manufacturer in the welding and fabrication sectors. For over 35 years, they have been providing customers with unique products that can be found in grain harvesting equipment, ice surface cleaning machines, components for machines that gather corn for ethanol, augers for foundations, snowblower blades, commercial ventilation systems, paper-making products, mining equipment and ice fishing equipment. They are ISO 9001 : 2008 certified and Lean Manufacturing is a prominent part of their culture.
Setting the Example
Once it was convinced of the potential of Essential Skills training for increasing productivity, Uniflyte invited WEM* and WPLAR** to work them to identify the specific Essential Skills/ES set needed on the floor at Uniflyte. The next step was to assess all relevant employees. Thirty of the forty employees assessed met all the requirements and got their Essential Skills Certificate without having to attend the ES training program. The remaining ten are taking only the modules required as identified by the skills recognition tool saving the time of the employees and the money it might have spent training them in skill they already possessed.
As soon as it was clear that ES training with RPL was proving to be of real value, Uniflyte committed to it for the long term. To ensure RPL became part of its overall Human Resources strategy, a manager was assigned to become fully knowledgeable about it and the person responsible for its ongoing implementation -not only in terms of training existing employees but also for the RPL ES assessment of potential new hires.
Results Achieved
To date five candidates have taken the assessment. Management has reported significant improvements in the efficiency of employment selection and new hires training.
By committing to providing all relevant employees and potential new hires with the chance to complete certification in Essential Skills, and by investing time, money and personnel into incorporating and coordinating RPL within its HR policies and practices, Uniflyte has become an exemplar of how to effectively implement RPL within a workplace on a daily basis and gain the resulting benefits in terms of improved productivity, reduced waste raised morale as a consequence of these fair practices.
Acknowledgement
Generous support and advice from the Workplace Prior Learning and Recognition (WPLAR)** and Workplace Education Manitoba (WEM)* allowed Cadorath/Uniflyte learn how to redesign its training and recruitment practices so that it could effectively incorporate the recognition of prior learning into its day to day operations.