This topic contains 13 replies, has 11 voices, and was last updated by 
Nigel Shipston 11 months, 3 weeks ago.
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As I have indicated that I will delete members who abuse the skills-universe, I have been asked to explain myself. What do I mean by abuse of the site?
The skills-universe is a forum to provide a means of people, who work in skills development and training to make contact, request help and support each other by sharing their knowledge and experience – helping each other to deliver.
That involves a range of issues as you all appreciate: accessing material and development, understanding qualification registration numbers and dates, accreditation and registration of providers.
Keeping updated with DHET, SETA, QCTO, Umalusi, CHE, SAQA & NQF policies and procedures.
Members regularly look for facilitators, assessors, moderators to assist them with particular qualifications or unit standards or programmes.It is very important that everyone is honest and ethical in their approach. Any misrepresentation would constitute abuse.
So it would be abuse to offer work when actually the provider is only going to tender, or needs an assessor’s details to go for accreditation – without explaining the true position.
It is abuse to contract a facilitator but not pay them for their services.
To sell material as ready for an accreditation process, that is not a fit quality that will require much further work for the provider to be accredited.
To offer services as an assessor or moderator, when not suitably trained.
For a training provider to put out that they are registered and accredited when they are not either registered with DHET or accredited with the appropriate quality council/authority – or to deliberately confuse what they are, or are not accredited for.
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This topic was modified 11 months, 3 weeks ago by
sylvia hammond.
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This topic was modified 11 months, 3 weeks ago by
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Dear all,
Thank you for your positive responses and support. Please understand I manage the site. I don’t personally interact with the people, who you believe are abusing the site.So I need you to send me the name of the member and the specific action/failure so I can follow up. If for example it is failure to pay, then I contact the member via external email to remedy the situation. Failure to do that in the required time, then I will delete them.
So Louis if you have specific examples please let me know.
Des, I would suggest please keep a record of the member name, and if you request further info and then don’t receive a reply, then please let me know. I will also discuss with Alan whether we can amend the way the requests are posted.Members can either direct message me via the inbox system, or alternatively contact me on: skillsuniverseinfo@gmail.com
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Thank you for the clarification Sylvia and for protecting the rights of people using the site with sincerity.
This is a good move as any process without controls will ultimately fail in achieving its intended purpose.Thank you for protecting the credibility of the Skills Universe site. -
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I am going to be very blunt. Some members on this site have taken advantage of me and made me feel very unappreciated. I had no idea that one can receive payment for assistance in accreditation and l feel bad that this information was given to me by a non member who requested that I be compensated for accreditation. Imagine my surprise that it is common place in the industry which one can choose to accept or decline.
I wrote to the member in Skills Universe to request compensation but got no reply. In fact what makes me upset is that they don’t communicate with me in any way. I was even thinking of exiting the group because I don’t see what gain l have received here.
Sylvia, thank you for bringing this up. If one isn’t working, helping others getting accredited and earning some little money isn’t a bad thing and members must never abuse this.
It is sad that as professionals we forget email etiquette. It us extremely rude not to return a member’s email. It shows maturity and l am sorry to state that a lot of us here lack that simple quality of returning messages. If you took the time to request for something, it’s only fair to give feedback to those who have taken it upon themselves to respond to your message.
Sylvia, l am going to write you personally to mention who it is in this group refuse to honour the invoice l gave.
Apologies for the long mail. It just had to be written.
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Dear Abraham, I am glad that you bring everything to our attention.
A few things I can say:
first, I agree with you about email etiquette. Recently I had reason to send emails asking for assistance and only one person responded to me. Even if one doesn’t know the answer it is so easy to just respond with a short note.Second, on accreditation assistance. To my knowledge noone has even issued a code of good practice – not DHET, QCTO or the SETA QAPs. One of the issues that was raised on skills-universe was – if an assessor provides their CV and details to a company seeking accredtation, should they be paid? There are no guidelines and each person needs to negotiate their own position. There must be some arrangements either in payment up front, or in a contract to be part of the work that will arrive after accreditation. (You can find previous discussions if you use the search boxes on the site.)
If the assistance is more about providing guidance on what is required, how the policies should be put together etc., then that is a consultancy, and should be charged as a consultancy fee. Others who offer the services should be able to indicate what sort of hourly rate that is.
You are welcome to contact me.
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Hi Abraham,
Having been providing various consulting services to providers over the last 10 years, it is imperative that you do not supply any services until an agreement is reached on the services you will be supplying, and a percentage of the total fee is paid up front. Normally I work on a 50% up front fee, which will cover my costs in the event of the remainder not being paid. If you supply anything first, the payment motivation is lost. This is a hard lesson to learn, but probably most of us have experienced something similar.Unfortunately there are so many pretenders in the market that providers are cautious when dealing with “consultants”, and in your case, the provider must have thought it was Christmas again! Your time, skills and expertise are of value, and you have every right to expect payment when supplying these to a provider. Equally unfortunate is the fact that while there are a number of suspect “consultants”, there are also providers who lack the common decency to support someone whose services have been used.
You are most welcome to make use of our experience when embarking on these activities. As Sylvia said, there are no hard and fast rules in terms of these type of services, so you need to get some balance in your charges and the actual service delivered. One of the key factors is to offer a service which you know you can deliver, and to provide the best possible service, which includes support services. This has been a glaring fault with most “consultants” who have an alarming tendency to fade away once the full fee has been paid, leaving the provider with issues and problems which should have been addressed by the “consultant”.
Do not give up hope, we all have to stand together. With no set guidelines, it is up to us to set the standards, and that we can only do together. When I first began I was also subject to one of these scams that cost me over R10 000.00. Today however, I have between 200 and 300 training providers who continue to be loyal to me, and rely on my services and guidance. My loyalty to them is returned in providing services of value.
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