What is capacity building?

Capacity building seeks to improve the performance of work units, departments, and the whole organisation.

Organisational capacity building is a system-wide, planned effort to increase organisational performance through purposeful reflection, planning, and action.

In particular, capacity building looks in depth at where an organisation stands in comparison to where it hopes to be in the future, and develops the skills and resources to get there. Thus organisational capacity building is synonymous with organisational learning.

The ultimate goal of capacity building is to enable the organisation to grow stronger in achieving its purpose and mission.

It asks the question, "What kinds of things do we need to do to keep ourselves healthy and vital as an organisation?" and provides a variety of techniques to help find the answers.

Building organisational capacity typically involves four steps: diagnosing what is missing or needed in the organisation, planning strategies to change the situation, educating personnel to carry out change, and evaluating results.

As an organisation engages in these activities it acquires new knowledge about organisational actions and outcomes. Organisational capacity expands when learning goes beyond solving a specific problem to gaining the skills and knowledge to solve future problems.

At NQET we work with the client to build their organisational capacity by:

• Identifying appropriate professional development learning programs for personnel across the organisation
• Ensuring that the organisations performance management systems are robust
• The provision of leadership coaching services

In conjunction with the above, for Registered Training Organisations (RTO), we can:

• Assist with internal Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF) audits
• Assist with the design and development of assessment tools and instruments
• Assist organisations to become RTO’s by helping them to understand and interpret the AQTF
• Provide coaching and mentoring services to trainers, assessors and RTO managers