Tips for resolving issues

When you take on an apprenticeship or traineeship, you may experience issues with your:

• apprentice or trainee
• supervising registered training organisation (SRTO)
• Australian Apprenticeship Support Network (AASN) provider.

We recommend that you try to resolve the issue first by following our simple steps. In fact, if your issue cannot be resolved on your own and you need our help, we will ask what steps you've already taken to try and resolve it.

Identify the issue

Work out exactly what the issue is. Then express it in words that make it solvable.

TIP: Focus on the issue not the emotion or the person.

Identify causes, consequences and contributors

Identify who or what is causing the issue, who is contributing to it, who is affected by it, and what the consequence are.

TIP: Try to listen without arguing or debating.

Brainstorm solutions

Make a list of all the possible ways you could solve the issue. You're looking for a range of possibilities, both sensible and not so sensible.

TIP: Try to avoid judging or debating these yet.

Choose a solution

Look at the solutions in turn, assessing both the positives and negatives of each one. The solution you choose should be one that you can put into practice and that will solve the issue. Consult others if you can’t find a solution you are both happy with.

TIP: Considering the pros before the cons avoids people feeling criticised.

Plan the details

Once you’ve agreed on a solution, plan exactly how it will work.

To plan, you can ask these questions:

• Who will do what?
• When will they do it?
• What is needed to put the solution into action?

Evaluate the solution

Remember that you’ll need to give the solution time to work and note that not all solutions will work. Sometimes you’ll need to try more than 1 solution.

To evaluate you can ask these questions:

• What has worked well?
• What hasn’t worked so well?
• What could you do differently to improve the solution?