Navigating Excellence: A Glimpse into the Management of DQS Academy

Prior to DQS Inc., Beth had experience working as a Billing Coordinator for a charity which “that gave [her] some background in expectations of education courses and what works doesn't work.” She then moved to a position within DQS as a Project Manager within the IT sector. Within that position, she “help[ed] set up the previous people in the company with their I.T. infrastructure that they needed,” until she was approached about an opportunity within DQS Academy. She had gained experience with “setting up systems such as Dynamics, Audit Center, maintaining expense center, audit day calculator that helped [her] understand what was needed from an IT infrastructure perspective and a staffing perspective, both full time and supplier.”

To Beth, DQS Academy “is really a startup rather than a one-off growth of our auditing business” and her previous work with setting up the information security management system (ISMS) in IT (learn more about our ISMS offerings, and ISO 27001, by visiting our training catalog) gave her “the background and how to set up a business as a whole to work in an efficient process.” Her main goal for DQS Academy is as follows:

“The goal for DQS Academy is to create a culture where learners can come in and learn how they can change a set of uninspiring tasks into a culture of advancement.”

Taking on this goal of requires that DQS Academy is “up front doing practical applications” and ensuring that learners are not idle participants but “seeing how [the standard is] impacting in the real world [and] applying that knowledge. That could be through practical exercises or instructor storytelling from experiences.

Beth also gives insight on the DQS Academy mission,

“…our focus going forward is to provide an environment where anybody can come in for interactive learning or instructor led learning and see not just the standard but how it works overall with the world.”

DQS Academy focuses more so on the value-add to each participant and giving the foundation to build upon.

When courses are being developed, the team looks not only to what is happening in the real-world now, but also how can we provide information to aid in shaping companies for the future? What needs to be focused on to give working knowledge that leads participants to aspirations to learn more and to improve? As Beth states,

“When we're measuring the impact [of professional development and career growth], our goal is to have a development path where they can start with just figuring out what they're really looking for…”

And this translates into the different types of courses that are offered by DQS Academy; with Executive Overview giving a general “overview” of the standard, which moves into the Implementation courses. Implementation goes into “how are [you] looking and assessing whether or not [something] meets the requirements” of the standard. It gives learners the opportunity to take the standard and use it to better manage their teams and work through tasks. And finally, after Executive Overview and Implementation, there can be a focus on “soft skills development [and] risk-based thinking development” with courses such as the Internal Audit courses. And how does DQS Academy measure success? Beth states,

“…our way of measuring our students’ success is to see them graduate between each of these tiers into continuing their knowledge growth.”

This mindset also gives insight on how DQS Academy develops courses and views what is necessary during times of growth.

DQS Academy is always looking for ways to improve, whether by internal systems, course development, updating customer interfacing, and more. Beth states that the “biggest impact” when it comes to recent changes had been the entire internal process. She states,

“There is no overarching process for a streamlined and efficient customer experience. And by customer experience, I mean, both for our instructors and internal users and our external students.”

And when it comes to continuous improvement, it takes team effort and feedback from previous learners. Whether it’s working “regionally with Megan and Allison to develop our internal processes” or with the “global office” to “[learn] from them and [integrate] that,” DQS Academy is always moving forward with improvements. And how about those previous learners? Beth states that:

“…one of the big things is that suggestion box that we have for Academy and how much we lean on that to continue to improve.”

With this as their basis, DQS Academy has reached milestones and sets itself apart from competitors.

The team is “in the process right now of doubling the catalog offerings that we can give to students.” Feedback from previous learners have also led to the revamping of “user interface for [customers] so that they had a much more intuitive way of navigating both the catalog and their course.” With the work completed from feedback, the goals of, and the mission of DQS Academy, how does DQS Academy stand out in the field of competitors? For Beth, she sees that the “practical application piece” is the first point in differentiation:

“All of our courses are developed with the idea that you're going to be able to relate this to actual events that happened in the real world that are current and you're going to be able to then apply them. So, we aim for 50% of a course to have those two components.”

So, what would be the second half that also makes DQS Academy courses stand out? Experienced subject matter experts and instructors:

“…leaning heavily on our very experienced set of auditors [for] content development. There are subject matter experts that provide us these examples and the instructors in the class that get to share with the learners all of their experience, because we're averaging right now about each instructor has about 15 years of experience each, on average. Some of them have closer to 40.”

And this is something I can also speak about, as I’ve sat in on a few courses, such as the ISO 14001 Internal Audit course (you can read the blog here). The instructors truly know what they are talking about; the experience they have is brought up in each point they make. Whether it is something they have experienced first-hand in the field, or something they can reflect on that has been in the news, you gain insight that you may have never had prior to the course.

One final point that Beth made before she continued back to her busy schedule managing DQS Academy was in regard to moving forward for the team and content for future learners:

“I think when it comes to managing DQS Academy, we're really showcasing what DQS can do locally by leaning on all of the cultures. We always try to keep that in mind when we're developing the content and the customer journey. So, the value it can bring is taking that global mindset for academy and transferring that to your companies so that they can help develop that culture themselves.”

Although Beth is not typically seen in day-to-day courses, you can still see the impact she has on each course. Register for courses today by visiting dqsacademy.com and look out for upcoming training dates for the new Cybersecurity Annual Awareness course in which Beth was a subject matter expert. Looking for private training? Contact Sales today by clicking the link below or emailing sales.us@dqs.de. Want to learn more about the DQS Academy team? Read about Allison Ramos, DQS Academy Coordinator, here.