Consultation fatigue is a rational response

Everybody is asking, nobody is reporting back.

An employer in a sector with several local providers is asked repeatedly, in overlapping ways, mostly by survey, and sees nothing result. Declining is a sensible use of their time and the falling response rates across the sector reflect that rather than disengagement from education.

The providers who continue to get good engagement are generally the ones who ask less often, ask better, and report back. Frequency is not the variable that helps; a single substantive conversation a year that visibly produced something beats quarterly surveys.

Coordination between providers would help and rarely happens, because consultation is treated as a competitive relationship. Where local providers have shared a consultation, employers have responded well to being asked once rather than four times.

The other reducer is to bring something. A conversation that includes information the employer wants, about the labour market, about what other employers are reporting, or about the qualification landscape, is an exchange rather than a request.

There is one thing that reduces fatigue more than any change to method, which is asking fewer people better questions. A provider that consults forty organisations superficially each year and one that has six substantial conversations produce very different records, and the second is both more useful and less burdensome on everybody.