Advice, guidance and education – what’s the difference and how to know what to offer
In order to understand the difference between Advice, Guidance and Education it probably makes sense to use an everyday analogy, the annual MOT.
I was fortunate enough to inherit a purple Vauxhall Corsa as my first car. Having only had one very careful and cautious previous owner, my Gran, meant that despite being 10 years old it didn’t have many miles on the clock.
Living in London at the time, it was an inconspicuous car that was generally left alone by thieves and drunken party goers. The car’s main use was to ferry myself and several mates around at the weekend so it’s fair to say it took quite a beating over the years. It is for this reason that the yearly MOT was a rather stressful time as I awaited the news of how much it would cost me to get it to pass.
Cars are much like our finances. They are complex, require attention to avert problems and need to be regularly reviewed. Of course, to become an expert mechanic, as with finance experts, takes considerable work, time and study.
Back to the example of my old Corsa and its annual MOT. One particular year, it required a new suspension, given the weighty load it was hauling around it was hardly surprising. Let’s explore what sort of service I would receive if for example the mechanic was an educator; someone providing guidance or an adviser.
Education
Depending on the education service available to you, it might not be personalised at all. In this case, the mechanic might not tell you what is wrong with the car or why it has failed the test. He would point you to a website or seminar which talks through why the average car fails an MOT and then if this is a problem, what to do about it. It is then up to you to buy the replacement suspension. In the event you also decided to install the suspension yourself, despite your limited experience, if anything were later to go wrong with it then you would be responsible for whatever happens.
Guidance
In this example, the mechanic would deliver the news that the suspension needs replacing. If you were to then ask what they would recommend doing to repair it they could then point you towards several suspension types you could use. The decision of which one to use would be up to you and depending on the guidance service you were receiving you may or may not have to install it yourself. Like with the education service, if anything were to go wrong with the suspension it is up to you to resolve and pay for it.
Advice
With advice, the mechanic would come to you having identified the problem. It would then be up to the mechanic to give you a personalised recommendation on what to do to fix it. This would include which suspension to buy (depending on whether they are independent or not he would have compared all of the available suspensions in the market to ensure you had the best value product that most fits your personal needs). If you were happy with his recommendation he would then install the suspension. In the event something were to go wrong with the product, unlike in the last two examples, the liability would fall squarely on the mechanic to resolve the problem and ‘make good’ the customer.
This might seem a touch simplistic but broken down these are the core differences in the services.
As an employer you must make the decision as to what level of help you want to give your employees. This can range from simply informing employees through to helping them solve their problems. The key consideration is what you are trying to achieve by launching the service. If you wish to drive employees to take action then advisory services are most likely to achieve this.
Many employers feel that by offering advice they are opening themselves up to added liability. Given that advisory firm’s practices are regulated by the FCA this gives a layer of protection which many other services offered to employees don’t have. Digital advisory services are emerging that have radically reduced the cost to deliver advice to employees, often costing as much as bespoke education programs.
This article was provided by Wealth Wizards.
In partnership with Wealth Wizards Ltd
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