On July 6, 2009, Józefa was interviewed by Sharon Gaskin, of The Trainers Training Company, who help freelance trainers build their own private business.  She invited Józefa to say a few words about how she started out – the interview is below…

Józefa Fawcett is a freelance learning specialist and created OFQT to help businesses and trainers solve one of their biggest problems: how to provide training that produces real results in performance and service improvement. She provides: customised training and instructional design; consultancy to EU-funded projects; a tool that affects attitudinal development; supervision and mentoring support for trainers and quality management standards to measure training systems. Józefa has earned recognition of her work from her peers, resulting in the achievement of the 2009 Global HR Excellence Award for Leadership from the World HRD Congress.

1. What did you do before you became a freelance trainer?

I spent 14 years working in the private sector in a range of roles that involved me working at least 50% of my time training and presenting to others – these roles included: make-up artist, area sales manager, customer complaints manager, recruitment agency manager, personnel & training manager. Then in 1990, I went to work in the public sector, National Health Service (NHS), and spent 12 years in dedicated training and organisational development roles, becoming a freelance trainer and learning specialist in 2002.

2. How long have you been in business?

This year I will have been working as a freelance trainer for 7 years – all in all I have nearly 33 years of training experience!

3. Why did you decide to set up on your own?

I didn’t – the decision was sort of made for me, taking place at a time when the NHS was going through major restructuring. My last role was as Head of Workforce & Organisational Development for one of the first NHS Shared Services. However, the recipients of my teams’ services didn’t understand the cost benefit savings of a Shared Services concept and voted to disband the Workforce & OD function and take back small budgets to manage training locally. Rather than join yet another organisation, my husband helped me decide that it was time to ‘go it alone’.

4. How did you feel when you first started out?

I was lulled into a false sense of security as I was immediately commissioned by my former CEO to continue to be Project Manager of a Knowledge Management / E-learning venture that I had secured NHS funds for when in post – this venture had attracted nearly £¼m pounds from the Dept of Health over a three-year period and was very successful, being the first of its kind in UK. I didn’t actually realise that I was working for myself until the project finally came to an end, some six months later.

5. How did your first year go? Did it turn out as you expected or were there any surprises?

Working on the above project part time and picking up, by recommendation, other small projects meant my first year was very busy – almost too busy and I worked very long hours indeed. I was still in a work-mode that didn’t really feel any different; after all I was still going to familiar work places, just under my own steam rather than as an employee of my former organisation. I was surprised though as to how my ideas were viewed differently when given from ‘outside’ the organisation, this made me quite sad about how little value is given to the views and expertise of trainers working ‘inside’ organisations.

6. If you could have your time over again is there anything you would do differently?

When I started out, I didn’t plan where I would work, just going from job to job and, if I must admit it, I didn’t really think much about my profile or visibility in the market place – I sort of got swept along on a tide of referred work. This is both good and bad. I took on a lot of work as it came to me and even forgot to plan a holiday or any time off in the first two years! If I was starting out again, I would invest my time in putting in place an infrastructure to manage my time; manage my resources and manage my information.

7. What has been your biggest challenge as a freelance trainer?

The biggest challenge, this year particularly, has been to cope with economic changes and the downturn in companies wanting to invest in training. When budgets are tight, one of the first things to go is investment in learning. It is really important for the freelance trainer to adapt to the climate and not just continue to try to do the same as they have always done.

8. You have a successful training business. To what do you attribute that success?

Success comes in many forms, and achieving a working lifestyle that brings me happiness and continues to motivate me is what I consider to be my success. Diversity and quality of service have always been my trademarks along with the fact that I take my CPD (Continuing Professional Development) very seriously focusing on four main areas:

Knowledge Management (looking at complexity, narrative capture and storytelling);

Organisational Development (and its impact on learning organisation and change);

Management & Leadership (specifically healthcare management across Europe);

HRM & HRD (focusing on professional advancements and quality improvements)

I love to learn and find much from many informal sources, such as networking, blogs, wikis, podcasts etc… I also enjoy travelling in my work and comparing and contrasting the way people in business learn across cultures. My main geographical area of interest is Central and Eastern Europe, working with collaborative partners on a range of different projects.

9. In your opinion, what’s the 1 thing that all new freelance trainers should definitely do to give themselves the biggest chance of success?

That is easy – Reflective Practice. Anyone who is working as a freelance trainer has to ensure they spend their time in equal amounts on three important areas:

1. Work in the business – with clients on jobs
2. Work on the business – using a business coach to help your business grow
3. Work on themselves – employing a professional ‘training supervisor/mentor’ to challenge professional thinking and personal learning

This third area is often left out of the equation and yet taking time out to improve the quality and impact of their training efforts means a freelancer can better demonstrate real performance improvements to their clients.

10. And is there anything they should NOT do?

Yes, avoid resting on their laurels dealing only with the here and now without considering a plan for at least six months ahead – when someone is freelance, they cannot wait for things to simply come to them, they have to make things happen.

11. And finally, how do you see the future for freelance trainers?

All freelance trainers will be finding the current economic climate challenging, even those who are lucky enough to be actively working at present bearing in mind that the future upturn is some time away. If training as a profession is to have a future, then freelancers need to demonstrate their value to the business as a whole, they need to learn to speak business language and to measure the quality of what they provide in business terms. Never before has business needed us so much as now, but do they realise it? No, so our job is to help them.