On Monday myself and David celebrated the achievements of our Postgraduate Masters students from the University of Westminster at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

What a tremendous day was had by all, and what a fantastic way to celebrate the hard work after, what has been for some, two years of study and assignment and dissertation writing.

David and I wore black gowns, caps and our own University colours, David in the lovely purple and gold hood from Thames Valley University which I would have also worn had the hire firm not lost mine – after much searching I ended up wearing the maroon colours of the University of Westminster instead.

The time was ready for us to enter the auditorium, and we lecturers filed in two-by-two and sat on the stage looking out into the audience at a sea of expectant and very proud faces (see picture above for the view that we had from the stage where the orchestra normally sits).

As each successful student came up on stage to receive their award and walk past us we clapped and clapped and clapped, until our hands hurt – but it was worth it.  Some walked shyly across, hardly believing they had done so well, others with a more confident stride and one or two milking the adoration for all they could get – the atmosphere was electric!

You can use the link below to watch some personal footage of the ‘background scenes’ from the event

OFQT at the Royal Festival Hall

David and I not only applaud such academic achievement but are sure that if formal education or formal work-based training or informal learning, is to be of value in the market place and help the individual or organisation improve the quality of what they do, then it has to be applied quickly and with some regularity – then and only then, will changed behaviours embed as part of normal practice.

What we are also very sure about is the power and value of learning and how it can change so much in work and in life.

Einstein has been very widely quoted as saying:

“Learning is finding out what you already know. … “If you always do what you‘ve always done, you‘ll always get what you‘ve always got“

In this context we believe this to mean that to achieve some kind of change of outcome, you have to learn something new, but even more important, the individual has to want to learn as this cannot be forced.

Józefa at OFQT

Does the perennial ‘ice breaker’ used at the start of training sessions leave you cringing?

Apparently, it is no longer a good way to start off your session with these so-called relaxers.  As they have been around for such a long time, participants almost come to expect them and others just heave a sigh – hoping the first 15 minutes will go past quickly.

Lenn Millbower explains the three reasons why NOT to use icebreakers:

• Ice breakers suggest a frivolous training will follow – Forcing involvement in an activity with little seeming connection to the subject being taught implies a lack relevance in the training as a whole
• Ice breakers risk learner alienation before the subject has been introduced – Communication experts suggest that people, upon meeting someone new, make up their mind about that person and their message within seconds. The same dynamic holds true in the training environment. Ice breakers waste those precious seconds on seemingly mindless activity.
• Ice breakers squander valuable time on non-essential information – The short attention spans of modern learners brought on by the endless barrage of TV commercials and the point-and-click ease of the Internet make it difficult enough for learners to maintain a continued focus with on-target content. Activities that don’t readily connect to content send learners channel surfing.

Lenn further suggests that training sessions fall into one of two camps – broccoli or brownies.

If you don’t like broccoli then you will find the session boring and tedious.  If you prefer brownies, great, except you can have too much of a good thing.

Listen to him explain a better way forward http://www.offbeattraining.com/learnertainment/home.html

Now consider, does this make you hungry for high quality training and learning?

The OFQT Team

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.

And so is our latest edition of “Pass It On”- our seasonal look at all that is going on in the world of OFQT and Training.

Click here to go to our html online version

Have a good summer everyone!

The OFQT Team

The OFQT Team

In the recent edition of Personnel Today 22 May 2009 (newspaper for HR professionals) Kat Baker reports that:

“HR directors are queuing up to admit there are more “bad” people in the profession than good, and that they limit the power of the function.”

Can this be true?

Have we as a profession really lost sight of what we need to do to improve the quality of our own provision?

Whereas the CIPD (HR professional body) refuses to be drawn into the debate, the article claims that several HR chiefs have joined the claim and echoed these thoughts, expressing concern at the state of the profession.

Simon Nash, HR director at legal firm Carey Olsen, told Personnel Today he thought just one in 10 HR professionals were “really fit for purpose”, and that many people should leave the profession. “I have recently been recruiting for my team and I have been disappointed by the quality and motivations of many of the HR people I have seen,” he said.

Wow, this is damming – rather than focus on HR overall, it does force us at OFQT to question the HRD professional specifically and ask “what exactly is the HRD professional doing to improve their quality of their skills and their service provision?”

When we first established OFQT our main purpose was (and still is)  to improve the quality of training in organisations.

We used our associated research and discussions with many different HRD professionals in the course of our regular work and began to notice a trend in responses, organisations were raising the same difficult issues to do with HRD and Training and practitioners were voicing difficulties they found in their roles. 

We have colleated this anecdotal evidence into four main areas highlighting in each case a target group, the key problem they are facing and the associated risks if left unattended.

1.  HR Directors and Training Managers:

• Problem: Having to provide evidence as to how training is actually impacting on the business bottom line
• Risk: Leaves Training function (HR function) vulnerable to budget cuts and loss of jobs if unable to ‘prove’ impact on service and performance improvement
  

2.  Trainers, Coaches, Mentors, Facilitators:

• Problem: Needing to show, more regularly now, their own quality assurance systems and personal development actions
• Risk: Getting labelled as no longer ‘fit for purpose’ (as in article) or out-of-date in their approach / not having a ’safety net’ when dealing with difficult coaching and facilitating situations that demand more than they can provide

3.  Interim, Mobile and Flexible workers in the organisation

• Problem: Missing out on training that is provided by the organisation meaning it is hard to keep up-to-date / taking knowledge with them when they leave
• Risk: Repeating learning programmes again and again is costly / organisation loses knowledge, innovation and memory

4.  Individuals, Teams and Services needing to handle change:

• Problem: Acquiring the knowledge and the skills is no longer enough to make change happen, meaning that change repeatedly fails or is unsustainable after change management training
• Risk: Waste of training investment and no real steps forward, staff become demotivated which affects climate and attendance

This is fundamental to all organisations and we are delighted that we have made it our business to address these problems ‘head on’ see our website if you want to know more about how we do this

We feel that by increasing the results and presenting these clearly to show the impact that HRD and Training can have on the business we will go some way to turn the tide of discontentment away from us being viewed as the bad ‘guys’.

Following the publication of this Personnel Today article,  it appears that our initial beliefs behind OFQT – were correct.  Our hope while we work on improving quality is that we are not all tarnished with the same ‘HR’ brush.

Read the full  article for yourself and make up your own mind

http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2009/05/22/50819/hr-bad-guys-hinder-success-of-profession.html

The OFQT Team

David Simmonds, OFQT’s Product Development Director has been chosen as the 2009 Emerald Literati Network Award for Excellence winner for his work

“A model for outsourcing HRD”

He will be presented with his Award at the UFHRD Conference in Newcastle in June – so there will be more pictures and a write up from there soon…

The OFQT Team

Józefa has not long returned from Paris, where she was co-presenting the findings from a few months research and development of a competency matrix for project managers working in European Regional Development Agencies, she writes:

“My very first time to Paris proper (cannot count the annual trip to Gare du Nord en route to skiing in the Three Valleys as the only bit of Paris I saw then was MacDonalds whilst we were waiting for the couchette) and it was wonderful.

First some work in a project partner’s office, just on the edge of Paris, to prepare the photocopying on a enormous tome for distribution in the afternoon.  Jerome was a real star, even buying a beautiful lunch for us both to make the task easier.  Then off to the meeting place in the Centre of Paris where we were met by some EU auditing officials who were to review progress to date.

So pleased that they loved the first draft, as did the rest of the project partners.

In the evening we went for a dinner boat ride on the Seine and despite a niggling cold it was WONDERFUL, seeing the Eiffel Tower glittering against the night-time sky.

I am due back in Paris towards the end of the year to run a short workshop so hope to see more of the City then.”

The OFQT Team

Józefa Fawcett, OFQT’s Business Development Director is the UK 2009 winner of the Global HR Excellence Award in HR Leadership (for the UK), presented by the World HRD Congress.

As she was unable to travel to Mumbai to collect this at their recent conference it was couriered to her and officially presented by Dr Ulrich Schweiker (Assessment Committee, World HRD Congress) and Marc Alen, (President, ECLO) at the VOV Learners Network event jointly held with ECLO at Vilvoorde, Belgium in February.

Józefa was delighted to receive this and be recognised by her peers around the World.

The OFQT Team

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David and Józefa have some exciting plans for 2009 and have created a new website featuring great new approaches to ensure that training really makes a difference to the business bottom-line.

More plans will feature in future posts, however for now, Józefa writes about her recent business travels to Russia…

“My trip to Russia was so exciting, I went on 11th December for four days and, despite the stories about Aeroflot, found the plane, the airline and the staff so helpful and kind.  Admittedly, I did sleep most of the way, arriving in Moscow at 05.30hrs on a Friday morning.  I was due to start the first day of my two-day masterclass at Moscow State University at 10.00hrs so had plenty of time to spare.

Little did I know of the drama that was to unfold upon my landing.

First, my visa apparently said that I was a man!  So, not going through passport control until they had worked out what to do with me.  Travelling all that way and now I was in fear of not even getting to step onto Russian soil.  I was left sat all alone in the early hours of the morning waiting for someone to talk to me, all I got was ‘niet Angielski’ (which even I could work out meant, ‘I don’t speak English’) -  Scary stuff!

My colleague from the University was waiting for me the other side of customs, so I phoned him to find out if there was anything he could do.

As it turned out, he could do very little until the customs office opened for me to get a new visa.

So I waited and waited.

I was joined by a guy from Taiwan with a different problem with his visa – he couldn’t speak Russian or English but he did decide to pray for me (this was getting stranger and stranger).

Three hours later, with new visa in hand, I met my Russian colleague and proceeded to collect my luggage, but customs had taken luggage label.  Now you don’t mess with a burly Russian customs officer when they say ‘no label, no luggage’.  So back to passport control (it is now 08.30hrs) to find passport officer and the missing luggage label which was eventually found in a dustbin.

Luggage retrieved, we got into University mini bus for the 30 minutes drive to the University, but then…….10 minutes into journey the bus breaks down.

Dimitry and I got out and ventured onto the side of the motorway flagging down anyone for a lift – just as well I had roubles with me.  A lone, run down car kangaroo hopped towards us and in we piled for the rather bumpy journey to the University, arriving at just 10.00hrs.

Five minutes to brush teeth and then onto the classroom and a fantastic session with synchronous interpretation and discussion.

Boy did I sleep well that  night!  That was not the end of the story but rest best left for a longer period and over a glass of Wodka!

The OFQT Team