Helen Howard
FST&C Limited, The Old Forge, Audley End Business
Centre, Wendens Ambo, Saffron Walden, CB11 4JL.
helen@fstandc.co.uk
, 01799 540588.
A CREDIT TO HELEN’S TRAINING WORK
Reasoning
To chase accreditation or leave it alone? Is it worth
it? Is it too much trouble? Does it bring any benefits? These are some
of the questions Helen Howard asked herself regarding the Learning
Practitioners’ Association’s Certified Learning Practitioner (CLP)
accreditation.
Helen Howard decided to take up the challenge;
successfully completed the accreditation and is now a CLP. She can
confidently say that for her it’s been both helpful and productive, both
personally and for her business.
When she originally decided to take the CLP
accreditation it was partly because she had no formal training
qualification and wanted some ‘proof’ that she was a good trainer in
addition to the usual course feedback forms.
CLP seemed to fit her needs particularly well; Helen
liked the idea that it looked not only at her abilities as a Trainer,
but also considered her personal qualities and the strength of her
training business.
Plus of course there’s the business angle; there was the
possibility that accreditation might bring in work.
No easy road
Helen commented that the accreditation process was by no
means quick and simple. It took several months for her to pull together
the required evidence, often working at weekends as she was busy with
training delivery on week days.
After the evidence aspect was completed, Helen had to
deliver a live short training session in front of a number of peers,
“far more nerve-racking than a typical course” commented Helen. All went
well and she was thrilled to receive a high ‘wow-factor’ score for the
evaluation part of her learning activity: a score that is rarely
awarded.
Having completed the accreditation in May, Helen went
back to focussing on her day to day training and marketing activities
with no expectation of receiving any recommendations in the short term.
Business through recommendation
In July, Helen was delighted to receive an email from
Peter Mayes, the Chief Executive of the Learning Practitioners’
Association letting her know that he had recommended her to The National
Trust who had posted a question on a discussion forum asking for
recommendations for good Finance Trainers. Peter commented that he was
only able to do this since he had seen Helen in action at her CLP
assessment and so was able to recommend her personally as well as a
being a CLP.
Helen followed up Peter’s recommendation to the National
Trust with a brief email confirming that she would of course be
delighted to help if they felt her experience and background were of
interest and then left it in their hands to contact her if they chose to
do so.
A few weeks later the National Trust invited Helen to
tender. She met the Trust to discuss their training needs. They asked
her to deliver a short training session. Given the impact that her CLP
assessment had had, she chose to use the same activity.
Later that day, Helen received a call offering her the
contract. Helen learnt that she had been one of six people invited to
tender and that she was one of a small number that had been short-listed
to meet with them. Their feedback was that they had immensely enjoyed
the session, found Helen very professional and personable and that they
felt her down to earth and engaging style would be exactly what was
needed to achieve the results they are looking for from the training
intervention.
Without having completed the CLP accreditation, Helen
would not have been put forward by the LPA and may not have been in the
running for this contract. Helen is delighted that Peter was able to
recommend her and even more thrilled that she won the contract having
been up against a number of other Finance Trainers who had also been
recommended to the National Trust. Peter concluded “I was thrilled to
have been able to recommend Helen to the National Trust and delighted
that she won the contract. My faith in our accreditation and our CLPs
has been justified again”.
Addendum
Jonathan Noall from the National Trust commented “You
may even wish to add that having delivered a couple of programmes now,
the positive feedback from delegates and sponsors at the Trust shows
that you are achieving success for us. :)”.
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