Facilitated Training

Name: Colleen Condon
Position: Chief Learning Officer
Website: www.facilitatedtraining.com
Location: Melbourne, Vic, Australia

Facilitated Training assists their resource and time-poor clients via the creation of editable training materials for developing employees in the workplace. This enables facilitators, trainers, HR professionals to maximise their time training in the classroom or workshop.

Training requests are often last minute, and the time required to create a bespoke solution is generally underestimated. It takes a skilled instructional designer 7 hours to create 1 hour of training. Facilitated Training solution enables their customers to take a quality training solutions and tweak them to specific in their workplace.  From a cost, quality and time perspective this is an optimal result for their clients

Facilitated Training’s ever-expanding library of training materials for professional development can be used again and again. Companies can insert their company logo, add in case studies or examples from their workplace, or train using the quality training materials, as is.

What products/services do you offer?

Facilitated Training offers training and organisational development resources to facilitators, trainers, coaches, HR managers and individuals.

Specialising in customisable leadership and management skills, Facilitated Training features a wide variety of products, including Training resources, Professional development courses, assessments, ebooks, videos and more. Our one-hour training topics are especially popular to use as lunch and learn topics.

Why did you start your business and how long have you been running it?

The creation of targeted and engaging learning materials is increasingly becoming a lost skill. Organisation al models have changed, resulting in ‘in house’ learning designers becoming increasingly rare.  Organisations have embraced eLearning, and while this meets many needs, there is still a need for facilitated workshops, particularly for the development of people managers and supervisors.

Facilitated Training helps to fill this gap with our quality, customizable training materials.  Our team collectively has over 50 years of experience in leadership, education across Australia, Asia Pacific, UK and Europe. The team has worked together in previous workplaces and formally started Facilitated Training in April 2019.

What struggles do you think most businesses face in your industry and what would you say they need to do to overcome them?

Generic training produces generic results. Take time to ensure that the materials meet your needs. Consider the type of training need and the outcomes that are required.  Not all learning lends itself to elearning.  However, the development need is remote, and targeted learning can occur via blended learning and the use of teleconference facilities.

What has been your greatest accomplishment?

Coaching and developing others. Watching the aha moment, when a new concept or skill is realised. One of my favourite accomplishments is inspiring an HR intern to target their career in Learning and Organisational Development.

What has been your biggest ‘fail’ so far?

Underestimating the time and cost it would take to build a social following that is relevant to our target audience.

What do you love most about your business?

The ability to tack quickly in a new direction. For example, with an increasing need to work remotely, our next training module will address these needs for team members and leaders. Overall, it’s very satisfying to be able to utilise skills, knowledge and qualifications and global experience to develop products that I would have loved to access in my past roles.

What do you find most challenging?

Patience, it takes time to build a solid business foundation.

How do you promote your business (please include as many details as you can)?

Word of mouth, blog posts, Linkedin, SEO, Facebook group, news articles, increasing product offering, and networking online and face to face.

What business skills do you have (e.g. graphic design, customer service)?

Leadership skills, change management, Human Resources, Project Management, Strategic Planning, Instructional design, public speaking, executive coaching, psychometric assessments and Adult Learning.

What software did you/your designer use to create your website (e.g. WordPress, Wix)?

WordPress.

What are some of your favourite business tools and apps?

  • Canva
  • Vyond
  • Zoom
  • MBTI
  • Pinterest

What do you like about your website and what’s not working for you?

I love the look and feel, but believe that the text could be re-edited to be punchier and linked to SEO.

What lessons have you learnt during your time as an entrepreneur?

Don’t underestimate the learning that comes along with starting or restarting your business.

Technology is ever-changing, in hindsight, I should have learnt more about SEO, before creating my website, to maximise its reach from day one.

What key tips for success in business would you like to share with others?

Block out time for your own development.

Determine who your audience is and focus on mediums that will be using.

If your demographic is 30+ chances are you won’t find them on TicTok.

What is the one thing that you want everyone to take away from this post?

Identify where to spend your time and effort to get the best outcome for you and your business.

Specialist skills are an investment in quality and sustainability.

Identify the real cost of creating a product, logo, training materials.

Did you know that it takes an experienced learning designer 7 hours to create one hour of targeted training materials? Do you have the skills to complete these in a timely way? What is the quality of the finished product? Are you proud of the result?

Developing and training your employees is more nuanced than standing in front of a ppt slide deck and reading out the slides.

Investment in the development of your employees will assist in higher productivity, engagement and retention.  Which let’s face it, is what every business wants.

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