|
News Archive Review our older 'news' on this page - however, if you would like to know the stories behind the news, then check out our blog.
June 2010 - Germany
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- May 2010 - Turkey Józefa, Managing Director, OFQT, has just spent four days (11-15 May) back in Turkey, but this time in Istanbul. The first part of the trip was a project board meeting to progress the TI-SAETO PROJECT of which OFQT is a UK field testing partner. The second part of the trip was spent speaking at the 17th Annual ECLO conference, the subject of which was "Optimism, Pessimism, Realism - Has Training Lost Its Way?" An extract of the footage from this presentation will feature shortly on our FILM CHANNEL and further soundbites on our LIGHT LEARNING page
Józefa with Alaa from UAE Józefa in action! Many new contacts from all around the World made this one of the most exciting conferences that ECLO has ever run - can't wait until next year! After the working part, there was even some time to experience the Turkish culture, the sights and the Raki! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- March 2010 - England The two OFQT Founding Directors, Józefa and David were, amongst 50 others, guests of the Rt Honorable David Blunkett MP, for dinner at the House of Commons (2 March). As part of the British Business Alliance, they are actively involved in networking with fellow business owners who are all trying to do their bit for the UK economy. With the forthcoming UK legislation looking at encouraging employers to give time off to their employees for training quite high on the agenda, and sitting across the table from David over dinner in the House, it was an appropriate place to continue this discussion and contemplate what this is likely to mean for organisations large and small. More about this over the coming weeks as OFQT considers how best to respond to this and provide practical solutions to those organisations that will be affected.
David and Józefa sitting opposite .... Rt Hon David Blunkett, MP with Ronny Vogt, Bus Dev. Mgr, Millennium Hotels -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- February 2010 - Turkey Józefa, OFQT Director of Business & Product Development has just spent four days (18-21 Feb) on the South Turkish coast in Belek, nr. Antalya, with fellow project partners from Turkey, Belgium, Germany and Latvia to further develop the TI-SAETO Project. This particular tool is being field tested as part of an European Commission-funded project enabling organisations that either co-ordinate learning opportunities, provide training or have a training function to have a chance to conduct a basic self-assessment of their services against the EFQM Excellence Model. Behind the scenes of this work, we were treated to an extraordinary experience by our Turkish hosts and their choice of hotel – The Adam & Eve! Given our business is quality and excellence, we know only too well how people have to be in the ‘right mood’ to undertake the sometimes significant changes that are needed if they are to improve their quality of management systems and work towards excellence. This ‘mood’ factor was a constant throughout our meeting, given that the environment we were staying in had such a tremendous influence. This concept hotel was created to adapt to individual ‘moods’ with the dark black and mirrored corridors designed to encourage you to leave your dark moods and negative thoughts at the door and help you to ’see the light’ as you enter your ‘white’ room. However, if you needed to change your mood, then you could adjust your room accordingly from red to green to blue to pink or even rotating rainbow colours to music!
It certainly put us all in the 'mood' for working and amidst the fun we devised a plan that would allow us all to undertake the 'field-testing' of the self-assessment tool across our various countries during March - August 2010. Józefa Jim, Andreas and Muharrem -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- December 2009 - Germany Józefa, OFQT Director of Business & Product Development, spent three days (16-19 Dec) in Mittersendling (just outside Munich, Germany) qualifying as an EFQM Award Assessor with six other colleagues from Liechtenstein, Austria, Belgium and Germany. After a freezing cold and snowy week with a number of challenging tests and exercises she passed and is now available to advise organisations on their journey towards excellence as well as conducting assessments for both the UK NQA (National Quality Award) and the EEA (European Excellence Award). Here she is celebrating her achievement with a glass of warming Glühwein (prepared with red wine, heated and spiced with cinnamon sticks, vanilla pods, cloves, citrus and sugar) alongside fellow celebrant, Hermine Haug from the Office of Foreign Affairs, Liechtenstein - standing next to the Christmas tree outside the Rathaus (Town Hall) in the famous Munich Christmas Market.
Hermine and Józefa with Glühwein Munich Rathaus --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 2009 - Belgium During November Józefa was in Brussels presenting the findings and results of a two-year project funded by the European Commission that has been validating informal learning for those managing projects in Regional Development Agencies (RDA's) around Europe. Our involvement was as technical developer, learning adviser and trainer to the project partners.
Józefa and William Evans from Norwegian Adult Association for Learning (NAAL) The main principle that underpinned the project was that knowledge, skills and attitudes were recognised as impacting greatly upon an individuals' performance - so much so, that our SITUATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PROFILER was incorporated into the final VISIBLE Guide for Project Managers. It is currently being used by all of the project partners from France, Belgium, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Norway and soon in Macedonia and Croatia - not just in the European RDA's but also other Public Sector municipalities and NGO's.
Józefa (centre) with all of the VISIBLE Project Partners
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- October 2009 - Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia OFQT Director, Józefa Fawcett, spent three weeks during October in three of the European Project partner countries training Regional Development Agencies in how to use the products produced as part of this project, these include the VISIBLE Guide and the VISIBLE Game. The three weeks went by so fast and many new friends have been made that will take the work of the project onwards.
Sofia, Bulgaria Braila, Romania Pezinok, Slovakia
Braila, Romania Sofia, Bulgaria
Pezinok, Slovakia --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- August 2009 - UK OFQT have made three short learning 'sound bites' for TrainingSuccess.tv - these focus on important topics affecting training professionals today: 2.0 Training Tools Attitudinal Development Cutting the training budget
TrainingSuccess.TV - 2.0 Training Toolsl
TrainingSuccess.TV - Attitudinal Development
TrainingSuccess.TV - Cutting your training budget
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- June 2009 - UK
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" Tom Garavan, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of European Industrial Training (published by Emerald) presented David with his Award at the UFHRD Conference in Newcastle in June.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- February 2009 - Belgium Józefa Fawcett, OFQT's Business Development Director is the 2009 winner of the Global HR Excellence Award in HR Leadership (for the UK), presented by the World HRD Congress. Upon r eceiving her Award from Dr Ulrich Schweiker (Assessment Committee, World HRD Congress) and Marc Alen, (President, ECLO), Józefa writes: "I feel honoured to be one of only two people chosen from the UK to receive this award especially as the selection process was undertaken by my HRD peers from around the world. I am driven by the desire to educate HRD and HRM leaders and organisations alike as to the value that can be gained from focused, effective and timely learning and development initiatives and how this can then be used to improve the performance and quality of their workforce. Through my work at OFQT I am regularly encouraging practitioners and organisations to benchmark their training provision against quality management standards to guarantee that their training and learning interventions not only change behaviour but also affect the business bottom-line. I continue to work towards this goal, aware of the fact that in these times of recession and budgetary constraints, many organisations are considering cutting training provision altogether - a dangerous move that gives only a short-term financial solution and stores up longer-term workforce capacity and capability issues for the eventual future upturn" About the World HRD Congress -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- December 2008 - Russia Józefa Fawcett, OFQT's Business Development Director, was invited to work with the lecturers at Moscow State University for Economics, Statistics and Informatics (MESI).
A two-day Masterclass was delivered to over 25 staff which included departmental heads, professors and senior lecturers. A wide variety of content was covered highlighting advanced learning methods and approaches to improve the quality of the teaching experience that will enhance the students' capacity to absorb, retain and use what they have learned in the class, improve their results and affect change in their behaviour.
The challenge was to deliver all of the material in English with Russian slides and translation - Mikhail, her translator, expressed their collaboration as 'dancing with words' and both managed to tango beautifully together without any difficulty at all!
This was tremendous experience and we are currently in discussion with MESI to repeat this warmly received programme with other Universities across Russia.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 2008 - Kuala Lumpur David Simmonds, OFQT's Product Development Director, has travelled to Kuala Lumpur to deliver a unique two-day Masterclass on Return on Investment using the "Ripples Evaluator" model - a newly produced tool to assist organisations in how to measure tangible return on investment. OFQT have now brought this masterclass to the UK running it each year at the Chartered Quality Institute, London. PROVE A RETURN ON TRAINING INVESTMENT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- September 2008 - Romania David Simmonds, OFQT's Product Development Director, was the keynote speaker at the HR Vocational School Congress on 4/5 September in Romania where he spoke specifically about the International Quality Standard in Training, ISO 10015.
He was also interviewed by the local media as was the conference organiser who appeared on television to talk about David, Training and ISO 10015. "Through speeches, interactive plenary or optional workshops, study cases, panel discussions, book launching (David Simmonds, Designing and Delivering Training) the conference achieved a social and professional dialog pointing out to the Romanian human capital, claiming the European active citizenship and ensuring the social cohesion and the adaptability and employment growth.” Roxana Mocanu, HR Vocational School Director MBA CIPD Licentiate Member
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- May 2008 - Budapest OFQT's Józefa Fawcett wins the ECLO Speakers Impact Award 2008.
Józefa travelled to Budapest in May 2008 to speak about Quality Management Standards in Training & Learning at the ECLO 15th Annual Conference. So overwhelming was the response that she was voted the winner of the annual ECLO Speakers Award for the presentation that had the greatest impact. For more information about ECLO CLICK HERE To see a two short extracts of the Award winning presentation go to the OFQT FILM CHANNEL
|
||||
