Stop Press!

This update went to all my contacts on Monday 4th January. If you want a copy with all the attachments please get in touch! In response to a number of queries since Monday and the new lockdown – courses are still going ahead as planned. The only ones which are face to face are first aid, and it has been confirmed these can proceed where they are needed at this point as they are essential workplace training.

I hope that is useful. The full update is below...

Termly update from Jill Webb Training

This communication comes to you at the start of the year to wish you, your families and colleagues a safe and healthy 2021. I think for most of us, 2020 was a very different year and there is a sense of relief that we are now in a new year! It was great that so many of my contacts kept in touch during this time and I would like to extend my gratitude for this. I took the opportunity of the lockdown period which continued during the course of 2020, to reshape my training opportunities, so please let me know if you want an up to date list of the trainings I currently offer, as well as a list of virtual trainings. 

Virtual trainings have been working well and the secret to the success seems to be short, interactive sessions with plenty of breaks. I invite you to visit my You Tube channel where you will find some additional information along with some feedback from clients about their experiences of participating via this revised learning platform. My You Tube channel was another challenge I set myself in 2020 and the feedback has been so positive. It is particularly useful for blended learning, where perhaps half of the training is virtual and the rest is face to face. There are also lots of videos on this channel to support learning in between sessions. Please do have a look and it is great when people leave comments and questions! 

First Aid 2021

As you can imagine, now the HSE have confirmed there will be no further extensions to the expiry dates for First Aid certificates, I have been inundated with enquiries! f you find you are in need of some First Aid training, please contact me NOW for details of forthcoming courses, or visit my website www.jillwebbtraining.co.uk where you can book on line. It is important that you book the course you are interested in NOW so that, in case of an issue or inspection, you have evidence that you were aware of the need to renew your certificate. 

Please don’t worry if you have undertaken a Safeguarding, First Aid or Food Safety course with us over the last three years or so, we will remind you when your certificate is due to run out but it might be worth checking the expiry date now so you can get booked on in plenty of time!  

Extra Safeguarding and Paediatrtic First Aid Courses

In response to the high level of demand, I have organised additional courses that are to take place over the first quarter of the year so please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to get details of the courses which include Paediatric First Aid, Designated Safeguarding Lead and the opportunity to gain a Level 3 NUCO qualification in Safeguarding.

To book other courses 

The training opportunities in my diary are continually reducing over the course of this month and into February, therefore in order to meet your requirements and to meet any potential expiry dates you may have, please contact me as soon as you are able in order to avoid disappointment. 

Advance notice! 

Finally, I am pleased to advise you of some great news, my business contacts have now increased so much resulting this week's direct mailing was last one that will be sent out via this communication channel.  With effect from April, when my next update is scheduled to take place, I will be using an e-mail marketing communications platform called Mailchimp. As this might be a surprise to your inbox, it could get marked as junk therefore I would like to take this opportunity to please keep an eye out for this. In order to remind you, I will make sure I put the message out loud and clear on all my social media channels. 

Thank you for all your support at this time!

Some thoughts on team work..

Those of you who follow me on LinkedIn Twitter or Facebook will know I’ve recently been doing some work with a University Widening Participation team. They have been a great team to work with – they have a really challenging remit around making education more accessible and have loads of amazing ideas about how to do this.  So - like many teams - they have that real challenge of day-to-day targets around delivery whilst keeping an eye on the strategic vision, quality assurance and future planning.

And to throw into the mix… like so many teams at the moment, quite a few of the members have never actually met each other in person!  My experience has been that it’s much easier to work virtually when you know people already, and I think virtual working when you are new to a role is something really challenging for anyone.

So it was great that they came together so positive and keen to look at their own practice and how they could work even more effectively as a team.  We worked over two group sessions using the team management profile as a tool, and also offered individual sessions.
At the second team sessions, we used the elevator pitch which many of you will be familiar with – you get into a lift with somebody very senior and you have 20 seconds while the lift ascends to tell them about what your team does and the impact it has. 
It was really impressive to see that small groups working separately came up with very similar and very clear visions for the team  - why it was there and what it did.

A challenge to all of us – does the team you are working with know why it’s there and perhaps even more important what difference it’s making?

Using the Team Management Profile enabled us to have a model to work with to move ahead looking at the strengths of the team and where they could develop. The team felt it was uncanny that from the  team map I was able to predict that they were fantastic at getting the job done, but perhaps need to allow time to reflect and to  work on that quality assurance bit more,….and how much does this apply to almost all the teams that I work with.  And teams I’m a member of both in my paid work on volunteer capacity!

We are generally very good at ‘doing’ – planning a task and executing it.  Sometimes the reflection,I n the checking out the quality and the learning can get left behind as we rush onto the next task…

As we come to the end of this year, which has been so different in so many ways, perhaps that is the time to step back and think about the different teams you are in – why don’t you suggest a virtual debrief over coffee and mince pies (bring your own).

You could share you thoughts about what has worked well this year in the team?  What have we achieved?  What do we need to make our priorities for next year and how we going to take the learning for this year ahead? Perhaps this year more than any other this is a key question.

There will be many teams that are operated virtually for nearly all of their work time and it will be good to reflect on what’s worked well and what you’ve missed

As one manager I worked with said to me ‘Jill I’ve missed just walking round the office – picking up what people are doing and helping them to link with other people…’   However good online meetings are you lose that.

So let’s all challenge ourselves to take the best of team working forward and learn from all gone on this year!

Going beyond the comfort zone

I recently took myself right outside my comfort zone and decided to have a go at making some of my YouTube videos in a professional set up. Thanks so much to Ian at Paradigm for his patience while we filmed. I have released my first results you might want to look at it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEcPfXAWpEM

Two things about this experience are really worth sharing. My first reflection - I honestly did not know how many people it takes to produce even a short professional video. There is Ian there with his two cameras and sounds system. After the filming day there is an awful lot of work in editing the footage – adding the graphic and a mysterious processes called rendering… I’m still not clear what this is!! Thanks to Siy for supporting and project managing this - www.siybishop.co.uk

I work with lots of different teams – and working with the team that bought these videos together helped me yet again to realise how important it is that everybody is clear about their role and there is lots of communication going on. We did a lot of work filming in one day and the margin for error was immense. I was also struck by how – in an effective team – there is a massive respect for each other’s professionalism. This reflects the experience of many teams I work with and - in those teams that are not working so effectively - some of the work we are doing to try and improve that.

The other real impact on that day was how difficult it is to go outside your comfort zone. I’ve spent most of the last of the six months working from home so to go out to a building I didn’t know into really different set up, with people I didn’t know was quite challenging. And that’s before the camera is turned on!

And that was a real good reminder for me of how it can feel for some of my learners. Even when they are undertaking learning in a team they know they may be very new to that team, they may not have visited the venue before or they may be worried about the COVID rules within the venue.

If a training is operating virtually it’s easy for me to click away and say do this and do that. It reinforced to me the importance of taking any concerns really seriously and understanding why people might feel nervous.

So a bit of a different thought this month - a reflection on an experience that I’ve been through – I’m sure it will resonate with some of you. Meanwhile if you want to see the products of this day keep an eye on my YouTube channel as I’m going to release a video every week.