Self Employed as an IT Training and Consulting Officer. The majority of my work is teaching Microsoft although I am fully trained up in all the leading software packages. Over the past few years the majority of my work has been training and floor walking for many major clients who are undergoing large software upgrades. My main client base has been Vodafone; English Heritage, BMI and the AA also many local authorities and corporations around the country. At Vodafone – I managed the project and was responsible for 28 floorwalkers, issuing them with clients and co-ordinating the issue logs with the engineers as well as managing the staff and completing their daily timesheets. Over the past 12 months I have been lead floorwalker for a rollout for the AA covering offices all over the country. Again I was responsible for around 20 trainers/floorwalkers and the day to day duties. I have completed another project for the AA which involved assessing a new software package for their call centre and developing and writing the training materials. I also work for Atlas and am working on delivering seminars to the MOD regarding the new upgrade to the whole of the MOD systems. I also work for the Welsh National Assembly on an ad hoc basis providing training and consultation. Also over the past few weeks I have been working as a trainer/floorwalker for Zurich International in their offices in London and Cardiff.

Icon Training & Consulting was set up with a business partner. The company consisted of 2 Directors and 2 admin staff and also a 3 freelance trainers. The business started off by training companies in Microsoft Office based packages. The business soon started to build up a very good reputation and our client base grew rapidly – expanding to large corporations, the MOD and also the National Assembly. We expanded the business and moved to new premises with more training rooms – this is when we introduced many more features to the business, included database writing and management and soft skills and management training courses. These proved very successful and soon Icon had a very good name in and around South Wales. My main duties in the business were training but I took on the role of Marketing Officer and I promoted the company to the business world through networking events, job and marketing fairs, media and telesales. Icon Training & Consulting was runner up for Business of the Year in 2003 for the Chamber of Commerce, and I was runner up in the category of Business Woman of the Year.

Following Local Government Re-organisation I was re-located from Gwent County Council to Monmouth County Borough Council. I retained my post as IT Training Manager although this was now on a much smaller scale to my previous position, but still involved promoting and organising training courses for the staff of the authority along with managing the training budget. I was also responsible for all updates of software and also manual production to accompany all courses. Due to the fact that there was a training officer in place this enabled me to set up Training Needs Analysis programs to help promote and sell the training courses that the local authority had to offer. One of my other duties was to promote the use of IT to the members. This involved putting on road shows and taster events for the members – these proved very successful.

My duties here were very much the same as my duties for Monmouth County Borough Council, but were on a much large scale due to the fact that the authority covered the whole of Gwent. The budget was obviously bigger and more challenging to control as it covered all the local authorities within the Gwent area. Promoting the IT and Management Training Courses was done by putting on road shows in each individual local authority with taster sessions and on-hands involvement. These normally culminated in a week long event that I organised and was held at Gwent County Council for staff and members to attend seminars and short courses over the week which they had to enrol on. This was a very challenging role which I thoroughly enjoyed.

My main duties as the training officer were to provide IT training courses in the local governments chosen software. I was involved in the creation of documentation and training materials to support the courses and also in the promoting of the courseware. I also helped the IT Training Manager with the budget and evaluations of the courses.

I was employed by Gwent County Council as a trainee programmer, the first two years of which you have to cover all aspects of computing from data input to running the overnight programmes that the programmers had set up and written. I was given the opportunity of being involved in the very first Personal Computers (PC’s) that were introduced to the Local Government. This fascinated me and I took a keen interest in how they were set up and how they worked. Due to my enthusiasm I was asked if I would oversee the setting up of the new PC and put a procedure in place for them to be set up and tested then taken out to the users. I developed a process for this which also included me accompanying the PC to the users’ desk and sitting with them for the next couple of hours whilst I showed them how to use the new equipment. I developed training notes that went with the new PC’s which soon developed into a training programme that I was fortunate enough to set up and run. This was the start of my training career.