The Nelson Training Story

Viv Nelson, Founder and Managing Director of Nelson Training

It was 1997.

I was working at Solihull College, searching for new ways to make training ‘different’. A client comments that she had seen actors being used in training ..my ears pricked up. Yes, I had a wide range of tried and tested/ interactive/ participative training activities that kept delegates moving, inspired, amused and (sometimes even) awake, but time had come for a change. On that day, the seed of drama based training was well and truly sown.

A year later ..

A request from Solihull Police. They need a training session for the desk enquiry officers in handing conflict, but the training officer tells us … “No role play!” I reassured her that we never made anyone role play. We used professional actors. She was most impressed and asked me how long we had been doing this. In fact she was the very first! But they loved it and it sowed the seeds of an idea for a business!

2001

It’s time to leave Solihull. My request for voluntary redundancy had been refused. I left anyway and in June created Nelson Training ….

I needed actors so sent out a press release to local papers..

In September 2001 Kevin Tillett was scraping bird poo on an old newspaper from the bottom of a cage and he noticed the words ‘actors wanted’ and called me. Five weeks later he carried out his first role play for us and has been here ever since between pantos at Christmas..the first open training courses are delivered at Malvern Science Park.

2002

Nelson Training delivers training in Manhattan, Long Island, New York and Banff, Canada, and wins its first prize which has pride of place on our office wall: the Platinum award for Business Excellence in the Business Start up category ….:-) Our first trophy-Hurrah!

2003-2005: More trophies and training down under

HA! Our prize this time is £500 for the best local arts company! Trophies are great …money is even better! We strut our stuff in Sydney and Brisbane and win some lovely contracts for work in Australia. At home, customer service training has really taken off as our most popular training session.

 2005 -2010: National Training Awards!

Training every year now down under; a firm favourite with Pest Controllers! Our first National Training Award comes in 2006 with Bristol City Council for our customer service training program, more follow in 2008 with Whitefriars Housing for absence management training and our fourth in 2010 with South Gloucestershire Council for complaint handling training.

Diversity and management training start to overtake customer care as the favourite training programs! Nelson Training makes dozens of customised training videos for clients.

2010 – We enter our second decade

Now performance management, Absence/attendance management and handling difficult situations are the most popular training sessions followed by a surge in Diversity due to the Equality Act 2010.

2015 – 2020: Major contracts with the NHS, Government Departments, Councils and Corporates

Equality, diversity and inclusion training has exploded particularly in the public sector and we have been awarded many mandatory training programmes for staff at major NHS Trusts such as Worcestershire Acute and Whittington Hospitals NHS Trusts. As well as for diversity, NHS Trusts have increasingly used Nelson Training for absence management, managing bullying and harassment, complaint handling and performance management. We have also created programmes for several Government Departments such as Foreign Office, Natural England and the Ministry of Defence. A two year programme for ABMU at NHS Wales trained 760 managers. Major PLCs such as Bosch, Hill-Rom, Kimal and Casio have continued to trust us with team leader and customer service training.

2020 – 2021: Year of lockdowns, masks, WFH and we develop on-line drama based training

With the onset of Covid, training as we knew it went out the window. Our training model of face to face training using acted out scenarios followed by interaction by delegates with the actors in role became impossible. We had to develop an online version that would still be as interactive and engaging in online form. We quickly adapted to training over both Zoom and Microsoft Teams by making videos of the scenarios with the actors, either socially distanced (green screens helped considerably here) or online, with delegates interacting with the actors live in role over Teams. With extensive use of breakout rooms, use of Mentimeter (an online polling tool) and fingers crossed on the technology, we developed a form of training that now represents an often used solution to employees working from home. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Services gave us a major online contract as they were able to have staff from all over the world join the training simultaneoiusly.

2021 – Present: We enter our third decade

Nelson Training celebrated 20 years of success in 2021 and we continue to grow. We have embraced further technological training by developing a developing week long on-line storylines whereby a video showing a complex client issue is shown on the first day. Delegates respond with their suggestions via a text based online survey as to how the next day’s video should develop. The new video is shot that evening for showing the next morning incorporating the suggestions but with added complications. This continues through the week until the situation is resolved with the Friday video. We were first asked to do this by Natural England and this was followed by the Ministry of Defence. Face to face training has returned as more clients see the benefits of being in the room but we continue to innovate and find new ways of delivering the very best in drama-based, interactive and engaging training regardless of the format.

Check out what makes us a great team to work with…