The training industry in the UK is highly fragmented yet rather sophisticated.

On the one hand, there are thousands of trainers and coaches. Invariably, these individuals have already gained a range of business experience in their early careers and have opted for a second career passing on their knowledge and developing others. Some are in semi-retirement, others working part-time to balance work with family commitments. Most though, are full-time training and development professionals in the second phase of their careers.

Some training professionals are employed as staff trainers by training companies but the vast majority operate on a freelance basis and are either self-employed or operate under the banner of a small, owner-managed limited company. This provides training companies with a flexible talent pool that they can utilise to design and deliver training for their clients – these are presented to clients as their ‘associates’.

Typically, a freelance trainer will work for two or three larger training companies as an associate trainer in addition to picking up direct work with clients, mainly via networking.

In effect, companies throughout the UK are engaging the services of freelance trainers indirectly. That is, they are purchasing their training via larger training companies who in turn, are predominantly using freelance trainers on an associate basis to deliver the training solutions for their clients. And of course, there is a significant margin between the amount charged to the client and the amount paid to the associate trainer.

What then, is the added value provided by training companies?

Mostly, they will position themselves as corporate training providers. They have access to a large number of mainly proven associate trainers. They usually produce branded course materials. They often provide some level of training administration support. For large contracts they will provide a scheduling service. They will provide account management and learning management support. All in all, the margin pays for a lot of back office activity that can be presented as being beneficial to the client.

Does this arrangement work for freelance trainers?

In many respects it works very well for freelance trainers. The training companies do the selling and manage the client relationship. They take care of printing course materials. And they also carry the cashflow risk. In short, working as a regular associate trainer for a successful training company provides freelance trainers with an element of security and stability in an uncertain world and enables them to focus on what they are good at – designing and delivering high quality training solutions and providing coaching support, as appropriate.

So what is the problem?

The main problem is that a lot of companies are paying a higher than necessary fee for back-end services that they don’t really need. Take for example a relatively small business employing 200 staff who might run around 10 days training per year. And mostly, these will be standard courses that they will select from the training provider’s brochure on online catalogue. This will cost them around £15,000 and the freelance trainers will maybe earn around £5,000 of this. Where’s the value add from the training provider? This small company doesn’t need training administration support, a scheduling service or any level of complex learning management support. Essentially, they are paying £10,000 for someone to sell to them, source the trainers, print course materials and collect payment.

Against this, if the same company were to source two or three freelance trainers directly, they could probably organise the same staff training for around £7,500, acknowledging the need for the freelance trainers to be paid a little more than via the associate model to produce the course materials and carry an increased cashflow risk.

Why do more companies not source freelance trainers directly?

In a word – fragmentation. Smaller companies who have an occasional and irregular need for training would not find it easy to locate freelance trainers. A search for ‘training’ or ‘trainers’ on Google would invariably return a list of training companies rather than freelance trainers. Business networks or training directories might provide an avenue but most small businesses would not always find it so easy to find these networks or directories.

This then, is the main reason why Trainers Direct UK was set up. To provide small and medium sized businesses with a single site through which they can locate freelance trainers directly. Companies can search for trainers by subject expertise and geographic location and make contact with the relevant trainers directly without the need to register or provide any details beforehand. And by sourcing trainers in this way, companies are able to save around 50% or more compared to the cost of using larger training providers.