A job like mine
07 December 2009
Joe Quilter is principal consultant for PSP Group, a company that provides e-learning, e-communications, e-promotions and community website solutions. As well as holding down his day job, Quilter is a committee member of the eLearning Network and for a third successive year has chaired the judges for the E-Learning Awards.
An enthusiastic professional whose entire career has been spent in the learning and publishing sector, Quilter loves his job. “I get to do something new every day,” he says with infectious optimism.
At PSP Group, he is in charge of offline and bespoke e-learning materials; e-appraisal, learning management and e-portfolio systems; and websites that enable people to network and learn.
“What drives me most is being able to help people improve themselves with new skills and invest in themselves by adding value to their ability,” he says. “This is best done by giving them a learning platform, and that’s what got me into doing all this.” He thinks education is the greatest gift anyone can make to society. “It’s a gift for life. When I realised its value in improving people’s lives, I had a vision of providing learning tools to all individuals regardless of where they were based.”
Quilter himself lacks a traditional academic profile. “I left education aged 17 and joined publisher Pearson’s sales department.” He did extremely well, winning strategic marketing awards back to back and persuading Pearson to sponsor his MA in marketing, five years later.
It is no surprise that Quilter’s relationship with academics has gone from strength to strength. He was in charge of marketing and branding at Brunel University and associated colleges, and won two prestigious HEIST education awards for his role there.
He has held similar roles at other academic organisations, such as Oxford Brookes University, Southampton University and Winchester College.
He has also been a keynote speaker at the FT, London Stock Exchange and Cheltenham Racecourse, where he motivated and inspired over 2,000 professionals. “I love my job and these keynote
sessions and award events. They help me keep up with innovation, learn, network and shape the industry.”
Now Quilter wants to help develop effective and powerful learning technologies and bring innovation to the training sector. “We already bring in innovation with our offline learning management system, e-community websites and the ability to help businesses conduct training any time, anywhere, any place.”
Quilter has had his share of frustration in trying to persuade people of the advantages of adopting technology-enabled training to improve their results and cut costs. He insists it’s less about understanding technology than the organisational culture.
He says businesses are slowly opening up to the prospects of technology in learning and is eager to make progress. “E-learning and e-communications professionals are given a place under the bonnet, but it is time they had the steering wheel. Organisations must start seeing them as drivers, not just mechanics.”
His wishlist doesn’t end there. “I’d like to see the training tools becoming more accessible and easily adoptable. I want the industry to be more established, and mobile technology to go mainstream.”
Quilter believes these technologies are the future because they speed up and ease communication.
He advises organisations to identify what they want to achieve – whether compliance, cost efficiency or improving revenue – and only then to look at implementing the relevant solution. “There has been a huge explosion of technology in the learning sector and it improves our ability to connect remotely. All businesses must make the most of these technologies confidently, but cautiously.” He adds that the integration of Web 2.0 technologies must be linked to learning objectives and operated under a structured framework.
Quilter has managed several blue-chip clients at AdVal Group with his father, and he credits him with his own technology vision. “I have learnt a lot from my father. He and Ian Etchells [now at PSP Group] were considered fathers of the e-learning sector and pioneered technology in learning in the 1980s.”
As AdVal’s publishing director, Quilter launched products in partnership with qualifications company Edexcel. From there, he went on to establish ea4u, a national centre for qualifications, and QVQ Education, providing software support for the school classroom.
Golden moments in his career include excellent qualifications, working with ambitious teams, gaining strategic insight in the industry and keeping pace with technological updates. “I got my first company car when I was 18 – a big thing then,” he adds.
Quilter struggles to pinpoint a significant low: “I am not a person who thinks about his low.”
So doesn’t he feel gloomy about the recession? “No. In fact, it’s helped the e-learning sector. The recession, advancing web technologies, pressure on budget and improved understanding of technologyenabled communications have determined the role of e-learning in business. It’s challenging but exciting.”
The education and publishing sector veteran has a busy 2010 schedule with his aim of making PSP Group an established player in the direct selling sector with new qualifications. The eternal optimist concludes with one of his favourite Churchill quotes: “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without losing any enthusiasm.”