SPOTLIGHT LADIES FIRST Tomorrow’s Contract Floors attends F. Ball’s Women in Flooring Course.
F. Ball & Co. Ltd. recently held another edition of its popular Women in Flooring Courses at its dedicated training facility, The F. Ball Centre of Excellence.
Taking place at the end of October, the two-day course drew female participants with diverse roles and experience within the flooring sector: from commercial contracting to retail and manufacturing.
Training covers all areas of subfloor preparation and adhesive selection and provides ample opportunity for the women to get hands-on with the products and gain practical knowledge that can only be learnt through application.
The first Women in Flooring course was held in 2016 and has proven so popular that they are now run twice a year with demand for even more. Lisa Shirley, F. Ball Marketing Communications Manager, said: “We started running the courses to help women to feel more comfortable working with the products, gain more technical knowledge and also to provide a networking opportunity for them to meet other women working in the sector.”
For Elaine Thomas, owner of Living Floors & More in Chester, this was one of the main attractions for attending. She said: I’ve worked in the flooring industry for 21 years and this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this, that’s female- focused. You can get so busy in your business that it’s very easy not to take time out, but the fact that this was a bit different and all-female made me go for it. It has been a great opportunity to meet other women. I do all of our estimating and pre-fit checks but I’ve never physically got hands on before.”
All attendees report that the course helps them to feel more confident in recommending products to clients and the fitters they work with. Michelle Beazley runs her company SMC Flooring, in Reading, with her husband Steve and daughter Cat, who is also on the course. Michelle explained that when customers come into the show room, they tend to go straight to Steve and ignore Cat in particular. “There can be a lot of bias,” said Cat. “Especially as I’m quite young, they overlook me. I’ve only been in flooring since last December so I don’t have as much knowledge but this course has really opened my eyes to all aspects of the job and being able to actually use the products has been much more useful than just talking about it.”
Megan Gardiner, senior estimator and buying manager at Blade Flooring, has worked in the industry for 12 years. “This is the first hands-on training I’ve done and it’s really broadened my knowledge,” she said. “The substrate training was really good as there were a couple that I’ve never come across before so it was great to be able to recognise those. I’ve also learnt about some products that can fix major issues for us and will actually save us some money as well.”
F. Ball offers free training courses to all flooring professionals throughout the year, including subfloor preparation, adhesive selection, LVT installation and a four-day masterclass for apprentices.
https://f-ball.com/en/training
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