Way With Words Transcription recently
conducted one of their newest workshops, a workshop turning out to be quite
popular: How To Start A Home-Based
Transcription Service.
And why is the community so receptive?
Small businesses are crucial for job creation and employment: 45 percent of all employed people in South Africa work in companies with fewer than 10 employees.
Perhaps because of the increasingly
difficult job market. Perhaps because working from home is more and more
frequently the creative choice to success for a parent. Perhaps because of the lack of awareness of
transcription as a career. Perhaps
because of misconceptions surrounding transcription as a professional industry.
Perhaps because of the misunderstandings of transcription as merely ‘one of
those little secretarial services’…
Well, perhaps it is up to Way With Words
Transcription to set the transcription record straight, and in so doing, take
transcription to the community.And why is the community so receptive?
Clearly, South Africa, like much of the
world, is in the grip of a recession. Businesses are closing down. There are job losses on a frightening
scale. Millions of South Africans are
unemployed and underemployed. South
Africa lags behind other developing countries in promoting the growth and
sustainability of small businesses.
Eight in 100 adult South Africans owns a business that is less than 3.5
years old – significantly behind other low to middle income countries, where on
average, 13 out of 100 adults are building new businesses.
For a variety of reasons, South Africa’s
large businesses have not been creating jobs on the scale needed to lower the
unemployment rate. With unemployment as
this country’s central and most salient problem, a top priority must be to grow
small businesses and in particular, to provide appropriate support and a
conducive environment for opportunity-driven entrepreneurs who want to establish
a new business, whether out of necessity or because they recognise and seize the
opportunity.Small businesses are crucial for job creation and employment: 45 percent of all employed people in South Africa work in companies with fewer than 10 employees.
So, teaching peoples to transcribe and to establish
their own home-based transcription service is a gift to the community from Way
With Words Transcription.
It’s our way of driving economic growth,
creating employment, and being a source of innovation and new ideas.
This particular workshop, starting a
home-based transcription service, is designed to equip and prepare an attendee
to offer transcription services from home, covering the business of
transcription and the details about starting your own transcription service. Attendees
receive individual and
personalised attention. Not only do our facilitators have practical knowledge
and professional experience in transcription, they are also experienced in
facilitating adult learning.
Topics, helpful and
practical, cover the skills and character attributes needed to be a transcriber,
the required equipment, software suggestions, strategies for marketing one’s
services, legal aspects to be aware of, security and confidentiality issues,
rating audio, working out costs, drawing up client agreements, pitfalls and
challenges to avoid, and tips for providing a superior professional service.
The question that keeps arising, however, is
why?
If Way With Words Transcription is itself in the business of
transcription, why offer to teach
others in the community how to transcribe and start their own home-based transcription
service? Won’t we lose clients? Won’t we
be undercut by smaller services with lower overhead and smaller staff who can therefore
undercut in price as well?
But here’s precisely why Way With Words Transcription is eager and willing to offer this
and other workshops surrounding transcription – because Way With Words
Transcription isn’t small, isn’t engaged in any price wars, and isn’t looking
for clients with low volumes of work. Way
With Words Transcription is targeting an entirely different market, entirely
different clients, than a home-based transcription service will target.
Way With Words Transcription is global,
with high end, high volume, high value clients like the Financial Times, the
International Criminal Court, the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace, and we deliver
high quality transcripts all over the world.
These clients don’t want or expect a price war--that’s not what’s important
to them. What is important is that transcripts get turnaround quickly: high
volume, high capacity, high speed, never once compromising the high excellence
of the transcript.
Because we have an exceptional capacity for volumes as compared to an individual
service provider or small transcription business, training people in workshops
is not training competitors; it is training co-professionals who will have
small local transcription services.
We spoke briefly to two attendees of the
recent workshop, who felt, like the others, that the workshop resonated with
value.
What
was particularly helpful about the workshop? The
theory covered was helpful not just in getting started in industry, but how to
go about various aspects of working from home. It provided insights and clarity
into a field that I know now I can pursue.
Has
the workshop equipped you the knowledge and confidence to enter the market as a
transcriber?
Yes, it highlighted challenges, opportunities, and ‘possible pitfalls’
of the industry that I was unaware of prior to attending.
Way With
Words Transcription is in full agree of one attendee who said: It would be good to have these workshops taken into the community
as an extension of marketing the industry, as little is known about
transcription in our communities. This
will really contribute to the well-being of our society.
Way With Words Transcription is looking to professionalize
transcription, to educate the community about the service and what
transcription requires, how to transcribe well, and how to earn money. Essentially,
we are striving to set the gold standard in transcription, both locally and globally.
And Way With Words Transcription is right
now taking this gold standard into the local community, educating, teaching,
empowering, sharing transcription as a way to earn an income. In an
increasingly tough job market, Way With Words Transcription is happily
spreading knowledge and opportunity to those who attend their workshops and
commit themselves to such an endeavor.
To learn more about Way With Words’
upcoming workshops, please visit www.waywithwords.info.
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