Introducing The HGA Licensed Instructor Initiative…
For the last few years The Holistic Grooming Academy has been built around one simple belief: that the welfare of dogs should come before grooming aesthetics.
Grooming education should help us better understand canine behaviour and it should consider the individual needs of dogs more, than the breed standards of specific coat types.
What began as an idea has since then grown into what you all now know as the HGA Behaviour Grooming Diploma - an advanced online course that has supported hundreds of professional groomers around the world in pursuit of a more compassionate and dog-led grooming career.
And now, I am so excited to move onto an entirely new chapter that aims to put our amazing curriculum on the map once and for all.
So here it is, the HGA Licensed Training Instructor initiative.
Why now?
For a long time our education has been delivered centrally.
This has allowed me to remain completely involved with each learner and protect the principles, content and standards that sit behind the Behaviour Grooming Diploma. But this has also created a natural limit that I have found particularly challenging while also trying to raise a young family at home.
I have realised that there is only so much education one person can deliver, and if I genuinely want behaviour-led, welfare-centred grooming practice to become more widely accessible, then eventually that knowledge needs to be able to travel farther than The HGA can take it alone.
The answer, however, was never going to be simply handing someone the course materials and allowing them to teach - this is probably the biggest obstacle I’ve came to face thus far in this journey.
While I’ve always known that I alone cannot take the course where it needs to be, I have never been comfortable with the idea of selling the rights to the course to just anyone either (hence why I’ve never gone down the qualification route).
Education carries responsibility.
When somebody chooses the HGA diploma, they need to trust the education they receive, the assessment process they undertake, and the certification they ultimately earn is an investment into their future - this is what I’ve spent so long building The HGA up to achieve, and this is what I want to preserve and protect.
I’ve spent considerable time thinking about how we can grow our community without losing the standards and values in which it has been built, and I truly believe this is the most risk-free way to do just that.
What does ‘HGA Licensed Training Instructor’ mean?
An HGA Licensed Training Instructor is an independent professional who has been approved and licensed to deliver our Behaviour Grooming Diploma through their own professional grooming business.
The licence gives experienced professional groomers the opportunity to grow their own business through our education.
This isn’t about creating a network of tutors working for the HGA (this is already something we have in place) - instead, all instructors work for their business and operate under their own salon branding much the same as a salon teaching the Level 3 City & Guilds.
With this in mind, instructors will be able to recruit their own learners, determine their own tuition fees and develop their own teaching style that works for them. Some may choose to teach small numbers of learners alongside their existing grooming work, while others may develop workshops, practical training days or blended learning opportunities around our core program.
What’s more, every instructor will bring their own experience, personality and teaching style to the board, while myself and tutors of the HGA will remain dedicated to ensuring the course content remains relevant, up-to-date and consistent with the latest science.
What does it involve and why do it?
First: why? It’s a way for our graduates to earn back their initial investment into their own education and some. Instructors will also be giving back to other groomers looking to start their own journey into a more holistic and welfare-led grooming career through our education.
The HGA Licensed Instructor course involves a series of modules designed to prepare the groomer for this next exciting chapter of their career.
What I personally love about it is the flexibility it gives our instructors, who can choose to teach our learning materials in a range of different ways depending on their own salon facilities and vision for modern and supportive grooming education.
While you get to teach our curriculum, we remain committed to ensuring that the way our course is taught remains consistent, fair and ever-supportive of learners and their own individual learning needs. We support our instructors in helping to maintain the highest quality standards in a range of ways designed to make the process and journey enjoyable and efficient.
For many experienced professionals, there eventually comes a point where they begin thinking about how their career might evolve beyond grooming - there is no denying that there is a degree of “wear and tear” on the groomer’s body.
Education, in my eyes, can provide an equally rewarding path for those of us ready to move on, or at very least, take some physical pressure off. Experienced groomers have an enormous amount of professional knowledge to share, and so becoming an HGA Licensed Training Instructor provides an opportunity to turn some of that experience into something more tangible.
We aren’t promising anybody a particular income or business outcome, but we are offering an inroad to our amazing course and all it has to offer.
Who is it for?
Any active graduate of the HGA is eligible to apply for their instructor certificate with the HGA. Additionally, we also are open-minded to accepting individuals with an equivalent, albeit alternative, learning history and certification along with reasonable experience working within a professional grooming business. We would welcome anyone with an interest in becoming an HGA Instructor and would not want an individual put off from applying just because they feel they aren’t “qualified” to do so.
Basically anyone with a love and passion for working holistically and compassionately with dogs, and a strong desire to help champion a more welfare-led grooming standard is welcome to apply.
Successful applicants will undertake a dedicated Training Instructor Programme covering areas such as adult learning, teaching and learning support, assessment, constructive feedback, practical teaching, canine welfare, quality assurance and the responsibilities associated with delivering HGA education.
Applicants will also need to demonstrate that they can appropriately apply HGA assessment standards.
Only once the required preparation and approval process has been completed will an individual be able to become licensed.
Protecting our integrity
Of course, as our beloved HGA grows, protecting the integrity of our diploma becomes even more important.
Under the new model, Licensed Training Instructors will teach and assess their own learners against HGA’s established assessment criteria, and we will provide quality assurance oversight, which may include sampling assessment decisions, reviewing learner work and practitioner feedback, standardisation activities and additional support where needed.
Mandatory and official HGA certification will continue to be issued centrally by The Holistic Grooming Academy upon request for a small processing fee per student.
Seeking our Founding Training Instructors
I’m deliberately starting small. Rather than immediately building a large instructor network, the first stage of this initiative will involve working closely with a very small number of founding HGA Licensed Training Instructors.
They’ll be among the first professionals to complete the new preparation process and deliver the Behaviour Grooming Diploma independently under HGA Licence.
More importantly, they will help me to refine it.
Their experiences will help shape our trainer resources, standardisation processes, quality assurance systems and the practical realities of delivering HGA education through independent training businesses.
I want to learn what works best before we scale it up.
A bigger future for HGA
Obviously this represents a fairly significant change in how I think about the future of The Holistic Grooming Academy.
I genuinely believe I have carried it as far as I possibly can on my own, and it’s finally ready to travel beyond the limitations of my office in Scotland.
I know that in order for the course to make the biggest impact, it needs to infiltrate more workplaces, more trade shows, and more events.
While we are already a successful international business online, I want to see the curriculum taught within professional salons as well.
Therefore this is the plan as we nearer 2027…
to find the best educators to deliver our diploma
to support them in this next big business adventure
to (finally) reach more professional groomers
If we can do this while maintaining the standards and welfare principles upon which the HGA was built, then the Academy can have an impact far beyond anything I could ever hope for, and that definitely feels like the right direction for us as a community, and as a family.
Applications are officially open for 2027
Applications to discuss becoming an HGA Licensed Training Instructor are now OPEN!
If you’re a former graduate of the Behaviour Grooming Diploma, and/or hold an equivalent certification alongside your official grooming qualification, we want to hear from you. Applicants must share our commitment to behaviour, welfare and thoughtful education.
Stephanie Zikmann
Founder, The Holistic Grooming Academy