Training In The Food And Beverage Industry: Identifying And Filling Potential Gaps
Well, an industry of this size must have millions, even billions of employees worldwide (unfortunately no global data was available). The problem is that those millions/billions of employees do not receive proper training. And how do we know that? Through research, obviously.
According to a recent study, almost 52% of employees working in the F&B industry only receive training when they join their organization, and then never again. That alone is enough to describe the state of employee Learning and Development in this industry. But that, unfortunately, is not all. Of the 48% of employees that do receive regular training, only 4.5% received any training regarding their company’s mission and values. How can an employee be expected to relate the company’s values and mission when they don’t know it themselves? What’s worse, 70% of F&B employees say that they have never received any customer-service training. Very disturbing considering the fact that 89% of employees in the F&B industry are in roles where they have to deal with customers face-to-face.
After having a look at these statistics, it is safe to say that the state of training in the F&B industry is in a complete disorder. Most of these stats scream ‘lack of training’ in the F&B industry. So what is the solution? Like most industries, the F&B industry could use corporate eLearning programs to get the state of their training back on track. In addition to that, there are other steps that can be taken to improve training in F&B. Let us discuss those.
1. Ask Employees What Type Of Training They Require
According to the study mentioned above, most employees look for training that can help them get promoted. While this is not very specific, it does tell us that employees in the F&B industry wish to improve but cannot, simply because they either do not get training at all or do not get the training they require. This can be solved by asking employees what type of training they would like to focus on, and providing them with it. This is a great way to motivate and empower employees. Not surprisingly, the second on the list of things employees wish to train in is customer service. This is an area that needs to be given due focus when providing training to employees (preferably eLearning).
2. Go For eLearning
One of the biggest problems the F&B industry encounters in terms of training is that there is no concept of continuous learning. As we learned from stats, more than half of F&B employees never receive more than onboarding training, which is most likely a face-to-face training. This needs to be replaced with regular eLearning modules at a set frequency so that the employees learn continuously. The frequency doesn’t need to be too closely packed either. A training session every six months has been shown to provide satisfactory results. Also, eLearning has already been proven to provide the maximum engagement in comparison to any other training or learning methodology, and this is the best bet to improve the state of training at any F&B company or organization.
3. Don’t Forget To Keep The Learning “Human”
The F&B industry is one with lots of human contact. It is natural for an industry in which dealing with customers is the primary skill needed to prefer face-to-face training. It might be a better form of training anyhow. However, studies have shown that F&B employees who took eLearning courses have better retention than those that were trained by instructors face-to-face. Having said that, amalgamating the “human touch” with eLearning has often shown tremendous benefits, particularly in industries such as F&B where, as mentioned before there are a lot of physical interactions. Blended learning would be perfect for the F&B industry, and eLearning courses can be accompanied with sessions by managers or any other mentors. The right amount of eLearning with the right amount of traditional training has been found the perfect recipe for many an industry.
