Diversey has launched its cloud-based Hygiene Academy training platform for Food and Beverage professionals. The platform’s e-learning programme addresses one of the main challenges facing the sector globally – rapid staff turnover and the skills gap that occurs as a result. As a complete learning solution for companies of all sizes the Hygiene Academy offers flexible, cost-effective and convenient training in key aspects of hygiene across four main subject groupings. Integrating Diversey’s best-in-class knowledge enables any company to minimise risks to food safety and their brand reputation.
Diversey – the leading global hygiene and cleaning company – has launched its cloud-based Hygiene Academy training platform for Food and Beverage (F&B) professionals. The Hygiene Academy enables employers – including HR, Training, and Line Managers – to manage and develop their own tailored training programmes to improve the knowledge and skillsets of their manufacturing and processing staff. With hygiene fundamental in the F&B industries, integrating Diversey’s best-in-class knowledge into their operations is an essential step for any company wishing to minimise risks to food safety and their brand reputation.
Diversey tackle the skills gap with the power and convenience of e-learning
The Hygiene Academy’s e-learning programme recognises one of the most important issues in the F&B industry, as Diversey’s Global Food Safety Solutions Director, Fabrizio Tardioli, explains: “The skills gap is one of the main challenges the global food and beverage industries are facing today. The industry is characterised by frequent staff turnover and this means face-to-face training can be difficult to manage and very expensive. Ensuring that your workforce is trained to perform to their best is quite another challenge.” The urgency of the issue is reinforced by an Economist survey which reveals that 50% of food companies positioned labour challenges, and more specifically skilled labour, as their number one challenge.
Leveraging Diversey’s experience as a global leader in food safety hygiene solutions, Hygiene Academy courses enhance employees’ work-related skills, alongside knowledge of techniques required to progress to the next stage of their career. The benefits of the Hygiene Academy meet the three key challenges identified by a market research study into employment in the F&B market across the European Union. An ageing workforce highlights the need to develop staff in production roles, thereby ensuring progression into technical or managerial positions to counter any potential shortfall. Rapid innovation in processing technologies means site engineers, managers and technologists need “precise knowledge” on the systems and technologies in use. This is considered crucial: “Where public safety depends upon achieving the necessary degree of microbiological skill.” The study also considers labour productivity could be increased by improving the basic skills and knowledge of specific methods of production.
Diversey’s Hygiene Academy offers targeted solutions to training challenges and high employee turnover. It delivers effective management of training costs while embracing and driving a culture of quality and consistency throughout. With research showing that e-learning has the power to increase employee’s knowledge retention rate by up to 60%, the Hygiene Academy’s online bite-size training modules provide maximum convenience across all devices. Learners can be assigned to specific courses or course bundles. The course bundles are grouped under four main headings. Essential courses are dedicated to the basic principles of hygiene, while Application courses have been developed for specific hygiene applications commonly found in the F&B industry, such as: OPC, CIP and Bottle Washing. Process courses move participants on to an advanced level dedicated to site-wide best practices, including: GMP for Food plants, Hygienic Design and Allergens Management. The fourth bundle covers Specific microbes that pose key threats to food industry hygiene, impacting food and beverage production via direct or cross contamination – Listeria, Campylobacter, Biofilm and Salmonella.
Companies will find the Hygiene Academy an attractive option as there is no requirement to invest in expensive hardware or software, and training can be consistently delivered across the workforce. Accountability is ensured by tracking employee participation, with their performance and progress at employee, site and/or country level efficiently monitored through the user dashboard. Courses are now available in eight languages – English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Greek, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese – which, in addition to increasing the Academy’s global reach, supports customers employing an international workforce.
A learning management solution for everyone
The Hygiene Academy provides additional advantages to companies who can exploit the availability of a local subsidy, or who do not have the resources to implement and manage their own system. All courses have been assessed and are accredited by the CPD Certification Service and the platform exhibits powerful reporting capabilities which can be used for compliance/audit. Inbuilt flexibility allows corporate users to manage and deploy their own training courses from the same platform and corporate customers have two purchase options. The first offers the full LMS and reporting functionality, while the alternative provides access to the Diversey courses only. There is also the opportunity for purchasers to customise with their own branding.
Fabrizio Tardioli states: “Our experience so far reflects the Hygiene Academy’s total suitability for companies of all sizes. There is keen interest and take-up from global corporations as well as from small local accounts. As a complete learning solution the Hygiene Academy offers everything you need, from continuous learning to a commitment to career development; while we actively incorporate any relevant new developments in the F&B sector into the training materials. Our offer is unique as no other competitor or company has such an extensive catalogue of hygiene and food safety courses – or the assured quality that our global experience and reputation undoubtedly deliver to the market.”
For more information about Diversey’s Hygiene Academy please visit: www.hygieneacademy.diversey.com
