instore - November 2016 - COM6

Food Safety:

Going mobile with
staﬀ training
by Ryan Atkinson

he world of retail foodservice and
its suppliers has seen an explosion of new technology in recent
years - everything from point-of-sale
systems that work with the cloud to mobile payments and ordering to QR codes
that help with inventory and food safety
monitoring.

All of these - and so many more - advancements make day-to-day life easier
for managers, employees, customers and
consumers at nearly every step along
the way, from production to purchase.
But there is one area where utilization
of new technologies can make perhaps a
huge difference. Training employees on
phones and other mobile devices is now
a possibility.
The prevalence of MOOCs - Massive
Open Online Courses - makes it easy
and efficient to deliver mobile training
with unlimited participation and open
access via the web. And with two-thirds
of Americans owning smartphones, ac-

cording to Pew Research, this web-based
training can be delivered right to employees, regardless of time or place.

Taming turnover troubles
In environments that see high employee
turnover, mobile training can play an
even bigger, more important role. Many
times, printed learning materials or
classroom settings complete with PowerPoint presentations and quizzes are the
go-to training methods. These activities
eat up enough time as it is, but throw in
repeated training due to rapid turnover
and the time commitment skyrockets.
Utilizing a mobile training method, with
employees consuming content - like
video and animations - at their own
pace on phones and tablets can lead to
more efficient training and free up managers to perform other tasks instead of
leading repetitive training sessions.

Managing millennials
Perhaps an overlooked factor in training is the simple fact that many people
entering today's workforce are just not
accustomed to performing a lot of work
on paper. Recent graduates - and even
older employees who have embraced
new tech - do everything online, from
taking notes, reading newspapers, paying bills and applying for jobs.
Printed content, besides rarely being
up-to-date, is commonly shunned by millennial workers who are accustomed to
digital media.
In fact, many providers of mobile training use that as a selling point. Schoox,
a mobile learning management system,

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

6 * NOVEMBER 2016

commissary INSIDER

It's a smartphone
world
* Two-thirds of Americans own a
smartphone.
* 15 percent of Americans ages 18-29
are listed as "heavily dependent" on
a smartphone for online access.
* In 2013, global smartphone
shipments passed the one billion
mark for the ﬁrst time.
* Sources estimate the global
shipment of phablets - phones with
a screen ﬁve inches or larger - will
reach 146 million units in 2016.
* In 2015, global mobile data traﬃc
amounted to 3.7 exabytes per
month. That number is expected to
reach 30.6 exabytes per month by
2020.
* More than 50 percent of the global
mobile phone population accessed
the internet from their phone in
2015. That number is expected to
grow to 61.2 percent in 2018.
SOURCES: PEW RESEARCH, STATISTA

says its product can "deliver learning to
a new generation that you know lives
on their mobile device." Schoox claims
to offer a highly intuitive, social, mobile
interface that is designed especially for
Gen Y and millennial workers.
Courses can be created quickly and easily to train staff members, as well as partners and even customers. Custom access
and assignment rules can be created
based on appropriate criteria.
These programs can also feed into today's social networking aspects of personal and professional life. Many include
the capability to allow employees who
pass training and tests to post badges on
social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter,
Facebook and more.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of instore - November 2016