Building eLearning for restaurant industry – logistical and language considerations

Aug 09, 2017

Hello! 

I'm going to be building onboarding and continuing education eLearning for a new restaurant chain. I'm seeing some potential barriers to implementation, and I'm wondering if anyone has had similar experience, whether in this industry or in one with similar issues:

1. Language: A large percentage of the training population speaks Spanish predominately. Is the only option using a translation service? I'm in L&D and there's not a ton of budget for this. I know it can be pricey. 

2. Timing/hardware: We can't assume that the training population has access to a computer/internet at home, and because they are hourly employees, we really cannot require them to do any training on their own time. Would we need to have computers/tablets at each location? We also have a lot of trainees at a time, so access to a computer could be tough. How have you addressed these types of logistical challenges?

 

Thank you so much for your insight and thoughts. Very much appreciated.

1 Reply
Bob S

Hi Maggie,

Great questions. Regarding #2... As you pointed out, in most cases you must pay hourly employees for training time. So rather than attempting some complex approach of actually tracking screen time, simply scheduling and paying them for a certain number of training hours is much more manageable (and compliant). The trick is going to be reaching an agreement with the business leaders on how much time/payroll dollars they are willing to invest to properly onboard employees, and then properly estimating the average time it will take employees to complete the activities.

The way we've handled this in the past is to build/publish an onboarding calendar for the employees and schedule X amount of time per shift over the first number of shifts for dedicated training time. Perhaps it's an extra 30 minutes for the first 8 shifts or some such.

This approach also allows you to more effectively share limited computer resources by having the individual location aware that they need to book x amount of time per shift to do the onboarding activities...

  • Susie is scheduled from 3-3:30 training time, then 3:30 to 11 server time
  • Mark is schedule from 3-4 server time, 4-4:30 training time, and 4:30 to 11 server time again

Hope this helps!

 

 

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.