Recession drives e-Learning adoption in the food sector.

As the global downturn starts to bite harder firms are being forced to find new ways to cut costs. Historically recessions cause businesses to cut back on staff training but with current legislation making many training courses mandatory businesses are being forced to innovate.Current EU legislation in the food sector requires that all food handlers must receive appropriate supervision, and be instructed and/or trained in food hygiene, to enable them to handle food safely. Those responsible for developing and maintaining the business's food safety procedures, based on HACCP principles, must have received adequate training. Whilst the legislation does not require a formal qualification as such, small business's are required to demonstrate the procedures they have in place for ensuring their staff are trained.Many small business's are now requiring staff applying for jobs to have already obtained a food hygiene certificate to even be considered for employment. Gary Fowler, Managing Director of High Speed Training the UK's leading provider of food hygiene training says:“Since September when the global downturn began we have seen a 70% increase in sales of our food related e-Learning products. SME's and individuals increasingly need a fast, convenient and low cost solution to meeting EU legislation that classroom based training simply can't accommodate.”Whilst large companies have utilised the benefits of in-house custom e-Learning solutions for some time, smaller companies are often unable to manage the up front costs many of these solutions require. This is particularly unfortunate as  SME's tend to incur larger costs when utilising traditional training methods as they find gathering staff together in one place to train can bring their business to a standstill. Many of the biggest online training providers don't target small business as the average sale is usually too small. The rise in “off the shelf” e-Learning is an indication that the situation is improving, hopefully leading to efficient training for all business's in the future.With no end to the recession yet in sight hopefully technology can provide some much needed relief for our beleaguered  business's. In the long run perhaps the lessons learned may even prove to be worth the struggle?