PFD Foods Academy
PFD Foods is Australia’s largest, family-operated foodservice distributor delivering the widest range of foodservice products direct to commercial kitchens across Australia. The PFD Family consists of over 3000 employees located in over 70 branches across metropolitan and regional Australia.
With plenty of opportunities for career progression, PFD Foods have always valued the importance of Learning & Development, and many senior employees have been able to progress through the ranks to their current role thanks to the knowledge and work experience gained through the various development programs available.
PFD offered fantastic internal training programs as well as delivering traineeships. But those two different training options operated in complete isolation from each other. It was as though an individual would have two completely different learning journeys depending on whether they completed a traineeship or the internal training.
So why did they need Academy Ink?
While their internal training was running quite effectively via their Learning Management System, their traineeships were delivered via workbooks, PDFs and a lot of face to face training which often became quite disruptive to their day to day operations.
So PFD engaged the team at Academy Ink to bring those two pathways together and streamline the learning experience for their teams.
What we built for PFD
Our priority was to ensure that PFD’s internal training covered all the requirements for the Australian Qualification Framework (AQF). That would mean that all new team members joining the business and working through the PFD Foods Internal Training Programs would be learning exactly what they needed to be learning to get qualified.
Fortunately, we were able to map a large percentage of their existing training to the National Standards.
We also worked to identify any gaps in their existing training.
So now, all new employees complete the online PFD Foods induction, before branching off into specialised streams designed specifically for their job roles. The Sales, Warehouse and Driver streams contain a combination of tailored e-learning modules along with practical experiences and assessments for employees to learn on the job and be coached by supervisors and business mentors.
Being able to tailor those specific assessments that matched the various job roles was one of the most important outcomes we achieved because it made sure that each team member was receiving training that was truly relevant for their role.
Plus, by utilising our social mobile learning method, we were able to ensure their training would be engaging as well as effective.
What did they love about working with Academy Ink?
PFD loved that we didn’t disappear as soon as their programs had been launched. Which came in handy because the Transport & Logistics training package standards have changed 3 times since the launch of the PFD Academy.
But PFD didn’t have to worry about those changes, because Academy Ink were able to take on the responsibility of making the required updates and upgrades to the packages, each time they changed, ensuring that PFD’s courses always stayed up to date and relevant.
What they say.
Here’s what Kylie Baldac, PFD’s National Learning & Development Manager had to say about their experience working with us.
“We have always offered traineeships in our business using the traditional RTO delivery method of trainers and assessors visiting our sites and working with employees, with varied results.
We have found Academy Ink’s unique social mobile learning delivery method useful for us to streamline the content being delivered as well as allowing us full visibility and control over our trainees and their individual progress.
The trainees are more engaged and enjoy the flexibility of completing the content and assessments within a timeframe that suits them.
We are so pleased to be working with Hana and her team of experts to write training content that is tailored to our business, but still meets the national requirements. We are very happy with the PFD Academy program including all the extra details that Academy Ink thinks of. In particular, the learning journey and pathways really helped to communicate and engage with our staff because they had clear goals to work towards.”
Kylie Baldac, National Learning & Development Manager