By Jack Nelson
Today, we bring you a guest post from Jack Nelson, SkillSoft VP of Global Business Development. Jack and his team are the driving force behind our exciting new SkillBuilder offering announced today.
Few training challenges are more difficult than those faced by operators of fast casual or quick service restaurants (QSR). The workforce tends to be young and inexperienced. Turn-over is high. And there’s never enough time, or even adequate space, to train employees on everything they need to know. Still, well-trained employees are the key to delivering a consistent, high-quality customer experience, so providing training isn’t optional.
Over the past eight years, SkillSoft has provided web-based e-learning courseware to the fast casual and QSR customers like Dave & Busters and Subway. Our experience in the development of e-learning for both franchisor and franchisee led us to the creation of Service Industry Professional (SIP) SkillBuilder, a targeted high impact, low cost learning solution for the QSR sector, which we announced today. The SIP SkillBuilder program is designed to help chain operators quickly develop high-impact training for all of their restaurants, at a lower cost than building training courses completely from scratch.
We formally introduced the seven-course SIP SkillBuilder Foundation Curriculum at the Council of Hospitality and Restaurant Trainer (CHART) event in July in New Orleans. SkillSoft engaged industry subject matter experts in the development of the SkillBuilder Foundation Curriculum. Each course is structured as a template and QSR customers provide course-specific objects to create customized learning courses for their franchisees. SIP SkillBuilder solutions also include SkillPort hosting and experienced QSR implementation support services.
Each Foundation course is developed in an instructionally-sound, e-learning course template with a duration of approximately 30 minutes. Foundation courses cover the essential knowledge and offer practical knowledge application in each topic area:
- Customer Service
- Creating a Professional Atmosphere
- Security
- Handling Cash
- Cleaning Customer Service Areas
- Hand Washing & Customer Illness
- Shift Leader Orientation
As the screen shot above shows, clients provide text, graphics and photographs to uniquely customize each course to be consistent with their organization’s branding and service guidelines. SkillSoft builds the final course and clients provide their review and approval through the SkillSoft Enhanced Reviewer Tool.
We hope to able to share with you information from some of our SkillBuilder early adopters as part of our Innovations in E-learning series. In the meantime, for more information, e-mail our custom solutions team at customsales@skillsoft.com.


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