If you’re working for a growing, family-owned food manufacturer, chances are you don’t wear only one hat.
“As a small company, we are all required to fill our day to the fullest and utilize our skills and abilities to the best of our ability so our HR director has more than just one job, and Rootwurks helps her stay organized.”
Brooke Rehberg, the Director of Administration and Quality Assurance at Homeland Baking, told Rootwurks how the Learning Experience Platform makes the hassle and headaches out of onboarding.
“It makes both her life and my life a lot easier.”
As Brooke described it, the company previously would train new hires by providing them with a handout to read. They would acknowledge that they understand the assignment and then begin on-the-job training. But sometimes things get lost in translation - regardless of the language.
“What we find with the frontline workforce is there is often a learning barrier with reading - whether in English or Spanish. Everyone learns best in different ways as well, so a video where we can have audio and visual [components] is just a much better way to introduce these to them.”
She added that “having the video as a precursor has been instrumental in helping people understand in a way that makes sense to them.”
Based out of a production facility in Claremore, Oklahoma, Homeland Baking produces the brand “Mitchell’s Sausage Rolls,” packaged, pre-cooked sausage rolls sold in convenience stores, Costco, and grocery store chain Reasors. A little over half of the company’s business is in co-manufacturing for other brands.
In an interview with Rootwurks back in July, Rehberg discussed the company’s expansion since it was purchased six years ago by father and son-in-law Greg Reynolds and Christopher Gill.
She said the company has grown from 5 to 6 production batches 2 to 3 days a week, to between 30 to 40 batches per day, 5 days a week. She said they also plan to double their number of employees over the next year and to launch several new products.
Like any expanding company, the workload for Homeland Baking is increasing while the hours in the day seem to contract.
Brooke said the company uses Rootwurks enterprise learning courses to teach new hires about personal hygiene, handwashing, sanitary PPE, and food allergens. She said the four courses covering these subjects are all part of the custom learning plan she developed for new hires using Rootwurks.
“One really great thing about the enterprise courses and checklists is that they already contain many of the things that many companies that are involved in food and beverage need and then you can take those and customize them without having to build it from scratch, this is a very helpful feature and one of the big reasons we went with Rootwurks as a training program.”
Brooke said that when the company considered LMS options, “there were some that were 100% automated and others that were very basic and you could only do words. But Rootwurks is a really good combination of being able to make things on your own or take things that are already there and just tweak them to make things easier for yourself.”
She said the company plans to use the Rootwurks platform for compliance management further down the road, and is currently utilizing Rootwurks checklists mainly for entry and exit checks.
When asked to pick her favorite part about using Rootwurks, Brooke said “the fact that you have so many enterprise courses both in English and Spanish is the most beneficial aspect because it lets you hit the ground running with implementing the training, giving you time to create other custom content.”
She added that for compliance “the fact that you have the entire SQF code with all the audit questions available so all you have to do is fill it out, that’s immensely helpful.”
To read more about how Rootwurks solutions have helped Homeland Baking with training and onboarding, check out our latest case study here.