The Garden Centre Association’s (GCA) e-learning Garden Retail Online Workshops (GROW) modules on social distancing helped prepare members for re-opening after lockdown.
Antony Snow, the GCA’s Instructional Designer for GROW, said: “When garden centres across the country closed, no-one imagined how different things would be when they re-opened, so to put together modules on something that was unprecedented was a huge feat, but one that allowed staff to train and prepare for social distancing before the reopening of centres and in the immediate weeks afterwards.
“The two e-learning courses focused on the considerations involved to ensure that social distancing was maintained and therefore a safe environment was created for employees and customers.
“Although we are now all familiar with social distancing and our member garden centres have done us extremely proud with all the measures they have put into place, the modules still serve as a useful refresher tool that staff can refer back to periodically, to eliminate ‘Covid fatigue’. We regularly update our modules to meet with new guidelines as needed as well.”
As well as being available to GCA member garden centres, the GROW facility is also available to Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) garden centre members. The 98 modules include a wide range of topics that cover horticulture, customer service, health and safety, food safety and regulated sales.
The accredited health and safety and food safety topics are categorised as either level one or two.
Following on from GROW’s success in 2020, the GCA will be launching a variety of new modules in 2021, including a series on Environmental Issues/The Environment, of which greener gardening will be a part of. Other new modules cover poisonous plants and a till security module that will provide an overview of the best practises for checkout staff to follow to ensure that they don’t become the victim of fraud.
