What does a training course mean to you? Overheated conference rooms being talked through endless PowerPoint slides and the occasional role play? Or perhaps online training, that you try and fit into a busy schedule? Squeezed budgets have resulted in more and more training being delivered in this way.
Research has shown that most employees would rather have face-to-face and interactive training, and believe they learn more in this way. This is not only true in communications, strategy and project skills training but also in wider industry. In fact you can learn as much from interaction with other attendees and their experiences than just from the class.
A focused activity with active participation can be a more a productive, memorable and cost effective learning experience for employees. By taking people out of their office space to a different ‘neutral’ environment can also enhance the learning experience.
Cookery based training and team building events offered by The Cooking Academy allow employees to practise skills – transferrable from the office to the kitchen in a unique ‘low-risk’ environment. The Bake Off and Ready Steady Cook activities require time management, strategic planning, project planning, management and leadership skills as well as teamwork. The activities allow require people to work in unfamiliar circumstances, i.e. training (industrial) kitchen. There is exactly the right amount of equipment and ingredients, which means careful planning and execution of the strategy and plan is essential. One minor error and your recipe is compromised.
The feedback from both employers and participants on these types of training experience and the benefits people have gained has been extremely positive. Many people cannot believe what they can achieve in 90 minutes! How much fun they have had doing it, which also enhances the learning experienced and they get to eat the results!!
It resets the base line of the ‘art of the possible’ – i.e. what you can get done!
This type of training can be particularly effective for time management, streamlining, business efficiency and process management.
At The Cooking Academy we work with businesses large and small, using cooking to deliver more effective training programs (often as one part of a conference based training event) to nurture more team engagement, recruit top staff and work with local communities as part of their social responsibility.
We host corporate cooking events in London, Oxford, Reading, Slough, Cambridge, Birmingham and the wider South East either at one of our partner venues, a location of your choice or even your office.
Our events are entirely managed by our team of chefs and event managers; we provide all necessary equipment, ingredients and even a mobile kitchen where required, so all you need to do is turn up, enjoy and benefit from the days activities.
Discover how cooking can help your business, download our corporate brochure or contact me on Kumud@thecookingacademy.co.uk or call me on 01923 778880.
Kumud Gandhi is a Nutritional Food Scientist bestselling Author, Broadcaster, and Keynote Speaker on the subject of nutritional health for productivity & performance in the workplace. In 2010 Kumud founded ‘The Cooking Academy’ a cookery school that focusses on cooking for nutritional health and wellbeing. Kumud regularly presents to international audiences on a variety of topics such as ‘Eating for Immunity and a Lifetime of Wellness’. She is an expert in the field of Wellness in the Workplace and works with organizations to create transformational change in employee health & well-being through nutrition and health coaching.
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