Sandra Oldfield
There is much in the news today about how technology is driving a wedge between people. Children and adults spend too much time with heads bent downward looking at small screens rather than talking to the person beside them, or the obsession with taking “selfies”.
It's easy to concentrate on how technology detracts from personal connections rather than promoting them, but technology has also brought our world closer together. You can speak to family and friends across the globe on video, you can organize those in your community quickly around an issue and you can be transported to anywhere at anytime with the tap of a screen or the click of a button. But, how can you apply these tools to your day-to-day operations at a winery, vineyard or farm? More specifically, how can technology be used to educate both consumers and employees without detracting from the main part of your business? I will discuss three examples of how free or inexpensive technology can be used to better inform consumers and train employees.
First is the simple video. It takes absolutely nothing to film a video about what you do and upload it to YouTube for sharing. The video can be planned in advance to cover a specific topic or be completely spontaneous. It can be meant to tell your customers what you’re doing but it can also be used to help show employees how you want a job task done. What better way to explain to people how or why you do something than for them to see it visually? Recently a vineyard worker at our winery spontaneously took out his iPhone and shot a quick 30-second video of us planting vines this spring. He put it on Facebook, and we've already thought of a dozen places we can use that video.
A bit more advanced than the simple video is making use of webinars (web seminars) for two-way communications that can be viewed later. Just search on Google for the many companies offering these services.
They are not intuitive to do when you start out so I recommend practicing with people in your own company first. Once you get the hang of it, webinars can be used as a support for your regular marketing efforts. We have used webinars to talk to our agents about a new wine release in two provinces at once, and we use them monthly to discuss one topic with consumers who tune in to ask us questions from far afield. Imagine siting at your winery in the winter, no visitors knocking on your door, but you are able to still interact with them.
Online education is one of my favourite technologies, and we’ve used it often to train employees. From YouTube demonstrations to online certifications to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), there are all kinds of online learning options out there. Online learning allows your employee to schedule the learning when it fits with his or her work schedule; it is done on site so there is no need for travel time and expenses; and the cost ranges from free to low cost to administer. Some examples of how our winery has used online learning include simple safety training from YouTube on fire extinguisher usage, paid certification for WHMIS (there are many out there, we use YOWCanada) and fully free (again, free!) university classes from Coursera, EdX or Udemy covering topics such as learning Excel, or exploring why consumers will choose to buy your product over your neighbors’.
Do you have time to do any of these things? It is possible you don't, but they can be great to use when times are slow. We work in seasonal businesses and making short videos, hosting a webinar and learning online are ways that education of both consumers and employees can continue year round. ■