By Shamsiya Hussainpoor
Belgrave’s famous steam train operator, Puffing Billy has taken up an upskilling course facilitated by Typsy to help managers and staff thrive more effectively.
Typsy, an education technology company that provides online learning and training to the hospitality industry has partnered with Victoria Tourism Industry Council (VTIC) to improve Victoria’s tourism operators – this partnership, Puffing Billy and its employees have access to the platform to complete micro-credentialing programs.
The partnership between VTIC and Typsy is open to all tourism, events and hospitality businesses across Victoria, and they don’t have to be a member of any other entity.
Typsy head of growth Felicity Thomlinson said it allows businesses to support new people to the industry to learn about hospitality and tourism skills.
“With hospitality and tourism, there’s always skill shortages, and that’s often affected by many factors, any way that businesses can be supported to attract and retain their staff is a great win and a great support for businesses to thrive,” she said.
“We’re trying to do our bit to help any business that are struggling to find staff or retain staff, we know training can make a significant difference to staff retention – if they’ve had a good onboarding for example, then they’ve got good talent development that can actually help more staff stay within businesses, these benefits both the business and the industry.”
This program has been running for the past 12 months, it can be accessed online On Demand.
“They can watch it from their mobile device anywhere and anytime, and all the modules are under and hour long,” she said.
The course is not only available to businesses but also to individuals.
“Anyone in any hospitality or tourism business across Victoria can access the VTIC program, any high school student looking at getting some part time work in hospitality, can apply for these courses.”
Puffing Billy’s Way and Works Manager Shayne Nichols is one of the employees who has embraced the opportunity to upskill and lead his team more effectively.
“The course has pointed out some really important stuff like, slips, trips, and falls which we have issues with because of the nature of where our people work,” Mr Nichols said.
“It teaches you so many skills, from recognising and reporting to the softer skills that were particularly good for myself, the rail supervisor and even our team leader – where it’s leading and motivating teams, improving relationships with your teams.”
“The difference between managing and leading, managing is very much [focusing on] rosters and budgets, whereas leading is the relationships with the team, paying attention to those soft skills like, how to communicate effectively, having empathy and asking questions and getting to the root causes for all the things.”
Though the course is not mandatory for all staff, it’s highly recommended for team leaders to take part in.
“The branch manager who’s now retired, decided what he thought was good for me, and then I did the same for my team,” he said.
Majority of the learning modules were optional, all the team members were asked to complete the work health and safety, and the slips, trips and falls module, while Mr Nichols himself has completed many of the modules.
According to the LinkedIn Learning 2024 Workplace Learning Report, companies with a strong culture of learning and development, experience 57 per cent better retention of staff.
Mr Nichols said the program really brings that “emotional intelligence” above the surface.
“Dealing with the day-to-day things, whether it’s communication issues, conflict, engaging the teams, as well as the vision, and what makes it unique for me is we’ve got maintenance people – guys on the tools that are doing this training are getting a purpose out of it,” he said.
“Personally, for me it’s about improving my leadership skills and being an effective leader, being a manager and a leader – it’s like wearing two hats, it’s important to understand that.”
“It doesn’t only focus on skills but goes even as deep as tools for any self-doubt, it doesn’t matter whether you got a small amount of experience or 20 years of experience like me you can still get something from this training.”
Once all the courses have been completed on Typsy, the learner must successfully complete a quiz that focuses on the key learning outcome from the course to achieve the digital ‘certification’ or ‘credential’.
This course is only free until the end of September, if you are interested in accessing this course, get in touch with Typsy.
