The wine and brandy industry is seeking to be an employer of choice for talented individuals by retaining and growing talent, attracting the best training service providers and creating opportunities for individuals to further develop themselves all in a collective effort to drive profitability, global competitiveness and sustainability.

Although the industry trains employees throughout the year, up until now it has not been able to maximise on the return on investment.

This can be ascribe to various reasons, such as the training done currently is not captured on a central system and therefore the full extent of training in the industry is unknown, some learners that completed training do not have proof of their training, qualifications and employment, best practice training service providers are unable to advertise their services to producers, there is no platform/forum available for producers to report gaps in training which is needed by their employees and businesses and industry bodies, such as South African Liquor Brands Association (Salba), VinPro and Winetech are unable to accurately report, guide and leverage on the training that is currently being done by their members.

This is then why the industry commissioned a project to create a learner management system to benefit all stakeholders involved in or employed by the industry. This project takes its directive from Wise and is part of the implementation of the greater learning and development strategy being driven through the new Learning and Development desk at Wine Industry Network for Expertise and Technology (Winetech).

The vision of the project is to further develop an industry built on the capabilities of its people.

The LMS kicked off beginning this month and all interested stakeholders can visit the website at www.sawineandbrandylms.info or alternatively contact [email protected] for more information.