Balance between online and offline

At AgroTerra, the readiness of employees to harvest has been traditionally high, despite restrictive measures that have not yet been fully implemented in some regions. The company usually conducts Staff Exercises* to practice innovations before harvesting, but this year we had to look for new formats.

For example, due to quarantine restrictions, AgroTerra Academy has increased the share of online courses assigned to employees. In addition, the company has a network of internal trainers who have basic training skills and one hundred per cent knowledge of the material. They control the quality of learning in the field. A good addition to this is the many carefully written process instructions.

However, AgroTerra does not consider a full transition to online training. Full-time training is of higher quality and therefore more profitable: one personal training lesson would be sufficient where two online lectures are needed. When meeting in person, it is easier to monitor how the material is being learnt, to answer silent questions from the audience in time, and to control its involvement.

‘Distance learning cannot yet replace face-to-face learning, because in agriculture, not only theoretical training is important, but also the development of practical skills. And the problem is not even so much in transferring them, but in checking how they have been assimilated. An employee can know the theory brilliantly, and how he or she will work with his or her hands in practice is a question,’ explains Vadim Boev, head of the Personnel Training and Development Department.

It is not easy to find a balance between online and offline and the company will continue to work in this direction.

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*’Staff Exercises’ is a business game that takes place before each season. In the process, specialists build new chains of interaction, which after the game is reflected in cost reductions at various stages of production. The game has no analogues in the industry.