by Nancy Tucker
Invest in Your Future with PMA Educational Resources

Produce Marketing Association (PMA) is well known for its international convention and exposition, Fresh Summit, held each fall. Yet PMA is much more than just a week in October at a convention – PMA offers year-round value that connects, informs and delivers business solutions to enhance members’ prosperity. To inform our readers about PMA's many and varied activities designed specifically for its worldwide members, Fresh Plaza is publishing a series of articles about PMA's activities.

In difficult economic times like these, companies’ first response often tends to be to cut expenses that seem less essential in the short term – including professional development. However, this may not serve your company in the long term.  Instead, PMA  and the PMA Foundation for Industry Talent (PMA FIT) encourage members to look for opportunities to fortify and expand your business through increasing staff skills and reducing turnover.  

In fact, a strong commitment to professional development can benefit your company’s bottom line in a variety of ways. PMA’s consumer research found that consumers will switch retail stores to get better produce, and that well-educated store personnel can boost consumers’ produce purchases. Meanwhile, today’s younger employees increasingly expect strong professional development programs as a condition of employment – and professional development is essential to grooming your next generation of company leaders.

You don’t need to do all the work yourself; look for trusted allies to serve as your outsourced professional development partner. PMA offers an increasing range of educational opportunities through a variety of formats to serve our global community.

Our E-ssentials training platform offers retail training through a variety of channels – online, on-site and self-directed – to help keep produce clerks and managers’ skills up to date. Courses for clerks include food safety, customer service, merchandising, and care and handling of the top 20 fruits and vegetables. Managerial-level topics include sales promotion, interviewing techniques and goal setting. Courses can be conveniently taken online, anytime, anywhere. By late April, we will also offer seminars that can be taught at your location, and self-guiding workbooks for your own staff use. All E-ssentials produce-specific course offerings are available in English and Spanish.

A host of merchandising materials is also available from PMA, at lower or no cost to members. These include a cooler planogram poster, a handwashing poster and a produce troubleshooting guide in English or Spanish. Our recently-updated “I Know Produce” online reference library (in English) is the most comprehensive and inclusive database  available, now including information on nearly 200 produce commodities and more than 2,800 varieties. Additionally, PMA offers useful manuals including facility inspections, product recalls and crisis management.

As I wrote about last month, our unique Fresh Connections events connect you with fellow industry professionals while keeping you ahead of the curve on important business topics. We’re planning international Fresh Connections events in Mexico, Chile and Australia this year; read last month’s column for more information.  

PMA’s annual Fresh Summit Convention & Exposition – to be held Oct. 2-5 in Anaheim, California – is an unparalleled educational and networking venue, drawing supply chain members from around the world. Both Fresh Connections and Fresh Summit offer some of the industry’s best networking opportunities – another critically important tool in times like these!

While these indispensible resources are available to everyone, there are distinct benefits to PMA membership. Members receive significant discounts on events, products and services, and have direct access to special news and information.

Training and educational resources from PMA and PMA FIT can help you be proactive and invest in the present and future of your business.

Contact:
www.pma.com
www.pmafit.com

Publication date: 4/9/2009

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