Regular guest blogger Lorna Tyrtania is back with tales from the field…

I’ve just spent the day at the Academy of Football….. where’s that I hear you ask? Oh OK most people call it Villa Park, home of Aston Villa Football Club, but if you were delivered into the world by two Aston Villa season ticket holders what else could you expect it to be known as! The last time I was there was on a Dads and Lad(ette)s tour of the ground when I was about 12 and my Spurs supporting brother refused to go, so I eagerly stepped in as a keen footballer and loyal villain.

For this latest visit I was joining Punch Pubs at one of their Punch Partners Roadshow events in support of their retail training division. ThirdForce has partnered closely with Punch to launch a new elearning training initiative that is unique in the tenanted/leased pub industry. Punch are enabling their leased estate, run by licensees who they call partners, to access the same Food and Health and Safety training that has so successfully been delivered to their managed division.

ThirdForce is supporting Punch by joining them on their 11 venue Punch Partners Roadshow tour, taking place nationwide throughout October and November. And we’ve developed a truly compelling “Buy One Get One Free” offer for Punch Partners who register before December 2009.

On successful completion of their ThirdForce training, participating pubs will automatically receive a printed certificate complete with the Highfield Awarding Body for Compliance (HABC) approval logo to give tenants the confidence that the elearning training will stand up to the rigours of inspection by EHO’s and HSE inspectors.

I manned the stand with the Punch training team and never have I heard the term “no-brainer” used so many times in one day! Licensees were gleefully signing up to take advantage of our offer to deliver Food Safety and Health and Safety training in the comfort of their own pubs through an elearning programme. They were delighted to be given the flexibility of enabling learners to take the training in quiet periods or downtime in their pubs rather than lose staff off-site for a day and at a price that beat anything they’d ever heard before!

I can’t wait to go to my next Punch Roadshow event, which is at Newmarket Racecourse in November, but if I was studying the form of this latest ThirdForce offer I’d say Punch Partners think it’s a dead cert and well worth a flutter!