H&C News meets with suppliers regularly to keep up to date with the latest product and service innovations, aiming to get the inside track on what companies offer to the market and how it is delivered.
This week, we met with ‘Rod Knox, ‘CEO’ of ‘Virtual College Ltd’ at their offices in ‘Ilkley’ to gain a better understanding of the business.
H&C News: Where did the business start and where is the business today?
Founded in 1995 when the idea of e-learning was ahead of its time, Virtual College took the first steps in its vision of creating a better learning experience by embracing technology and seeing how it could help; fast forward to April 1999 when the company delivered its first electronic NVQ qualifications following a number of accolades including being cited in Government green papers and held as an e-learning exemplar in Hansard. By July 1999 we had become an approved supplier to UFI, and in the following years we have continued to build trusted partnerships with leading British institutions including Princes Soft Drinks and General Electric, creating modules alongside NHS professionals and the West Yorkshire Police.
Virtual College today is one of the leading providers of e-learning in the UK with over 2 million learners and the largest provider of food hygiene certificates. For over twenty years, we have provided online food hygiene training to individuals and companies across the world, breaking down the boundaries of traditional learning to deliver cost reducing, time efficient training.
H&C News: How does the Virtual College proposition work?
With a range of over 300 courses available covering food hygiene training to health and safety, or developed alongside trusted distance learning partners, we cover quite a lot. Two of our most popular online courses at this time are Food Hygiene Level 2 and our Allergy awareness course, which regularly receive praise on their thorough coverage of subjects and easy accessibility to users no matter where they are in the country. Recently we have also developed a number of HACCP courses included HACPP Level 2 and HACCP Level 3.
H&C News: How do hospitality and catering businesses start the process of selecting a specific course?
Our websites boasts over 300 online courses which can be bought and taken online; customers can browse our catalogue online or contact our sales team by phone if they prefer. With over 20 years’ experience in helping food business including restaurants and hotels, our sales team are friendly, experienced and ready to help you fulfil your training needs.
H&C News: What new developments are you looking at in the near future?
Fast forward to March 2016 and we now have over 2,000,000 learners, 400,000 of which have completed our Food Hygiene Certificate training. The ‘Reduce the Risk’ iOS app is helping to raise awareness of preventing domestic abuse, another set of apprentices have graduated with the help of our field staff, and our Housing e-Academy has partnered with the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) to help deliver training to contractors, staff, and tenants.
With new opportunities around every corner, the future is bright and we look forward to bringing you the cutting edge in online training tools.
H & C News comment: Virtual College certainly had vision in 1995 moving into online learning at that point in time and have clearly build the scope and depth of the business since. With people spending ever more time online we would expect the growth this business has enjoyed in recent years to continue and accelerate.
Contact our friendly team….
Address: Marsel House Stephensons Way, Ilkley, LS29 8DD
Tel: 01943 605976
E-mail: onlinesales@virtual-college.co.uk
Follow us on Twitter @virtual_college
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