First session of Tomato School gets high marks
Earlier this summer Morning Star held our first-ever internal Tomato School. Delivering on our belief that education is a vital key to our colleagues’ development and success, Morning Star was pleased to provide this custom-designed continuing education experience.
It started with a discussion about continuous learning and technical competence building, and an idea to ask our subject matter experts what they believe colleagues working with customers should know to best represent the enterprise and provide value.
Tomato School covered a two-day curriculum that featured guest lectures from colleagues on topics from evaporation to finishing techniques, packaging, lab process, R&D, plant grafting, and much more. Day two culminated with an afternoon of hands-on lab activities – a unique opportunity to build colleague camaraderie, as well as a new level of appreciation for just how intense our lab technicians’ jobs are during this critical part of the production process. There was something for everyone, including long time colleagues who had several aha moments.
It quickly became evident that the initiative had a dual purpose of learning and improving our technical skills, and of building relationships between colleagues who don’t typically work together, providing a great opportunity to learn about who our internal resources are.
All were inspired to see how passionate our technical colleagues are about their specialty, and even though some of the material was quite advanced, their excitement and love for the science was contagious.
Colleagues are already comparing notes on how to further ripen their knowledge at next year’s Tomato School!
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