OCEAN CITY – Local agencies have partnered together to offer a virtual training program to employers and their workers as the economy reopens and customers return.
The Ocean City Hotel-Motel-Restaurant Association (OCHMRA), Worcester County Tourism and the Ocean City Economic Development Committee have partnered together to purchase licensing for a “Back to Work Training Program” developed by The Maryland Center for Hospitality Training in collaboration with Dupont Sustainable Solutions, a division of Dupont Laboratories.
Susan Jones, executive director of the OCHMRA, said beginning this week the organizations will send out a link to a 63-minute virtual training program that will educate workers on safety practices and public interaction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are working as hard as we can to give businesses the tools they need to open in a safe manner,” she said.
Jones said efforts to introduce the training program began with an economic recovery team composed of local stakeholders. Jones and Shenanigan’s owner Greg Shockley, another recovery team member, both knew Michael Haynie – president of The Maryland Center for Hospitality Training – through their involvement with state hospitality and tourism boards.
“We’ve known Mike for a number of years, and he has great training programs,” Jones said.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Haynie has innovated a bilingual, science-based virtual training platform that will guide organizations, corporations and municipalities on back-to-work procedures based on CDC and FDA guidelines. The program is facilitated by a group of experts in the scientific and medical fields and has the ability to be adapted to the daily evolving science and knowledge of COVID-19.
“Employers have a responsibility to responsibly educate their employees and not just take their temperature and hand them a mask and gloves,” Haynie said. “Our goal is to establish a platform of education and awareness for employers that require public interaction and service. My personal commitment is to restructure the mindset of businesses to operate efficiently and effectively moving forward in an ever- changing world.”
Officials said the training program is geared toward employees in several sectors of the economy, including manufacturing, education, health care, law enforcement, hospitality, retail, restaurants and tourism.
The benefit to an employee who completes the training is enhanced customer and employee safety, improved hygiene and safe service delivery in addition to being armed with first had factual knowledge to pass on to friends and family in their communities.
Jones said the program would be paid for using training funds from Worcester County Tourism and Economic Development and the Ocean City Economic Development Committee, in partnership with the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Hotel and Restaurant Management department.
“The Economic Development Committee always had training for frontline staff in the spring,” she said. “So we are now considering this program as part of that.”
As many businesses in Ocean City and Worcester County rely on the summer tourism season, Jones said it was important to prepare employers as the economy reopens. She noted that best practices under the state’s Back to Business initiative included training programs that educated workers on protecting customers and preventing the spread of COVID-19.
“We do take COVID seriously,” she said. “It may seem like all we want to do is open our businesses … but we want to do it in a safe way.”