Mowi Academy Prepares New Technicians

Mowi Academy is designed so new technicians can wade into their responsibilities within the company, as opposed to jumping in at the deep end.

That’s how Human Resources Manager Shylo Loock explains it.

“When new technicians were hired, we used to send them to any site in the company that was shorthanded, essentially throwing them in the deep end to sink or swim,” Shylo observes. “This didn’t give our new employees a very positive or professional first impression of our company, and our high turnover rate and safety incidents for new employees in their first year reflected this.

“Most of our new hires are brand new to aquaculture, so we needed a way to provide them with better hands on training in their first three months, both to keep them safe, as well as help them be successful in learning their jobs. We realized that we needed to be more proactive in our hiring strategy and come up with a standardized way of training them.”

At the last manager’s conference, it was suggested that we should create our own school, to better train people and Mowi Academy onboarding sites is the result.

Blaine Tremblay and Shylo pitched this idea last November and once it was approved, they started creating the training program on DATS specifically for those sites that are chosen to be a Mowi Academy.

“We officially launched in September and our first site, Doctor Islets, has now received two new hires to train,” Shylo notes. “When they are ready to ‘graduate’, new employees can be hired to take their place.

The plan is to have five dedicated Mowi Academies in the Saltwater Department by the end of the year.

Scott Van Male, Site Manager at Doctor Islets, says “the Mowi Academy Program is somewhat new to us at the site, however, training and mentoring is something my team is quite familiar with.

“I am fortunate to have such a great team of skilled supervisors and techs that are motivated to pass their knowledge and skills on to our new employees at the site,” he adds. “New hires spend the first three months at the site and are expected to learn all the basics of farming day-to-day activities while conducting the tasks safely and efficiently. Safety culture plays a big role in our company and my supervisors are doing a great job reinforcing this by setting a good example and demonstrating we care about our workers and their safety.”

Scott says that after three months, each new hire should be able leave the Mowi Academy with their new skillset and knowledge and be placed at any farm within the company and continue to be successful.

“The goal is to value our new workers and engage with them in hopes they will do the same for Mowi,” he states.