Why Continuing Education is Essential

By Cass Jacoby. 

Jon Gardner of Owens Corning University talks with RCS about why it is so important to provide more learning opportunities to the industry. 

It is back to school season once again, however, at Owens Corning University (OCU) every month is back to school month. In Season 4, Episode 46 of the Roofing Road Trips Podcast, Heidi J. Ellsworth visits with the Owens Corning® National Training and Development Leader Jon Gardner. Join the two for a conversation about why continuing education is essential to improving the roofing industry. 

“At the end of the day, Owens Corning University is a vehicle for our contractors in the industry to leverage training and development content simply to help them get better and help them with their growth strategies and specifically help them with what their current issues are,” says Jon.  

Owens Corning University (OCU) is for everyone in the roofing industry, from the novice wanting to learn foundational elements to the seasoned professional looking to enhance their skills. OCU is a place where contractors in the industry can immerse themselves into content designed to help them with all the different elements of the industry. By offering expert education via easy-to-absorb videos, webinars and guides under one umbrella, OCU can effectively prepare contractors for the cutting-edge trends and solutions in the industry. 

“Owens Corning University delivers all of those pieces,” says Jon. “When we look at a contractor's business, there's not one element that's not as important as the other. All of it works together to create what we see as super successful and really proud Owens Corning folks when working with these contractors that made that investment.” 

In an industry that is changing so rapidly via technology and product innovations, this level of education and support is becoming more necessary. As the industry shakes off the curve balls thrown at them with material shortages and COVID-19, more contractors are looking to invest in themselves.  

“We intentionally built the content so that it can help support all aspects of the business and we intentionally built it into a learning management platform so that every contractor and every employee within that contractor can have a unique experience, an experience that is important to them so that they can leverage it,” says Jon. “Anyone who's looking to get better, the Owens Corning University is a resource that is set up so that you can go through those different elements of the business, the ones that are most important to you.” 

Listen to the podcast to learn more about growing your business with training resources and how OCU has the tools you need for success.  

Learn more about Owens Corning in their RoofersCoffeeShop® Directory or visit owenscorning.com/en-us/roofing. 

About Cass  

Cass works as a reporter/writer for RoofersCoffeeShop, AskARoofer and MetalCoffeeShop. When she isn’t writing about roofs, she is putting her Master degree to work writing about movies and dancing with her plants.