The Changing Landscape

As technology continues to play a bigger role in food safety programs and operations, food companies are finding themselves having to rethink how they’re training their workforce. With emerging developments such as AI-powered solutions, employees will need to receive the necessary training to use new technologies efficiently and develop the skills to fulfill their roles successfully.

Of course, new technology isn’t the only reason to revisit your training programs. If your facility is like most, chances are you may still notice that some employees just aren’t following food safety practices – despite the fact that you have training in place. What could be going amiss? Are our employees really learning from our food safety training, and if not, why?

In this guide, we’ll shed light on some of the disconnects that exist between food safety training and desired outcomes. We’ll also share the strategies needed to build an organization in which employees fully understand what’s expected of them and feel empowered to carry out food safety effectively. Here are some of the key topics we’ll explore over the coming pages:

• What’s most important to employees in the workplace and why it matters 
• The benefits of focusing on employee engagement
• What a learning organization is and how to become one
• The importance of communication and how to enhance it

Let’s start by taking a look at some recent statistics into employee preferences and expectations.

Current Employee Trends

As we continue to embrace new technology to improve our facilities, we must be mindful of how it will impact our employees, and thus, our training. Of course, this is only one aspect of the changing workforce to consider. According to Mercer’s 2019 Global Talent Trends report, the top three considerations for employees around the world are:

• The ability to maintain a work/life balance
• Recognition for contributions
• Opportunities to learn new skills and technologies

That last point should be of particular interest to food and beverage companies. While many organizations are hesitant to introduce new technology due to fears of potential adoption challenges, these findings indicate that employees are not only willing to embrace new solutions, but that they’re actively seeking out opportunities to do so. After all, learning new skills and technologies is how employees grow and develop new skills. As we look ahead, we may need to make a mental shift to consider how we can grant these opportunities to the workforce.

With that being said, every organization is different. If you feel that these three considerations don’t apply to your company, find out what drives your employees, so you can foster those qualities and help your workforce thrive.

The Number-One Trend for Companies

In 2019, 86% of respondents in Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends Report said that reinventing the way people learn is their most important priority. This trend will likely only continue to accelerate through the coming years as we move forward with AI adoption and other new forms of technology.

By some estimations, 120 million workers in the world’s biggest economies may need to be retrained as a result of AI. Other experts suggest AI will change 100% of jobs within the next five to ten years. And, instead of eliminating jobs as some of us may originally have feared, AI is actually poised to create 58 million net new jobs within the coming years. With these new jobs will come the need for new skills, requirements, and expectations. To accommodate this changing landscape, forward-thinking organizations must take an adaptive approach to training.

The Importance of Engaging Your Workforce

In the face of new technology, continuing to focus on employee engagement will be more important than ever. We’ve all seen the Gallup polls stating that the majority of employees are disengaged. While employee engagement is important in any industry, it’s especially valuable to food companies. The more engaged employees are, the more likely they are to follow food safety rules.

More engaged employees also deliver value to the organization in other ways. For example, one food company, Maple Leaf, found that driving engagement levels resulted not only in an improved food safety culture but also more aligned behaviors and a significant reduction in reportable incidents.

Moreover, there are other compelling statistics from an Aon Hewitt/Queens University report, Global Trends in Employee Engagement, which showcase the ROI of engagement. For example, companies with more engaged employees experience:

• 30% greater customer satisfaction
• 15% greater employee productivity
• 26% less employee turnover

Clearly, focusing on employee engagement can pay off.

One way to ensure your workforce is engaged is to create a learning organization, which we’ll discuss in the coming section.

The Importance of Becoming a Learning Organization

While training is the action of teaching a person a skill or behavior, learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught: When it comes to developing an understanding of food safety, formal classroom training is just a tiny component of how employees process information: They’re also collecting knowledge from peers, seeing their supervisors in action, and other inputs – all day, every day: Harnessing these interactions, instead of focusing exclusively on formal training, is what characterizes a learning organization. Learning organizations are also built on strong communication: 

To cultivate a learning organization, you’ll need to focus on five key elements: 

• Employee capability
• Effective training
• Training reinforcement
• Behavior accountability
• Employee empowerment

In the next section, we’ll look more closely at each of these elements an= compare what they look like in a mature versus an immature company

What It Takes to Become a Learning Organization

Learning organizations are built on five key foundations. While most food and beverage companies already have these elements in place to some degree, there are clear differences between how they’re handled in mature versus less mature organizations. See what sets them apart below.

1.) Employee Capability

In an immature culture, employee capability is characterized by:

• Universal training content (all employees receive the same information and materials)
• Lack of comprehension
• Lack of confidence
• Lack of behavior evaluations

All organizations want their entire workforce to have both a high understanding of and a high level of confidence in what they’re doing. This minimizes the risk of food safety incidents. Dangers emerge, however, when employees have high confidence but incorrect understandings.

Because the workforce is made up of many different people, you’re likely to have some employees who have incorrect understandings. Whether they’re new employees or veteran workers who have been with the company for years and may be used to doing things the old way, these individuals should receive mentoring so that their understandings and actions can be aligned with the organization’s current strategy. In other words, training must be personalized for your various audiences.

2.) Effective Training

There are a few other essential characteristics of your employee training, which can help to drive success. In an immature organization, however, training is:

• Curated exclusively by QA 
• Given only upon induction and on an annual basis
• Administered in the classroom 
• Overseen by QA for compliance
• Lacking metrics

In a mature organization, training becomes more effective through:

• Cross-functional development
• Routine and ongoing learning
• Blended learning (in and out of the classroom)
• Employees becoming responsible for training compliance
• Documented metrics for effectiveness

3.) Training Reinforcement

Commitment to food safety isn’t the same as reinforcement. In more than two-thirds of organizations, there are at least some employees who don’t follow food safety programs on the floor, despite their efforts in food safety training. If this is the case in your organization, it’s important to not only perform a root cause analysis to determine why this is happening, but also to make sure your training is being reinforced.

Here’s what reinforcement looks like in immature cultures:

• Food safety modeling is lacking
• Induction training is the sole form of training
• Only negative behaviors are addressed
• Supervisors perform corrective action instructions

Mature food cultures reinforce their training by:

• Modeling food safety at all levels
• Having ongoing food safety communications
• Addressing both negative and positive behaviors
• Supporting peer-to-peer corrective actions

According to the “Forgetting Curve” concept, a process of continuous reinforcement, as much as 80% of training material can be forgotten within 30 days. Reinforcement around food safety concepts is therefore critical in food companies.

4.) Behavior Accountability

In mature versus immature companies, there’s a big divide when it comes to accountability for behaviors. For immature organizations:

• Supervisors are held accountable
• There are no skills gap assessments
• Employees aren’t held to food safety expectations in performance evaluations
• Senior management is exempt from food safety training

Contrast those characteristics against mature cultures, in which:

• Employees are held accountable
• Ongoing skills gap assessments are performed
• There are clear food safety expectations in performance evaluations
• All levels of the organization have food safety training

Employees can be close observers, and if they see leaders failing to follow key protocols, it will communicate the idea that safety measures don’t matter. It’s therefore important that even senior leaders are trained on and follow through with food safety.

5.) Employee Empowerment

Employees who are empowered are more willing to do what it takes to uphold the company’s values around food safety. Yet, in immature cultures, employees lack this empowerment because:

• They cannot make food safety decisions
• There is a lack of coaching and mentorship
• There are no recognition programs
• QA leads the food safety programs

Mature cultures, however, empower their employees by:

• Encouraging employees to make food safety decisions
• Providing ongoing coaching and mentorship
• Having sustainable recognition programs 
• Ensuring the organization as a whole leads food safety programs

It’s critically important for employees to feel empowered to speak up about food safety issues. If operators feel uncomfortable about pointing out problems, this can build a culture in which everyone is afraid to say something, and food safety issues go by unaddressed. Be sure to encourage employees to make food safety decisions, and recognize the contributions they’re making.

Recognition shouldn’t just be a general statement that says everyone is doing a great job, however. Formalized recognition programs are far more effective in truly showing employees that you value their efforts. For example, some companies use recognition cards to:

• Reinforce key behaviors
• Recognize people demonstrating proper procedures
• Engage workers to recognize each other
• Reward employees for encouraging “speak up” behavior
• Creating monthly kudos and incent participation

Should you choose to implement one of these programs in your organization, aim to keep it simple. That way, you can stay consistent with it and sustain it over time.

Of course, the key to success for any food safety program is communication. In the final section, we’ll look at the role of communication and tips for enhancing it.

The Role of Communication

The role of communication in a food company is to cascade the food safety strategy throughout all levels. It should be upheld through transparency, so employees know exactly what leaders believe in when it comes to food safety, along with their expectations. Communication also acts as a means of sharing best practices and learning from failures.