Tag Archives: food safety culture

Lone Jespersen, Maple Leaf Foods

Food Safety Culture Series: Measuring Behavior

By Maria Fontanazza
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Lone Jespersen, Maple Leaf Foods

Food safety culture is yet another example of the current and future state in food safety: The movement toward being proactive versus reactive. There are still many questions surrounding how companies should be measuring behavior and a lot of companies don’t know where to start. Lone Jesperson, director of food safety at Maple Leaf Foods, provides some guidance in part 3 of Food Safety Tech’s series on food safety culture.

Food Safety Tech: What are the most important behaviors that organizations should be measuring?

Lone Jespersen, Maple Leaf Foods
Lone Jespersen, Maple Leaf Foods

Lone Jespersen: I think we need to get the order right. You start by figuring out the metrics, which should drive behavior, not the other way around. If you’re not clear on how you’re going to measure success, then how are you going to know that the behaviors you’ve identified will make a difference to the safety of your products or food?

Ultimately you want to be in a situation where people are looking out for food safety so that if something goes wrong, it’s constructively brought forward and fixed. Predictive and preventive measures are defined and implemented as needed. When talking about food safety—the metrics and behaviors—these depend on the organization’s state of maturity. [For example,] in an organization with a relatively low level of maturity that doubts whether food safety [culture] is something that is going to help the business, they’re mostly checking boxes and conducting food safety tasks because regulators are saying they have to.

So if you’re in that state of doubt, I would look at measuring something like: Are you completing your food safety training? Does that manager complete food safety communication on a regular basis? Has the plant done its risk assessment in a standardized way? Do they have tools and infrastructures in place to meet food safety requirements? That can spill over into a measurement that your plant manager actively enforces the training schedule for food safety. It [becomes] a behavior you can define outright and measure the plant manager on.

The GMA Science Forum takes place April 18–21, 2016 in Washington, DC | LEARN MOREOn the other end of the maturity model, there’s the relatively high level of sophistication and maturity for food safety. For example, a CEO completes a food safety workout session in which he or she sits down and looks at what the plant needs to do to improve food safety, and the decisions are made on the spot. When you’re in that level of maturity, you’re improving your food safety costs, because you have better control of your food safety program and you’ll get more uptime, less downtime, and make product that goes out safely.

We’ve had some great discussions around food safety culture metrics. But I think we’re a little misguided, because we’re not measuring food safety culture, we’re measuring the organization’s performance, and food safety culture is an enabler that is tracked to performance. So if you have a weak culture, it’s reasonable to assume you’ll have higher costs and a higher level of incidents, and less competent individuals. There are some characteristics you can put around the performance of food safety if you have a weak culture. There’s lots of research that shows the connection between organizational effectiveness and organizational culture. I have yet to find a counterargument that says it should be different for food safety culture.

It’s not a food safety culture metric that you need, it’s a performance effectiveness measure. We are looking at culture because we want to improve our performance—for consumer and business protection.

Brian Bedard, GMA, Food Safety Consortium

Food Safety Culture Series: Where the Leaders Are

By Maria Fontanazza
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Brian Bedard, GMA, Food Safety Consortium

Most industries face issues with breaking down silos and promoting cross-functional collaboration. For the next class of leaders to be well equipped to promote and practice a strong food safety culture, more work needs to be done on alignment within organizations and across industry. In part II of Food Safety Tech’s series on food safety culture, Brian Bedard, executive director of the GMA Science and Education Foundation and Lone Jespersen weigh in on leadership.

Food Safety Tech: Food Safety Culture requires strong professional leaders. How can industry work together to develop the leadership that is needed?

The GMA Science Forum takes place April 18–21, 2016 in Washington, DC | LEARN MORELone Jespersen: We start by acknowledging that we have an abundance of strong leaders in the food industry. We don’t need to build from the ground up or something new. We need to look at what makes [these leaders] strong. Why are some leaders more successful than others? Identify the companies that have strong food safety leaders that are not within food safety—those that come from finance, HR, procurement, and the CEO—and formally acknowledge their technical and leadership competencies.

I’m aware of three organizations that are actively looking at what constitutes a food safety professional and its competencies—IFPTI (International Food Protection Training Institute) in the United States, Safe Food Canada, and the International Union of Food Science and Technology. Alignment between the work conducted by each of these organizations is important to shorten the time between development and business impact. It’s really important to get this alignment. The more we keep working in small subgroups while not comparing notes and agreeing on those competencies, the more we’re going to see the cost of developing leaders going up. And we’ll have fewer strong leaders, because it will be hard for individuals to move on in their career if it is not clear what it means to be a competent, strong food safety leader.

There’s a very large group of food safety leaders, the ‘Malcolms-in-the-Middle’ who are excellent leaders and are one or two steps down from the head of food safety in an organization. Sometimes we forget that we have strong leaders at this level, and they have a much stronger handle on food safety culture because they’re the ones who have to make sure programs work for frontline associates, supervisors, and managers. Letting that level become more visible to what their competencies are or should be and making sure that they contribute and are heard in the conversations [is important].

Brian Bedard: We need to collaborate and get some alignment around what we think leaders need. Unfortunately, this is creating a competitive space among service providers and training entities that can work with leaders.

There are a couple of fundamental principles that need to be addressed:

  • The leaders at the top need to recognize and drive it down through their entire system so that everyone is responsible in terms of their annual work and development plans, including metrics and the deliverables in their annual evaluations
  • The ‘Malcolms-in-the-Middle’ who, in most cases, manage the budget. It’s critical to get them on board to ensure that, when making investments, they’re spending money on driving food safety culture throughout an organization
  • Several specific opportunities now exist to promote food safety culture leadership, including the Food Safety Leadership Workshop being offered by the GMA Science and Education Foundation at the upcoming GMA Science Forum (April 18, Washington, DC).
Lone Jespersen, Food Safety Consortium

Food Safety Culture Series: What’s the Controversy?

By Maria Fontanazza
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Lone Jespersen, Food Safety Consortium

From measurement tools to a shift in mindset and leadership, a recent debate at the Food Safety Consortium brought to light the varying levels of opinion and understanding about food safety culture. In a four-part series with Food Safety Tech, Brian Bedard, executive director of the GMA Science and Education Foundation and Lone Jespersen, director of food safety at Maple Leaf Foods continue the conversation about food safety culture and where it’s headed in 2016.

Food Safety Tech: What is the most controversial aspect to the concept of Food Safety Culture?

Lone Jespersen, Food Safety Consortium
Lone Jespersen debates food safety culture at the Food Safety Consortium in November.

Lone Jespersen: I don’t think there are a lot of controversial aspects. I think the debate in Chicago [at the Food Safety Consortium] showed exactly that—companies understand the importance of food safety culture. The challenges that we collectively face lies in what food safety culture is and how we can best measure improvements within our organization to sustain a strong and effective food safety culture. That, by definition, requires that we know what food safety culture is and what we are going to measure. That is where the lack of clarity, understanding, and alignment is.

Over the last few months, I’ve done a lot of comparisons between the measurement tools, and they’re actually not terribly different, but as usual, we get confused by words. As long as we have a clear understanding of how tools are different and what they actually measure, it will be possible for each of us to select the best method for our organization. It’s more confusion than controversy. If we speak of controversy, I think it is with manufacturers and processors who are increasingly worried about what FDA is going to do when they talk about the food safety culture—will investigators come and look for food safety culture without a clear understanding of what it is? Again, it requires that we have a common understanding, which we don’t have today.

Brian Bedard, GMA, Food Safety Consortium
Brian Bedard of the GMA SEF at the Food Safety Consortium

Brian Bedard: I agree. It’s not really controversy; it’s more of confusion and misunderstanding. We’re seeing some alignment and a better understanding that food safety culture is not something totally different and out in left field; it’s a new way of looking at food safety that is all-encompassing and gets around what was happening in the past, which was an ad-hoc, disjointed approach to dealing with food safety issues. It gives companies a more refined process to drive food safety that everyone can understand, from senior managers right on down.

Regulators around the world are looking at food safety culture as one way to help them do their work better. Our concern is that food safety culture shouldn’t become a regulatory tool per se but should be awareness and [an] appreciation that food safety culture at a company can help regulators better understand the risks they are supposed to be evaluating in a preventive manner.

The GMA Science Forum takes place April 18–21, 2016 in Washington, DC | LEARN MOREJespersen: It’s also about looking at food safety culture and the discussion today, which largely takes place in the forum of food scientists, food safety leaders, heads of food safety at large organizations—in other words, between individuals who are educated and experienced food safety professionals. Their experience is in developing microbiological environmental testing programs, full-scale food safety management systems that go across manufacturing facilities—very complex and technical issues, all of which couldn’t be more different than that required of a professional within an organizational where it’s about behaviors and consequences. The same goes for investigators and auditors [and their roles]—they’re good at assessing written systems, etc. What about behavioural observations and assessments? This stakeholder assessment hasn’t been a part of the debate, and we need to bring it in.

FSMA, Food Safety Tech, FDA

Certified to FSSC 22000? You’re Ready for FSMA

By Maria Fontanazza
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FSMA, Food Safety Tech, FDA

If my company is GFSI-certified, is it also FSMA compliant? The answer is: With shared goals of producing safe food, coordinating preventive measures and ensuring continuous improvement, if your company is FSSC 22000 certified, you’re well on the road to FSMA compliance, according to Jacqueline Southee, Ph.D., U.S. Liaison, FSSC 22000.  Southee discussed several areas in which FSSC 22000 aligns with FSMA as part of a recent Leadership Series, “GFSI in the Age of FSMA”.

Supply Chain Visibility

FSSC 22000 is applicable to all aspects of the supply chain and requires interactive communication (all of which must be documented), from the downstream level in ensuring raw materials and suppliers meet requirements of ISO 22000 framework to communication with customers and suppliers to verify and control hazards.

FSMA controls the hazard of food within the United States, says Southee, whereas GFSI certification is a global initiative, thereby extending supply chain visibility to foreign suppliers.

The Food Safety Plan

There has been much discussion surrounding building a FSMA-ready food safety plan and the migration from HACCP to HARPC. “HARPC can be referred to as HACCP with preventive controls,” says Southee. FSSC 22000 provides a flexible yet robust approach in a framework that is applicable to all situations (i.e., different manufacturers have different issues, such as producing ice cream versus baked goods). Rather than being prescriptive, the prerequisite program has the flexibility to apply to a particular situation. In addition, validation, verification, monitoring and documentation are an inherent part of the ISO 22000 approach and the FSSC 22000 certification.

FSSC 22000 serves as an effective tool in preparing companies for FSMA compliance. “We’re not a regulatory system; FDA has that domain,” says Southee. “They’re the ones that carry the responsibility of meeting those regulations. We work with everyone…to do the best job we can.”

Audit Readiness

Being audit ready all the time is a key part of preparing for FSMA. FSSC 22000 certifies a food safety management system (a three-year certification cycle) and requires internal audits of company performance, along with helping companies ensure that their records are organized at all times. The goal is to install a management system that enables constant monitoring, reevaluation and assessment as part of an ongoing process of keeping food safe, according to Southee. “If you’re certified and have an effective ongoing management system, unannounced audits won’t be an issue,” she says.

Food Safety Culture

FSSC 22000 and ISO 22000 provide a strong foundation for building food safety culture. ISO 22000 requires proof of management commitment to the food safety process, along with accountability, and for management to make resources available to see the food safety process through. “We agree that culture has to come from the top,” says Southee. “The personnel have to see that management is committed, and the culture will come from that commitment.” It also requires constant communication, up and down the supply chain as well as internally. This includes involving all employees and making sure that they know what they’re doing (i.e., training). “Everyone needs to know they’re valued and important, and how their function contributes to the function of safe food,” says Southee.

FSMA Alignment and Gap Analysis

There are sure to be some gaps when it comes to FSSC 22000 and FSMA. FSSC 22000 has commissioned a gap analysis to compare the preventive controls for human and animal food rules with the GFSI scheme and will add addendums as needed. Areas of review include a requirement to include food fraud into the hazard analysis and a review of unannounced audit protocol.  

Food Safety Tech

Most Popular Stories of 2015

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Food Safety Tech
Darin Detwiler of STOP Foodborne Ilness, PCA sentencing
“When Someone Dies, It’s Not Business as Usual”: Darin Detwiler of STOP Foodborne Illness discusses the impact of the PCA sentencing on the food industry.

5: FSMA’s FSVP: Clearing the Confusion of Importing Rules

Instead of action against violative food, FDA is now equipped to take regulatory action against importers that fail to provide necessary assurance of food safety.

4: When Someone Dies, It’s Not Business as Usual

“His actions resulted in technically more deaths than that of Charles Manson,” said Darin Detwiler, senior policy coordinator for food safety at STOP Foodborne Illness.

3: Marijuana Edibles: Update on a Rapidly Developing Market

Marijuana has catapulted into mainstream thinking via activism, state decriminalization, and medical reforms while investors and banks are beginning to trust the market more, further legitimizing the nascent industry

Steward Parnell, PCA, salmonella outbreak
Stewart Parnell sentenced to 28 years in prison.

2: Food Safety Culture: Measure What You Treasure

A renewed recognition of the importance of individual employee behavior within food processing and manufacturing organizations is shining a spotlight on awareness and accountability, but a standardized measure of food safety culture must be defined.

1: PCA Executives Sentenced: Stewart Parnell Gets Virtually Life in Prison

The landmark case sets a precedent for the food safety industry.

Top 10 Tips for Creating a Sustained Food Safety Culture

By Holly Mockus
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After much anticipation, FDA has finally published the FSMA final rules. If you’ve had time to dig into the details, you most likely noted the new initiative that requires companies to measure food safety culture. The industry is also seeing SQF, BRC and other GFSI audit schemes ramping up discussions around measuring food safety culture. However, FDA and GFSI audits aside, how do you create a culture for sustained compliance with this initiative? Follow these 10 tips to ensure your food safety culture is constant and in line with the new requirements

Photo credit: Dennis Burnett for Alchemy Systems
Set clear expectations for employees across the board. Photo credit: Dennis Burnett for Alchemy Systems

1: Create a solid foundation of programs, procedures and policies

Have a preset annual schedule for review and update of all programs, procedures and policies. Don’t let the schedule slide because there are competing priorities. A small pebble is all it takes to start ripple effect in the company, making it difficult to recover.

2: Set clear expectations, driven from the top down

Everyone should follow the rules and guidelines—from visitors to the CEO to the plant manager to the hourly employee. A “no exceptions” policy will drive a culture that is sustainable and drive a “this-is-just-how-we-do-things” mindset.

3: Use record keeping to ensure that food safety culture is well documented and data-driven

Collect the data that is measureable and non-subjective to help drive continuous improvement. If you collect it, you must do something with it. Good documentation is imperative to proving you did what you said you were going to do, especially in the event of an audit. Be stringent in training, and review all documentation before it hits the file cabinet to ensure it is accurate and appropriate.

4: Implement a robust continuous improvement process

Forward momentum through a continuous improvement process cannot be achieved unless management nurtures the program. If you are not continuously improving, you are falling behind.

5: Have a 360-degree approach to employee engagement with 24/7 awareness and communication

Top-down communication is critical to highlighting the priorities and needs of an organization and will not be effective unless an organized program is in place. Organizations that are not making the necessary pivots to communicate with the multiple generations within their workplace today will struggle to sustain change.

6: Foster an atmosphere of mutual respect

Treat people as you would like to be treated, turn the other cheek, etc. There may be lots of adages you quote, but which one best describes your facility and the relationships with management and peers on a daily basis?

7: Be sure employees have consumer awareness for the products they produce

Do your employees know who the end consumer is of the product that they are producing every day?  Does your culture include a review of consumer complaints and customer complaints with your frontline workers?  Listening in to a call center is a very powerful way to help employees understand what affects consumers and how their job is critical to avoiding a food safety or quality issue.

8: Create accountability across the board

Hold folks who do not support the culture in which you are striving to develop or maintain accountable, regardless of their position or stature.

9: Provide positive reinforcement. It’s the best motivator

Work to catch people doing things right and make a big fuss when you do. Positive reinforcement for a job well done is the most powerful motivator. It helps keep every team member on board with food safety commitments.

10: Celebrate often

We spend too much time at work not to celebrate all the good things that are accomplished. Whether it’s a cake and recognition for those that served in the armed forces on Veterans Day or a successful launch of a new product—celebrations are a great way to recognize and reinforce your employees’ hard work. Identifying and correcting mistakes should also be celebrated; they are fertile ground for making changes and provide great nutrients for continuous improvement.

Rick Biros and Frank Yiannas, Food Safety Consortium

Apply Behavioral Science Techniques to Food Safety

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Rick Biros and Frank Yiannas, Food Safety Consortium

The human behavior that surrounds us contagious. Read the article about Frank Yiannas’ presentation, Catch the Food Safety Culture Bug. In keeping with this theme, Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety at Walmart, reviews behavioral science techniques that can be applied to a food safety management system. In part I of this video series from the 2015 Food Safety Consortium, Yiannas reviews the principles of consistency and commitment.

 

Make Your Data More Meaningful

By Maria Fontanazza
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Data can be a very powerful tool, but only if it is used in an effective manner. It needs to be easily consumable and understood by all levels within an organization. “It’s great to collect information, but if you don’t do something with it, you’re not doing yourself, your facility or your employees any favors,” says Holly Mockus, product manager at Alchemy Systems. “It can really trip you up during a regulatory inspection to have all of this information that you haven’t looked at, tracked, trended or reacted to.”

As FSMA places more importance on documentation and record keeping, FDA-regulated facilities will need to not only capture information but also translate data into easily digestible content for management and employees in order to drive continuous improvement. In a discussion with Food Safety Tech, Mockus shares some key points on how companies can transform their data from numbers and statistics into meaningful and actionable information.

  1. Collect meaningful data from the start. From the beginning of the data collection process, be mindful of exactly what outcome the organization wants to achieve. Having an understanding that the data will be measured and acted upon encourages facilities to avoid gathering information just for the sake of collecting it.
  2. Involve the employees who actually collect the data. Data is more meaningful when employees understand why they’re gathering information and are involved in the process from the beginning.
  3. React to the data. If the information reveals a good or bad trend, or that a process or procedure is out of spec, take action. In addition, document how the business reacted to the issue and the corrections that were put in place.
  4. Close the loop for continuous improvement. Establish a closed loop for data collection, focusing on how gaps were addressed, with an emphasis on continuously improving on the process.
  5. Really examine the data collected. Whether collected for a product, process or equipment line, sit down and take a close look at the data. This exercise is intended to reveal redundancies across departments and help reduce record keeping tasks.

Food Safety Tech: How do companies transform data into a meaningful tool for management?

Mockus: That’s such a challenge for us. It should be easily consumable, especially for management and the higher ups in organizations, because they don’t have as much time to sit down and digest a 20-page document that’s full of numbers and statistics. Work towards to summarizing the information in a way that allows executives and plant managers to look at a graph and know instantly what it means; they don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty. Simplifying the scientific data, whether environmental sampling, quality assurance data, or microtesting in general, and taking it down to base a level so that the non-scientist can understand it—I think that’s something we have to work on, especially for those coming under more regulation. Keep in mind that people who look at the tracking and trending [might not] understand graphs and scientific terms.

A lot of people put the data into a graphic format—it doesn’t have to be a line graph or pie chart, it can be a red, yellow, green [indicator] or a scale of justice. Look at the graphics that are meaningful to your specific organization and use those. Be creative, but keep it simple.

FST: When companies set metrics, how can they ensure that those metrics are taking them in the right direction from a food safety perspective?

Mockus: Especially when you have metrics that are tied to performance for a manufacturing facility, you want to be careful how you set them and how you reward them. For example, if your metric for environmental testing is very low or at zero, you’re encouraging your workforce not to find those Listeria niches or areas in which Salmonella can grow, because you’re telling them that they have to be at a zero rate to be incentivized. It’s more about measuring the outcomes of the activities—are we finding the niches and eliminating them so we don’t have those issues versus saying we want to be at “zero”? [It’s important] to work with upper management so that they understand the consequences of their expectations and the incentive programs that they put in place.

Frank Yiannas, VP of Food Safety, Walmart

Catch the Food Safety Culture Bug: How to Influence Others

By Maria Fontanazza
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Frank Yiannas, VP of Food Safety, Walmart
Rick Biros and Frank Yiannas, Food Safety Consortium
Frank Yiannas (right), vice president of food safety at Walmart, answers questions about measuring behavior in food safety culture.

Are we winning the battle against foodborne diseases? How are we going to get better at this? How do you change employee behavior within food organizations to ultimately make food safer? Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety at Walmart, posed these questions to a captive audience last week at the Food Safety Consortium. “Human behavior can be contagious,” said Yiannas. “Food safety can be caught not only taught.”

While industry has increased its efforts in training, inspections, and microbiological testing, little progress has been made in lowering the rates of foodborne diseases over the past decade. As the global food system continues to change and grow at a rapid rate, a shift in the mindset of food safety managers—from process-focused to behavior-focused—needs to occur to facilitate a food safety culture that will in turn create a safer food supply, said Yiannas. He reviewed four tools that companies can use to implement a behavior-based food safety management system.

  • Consistency and commitment. “Humans don’t want to be wishy-washy,” said Yiannas. People strive to behave in a manner that is consistent with something that they’ve either said or documented publicly.  Watch the video
    • Apply the tool: When conducting training, go beyond simply having employees sign an attendance roster. Instead, ask each employee to commit, in writing, that he or she will apply the principles learned in the class into daily responsibilities.
  • Homophily. “Birds of a feather influence food safety for better,” said Yiannas. People with similar characteristics believe and influence each other.
    • Apply the tool: When communicating an important message, use a front-line employee rather than a corporate “talking head”.
  • Make food safety the social norm. “People do what other people do,” said Yiannas. In today’s society, we are flooded with information, and as a result defer to social norms as a short cut when making decisions.
    • Apply the tool: When trying to enforce a behavior, show the behavior more than once and show it being done by more than one employee.
  • Learning from the right way or the wrong way. Learning by being taught the wrong way can be an effective teaching tool, because it allows employees to learn from their mistakes. Learning from the “wrong way” also prevents complacency, which perhaps is one of the biggest dangers to food safety. “Complacency is driven out of overconfidence, and oftentimes poor risk assessment, and certainly poor metrics,” said Yiannas.
    • Apply the tool: Create training modules that examine the missteps other food companies have made and illustrate how employees can learn from these mistakes.

Frank Yiannas also received the 2015 Industry Advocate Hero award from STOP Foodborne Illness during the consortiumThe question of metrics in food safety culture often arises, as there is no defined way to measure employee behavior. Yiannas encouraged the audience to conduct a food safety culture survey within their organizations and ask the scary questions. “You need to have the courage to hear the truth,” he said.

All images by amyBcreative photography

Holly Mockus, Product Manager, Alchemy Systems
FST Soapbox

Inspiration for Frontline Employees and Supervisors

By Holly Mockus
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Holly Mockus, Product Manager, Alchemy Systems

No experience in our lives prepares us for working in a food manufacturing plant. It’s noisy, cold, hot, dry, wet, dark, or extra bright. It has a variety of aromas that are beyond description. And it has more rules about how to dress, personal hygiene and traffic patterns than can be committed to memory. Every day, frontline food workers make individual decisions that impact food safety, workplace safety, product quality, and operations. So inspiring employees to learn, apply and retain knowledge requires multiple touch points.

At this month’s Food Safety Consortium conference, Holly Mockus will moderate the session, “Gathering Data to Gather Data: Don’t Learn the Hard Way!” LEARN MOREAt most plants, employee onboarding is usually done through formal classroom training. Group training is a great way to learn in a focused setting and interact with an instructor and co-workers. But ensuring that the training is clear and easy to understand can be a challenge. A recent survey of frontline food workers by the Center for Research and Public Policy, Mind of the Food Worker, reveals that 39% of employees say that training is sometimes too complicated or difficult to understand. Learning must be contextually accurate to resonate with the learner, and alignment with the diversity of today’s frontline worker requires new approaches.

Ensuring employees learn, apply and retain knowledge requires multiple touch points because attention spans are getting shorter. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the average attention span is now just 8.3 seconds. Training content has to be presented through different channels in order to stick in the employee’s mind and drive the required behavior.

Companies are increasingly using digital signage to show relevant and eye-catching visuals to reinforce the formal training. The content is more impactful when played at strategic times throughout the production day—continuous or too infrequent may cause the retention level to wane. The content also needs to be changed periodically. Truly effective digital content display will be managed effectively to get the biggest bang for the effort.

Mind of the Food Worker survey
The Mind of the Food Worker survey found that just 43.2% of food workers rarely or never receive coaching from manager/supervisor. Figure courtesy of Alchemy Systems

Leveraging the supervisor and employee interaction through shift change meetings is another important delivery channel for training reinforcement. According to the Mind of the Food Worker survey, only 56.8% of workers said they receive coaching from supervisors. By providing supervisors with scripted huddle guides, they can effectively and consistently reinforce key messages. In addition, supervisors and managers who observe and provide reinforcement or correction individually to employees have found a winning combination that will strengthen and drive culture so that everyone will know the right thing to do every day.

Supervisors are the hub of the wheel that keeps manufacturing on the road and pushes the industry forward every day. Anything that can make life easier for the frontline supervisor will have a high potential for return on investment. Tablets are increasingly being used by supervisors to complete tasks in real time, as it eliminates the need to spend hours deciphering and following up on notes after a shift ends. This in turn gives the supervisor more time to spend on the floor coaching and reinforcing employees. The bond between supervisor and employee is the absolute core of the culture of each manufacturing plant.

The survey, Mind of the Food Worker, was sponsored by Alchemy Systems.