What's Lacking In Food Safety Education & Training?
By Sam Lewis, editor, Food Online
Food manufacturers spend endless hours and dollars on continuous improvement and educating staff on food practices. But, recent evidence suggests not much has improved in food safety education and training over the last few years. Recently, Principal at Cultivate Food Safety and former Director of Food Safety and Operational Learning at Maple Leaf Foods, Lone Jespersen took some time from her day to speak to me about her experiences with food safety training and education. Specifically, Jespersen details three missing elements from food safety education and training that, if addressed, could provide a needed jolt to how food manufacturers approach food safety training.
Recently, Jespersen participated in a roundtable discussion with other industry leaders titled, How To Fix Food Safety Education And Enhance Training Effectiveness. Jespersen certainly held nothing back when revealing the basis of the discussion: Are we getting better at how we educate and train those around us and ourselves in food safety? “We talked about, ‘What are we seeing in food safety education and training? Are we seeing any new improvements? Are there specific areas that warrant attention?’” says Jespersen. “Ultimately, we found there has not been a great change in food safety education over the last four years.” This is backed by data from the Campden BRI global training survey.
For me, this immediately brought the questions, “Are current food safety training methods effective?” and “What can be done to improve them?” Without hesitation, Jespersen replied, “Our current evidence points to ‘no,’ our current methods are not effective.” Jespersen, continues, “Food manufacturers face the same hurdles for effective training they have faced over the last several years.”
What are those hurdles? Jespersen believes there are three: Finding effective ways to pass knowledge from individual to individual, lack of time, and determining who is responsible for teaching and verifying effectiveness of food safety education and training.
“Data shows most training is done by food safety professionals, not the HR community. HR is typically where most of the knowledge of instructional design and anything you need to know about how to most-effectively pass on knowledge is. This is so HR can identify when employees can actually practice the behaviors being asked of them.” Jespersen continues, “That's not where food safety training seems to fit today, except within our own little bubble, which is the food safety professional. So, that worries me.”
Another major obstacle food manufacturers face in improving food safety education and training is time. “We're still struggling with time,” says Jespersen. “Because of this, two things are going on. First, there hasn’t been a clear linkage made between the value of food safety training and business performance and success. And we continue to be stuck in the frustrating mode of not being able to defend the time it takes to deliver effective food safety training.”
In my opinion, I think this is just a case of human nature being human nature. We are creatures of habit and we do what has always worked. Taking a step back and going through a new experience, such as training, seems like an unnecessary step to achieving an outcome despite the benefits — such as a bolstered safety record and improved operational efficiencies — it may provide in the long term. Jespersen agrees with this notion, “Some food companies may have a culture where food safety is getting on a soap box and saying it’s supported, but when it comes down to crunch time and investing in food safety and training at all levels of an organization — it takes time and is an indirect cost — the company has a hard time finding the needed resources,” add Jespersen.
Finally, Jespersen says the third obstacle in the way of truly effective food safety education and training is responsibility in design, delivery, and verification. “Many of my friends and colleagues are also food safety professionals. Very few of them have had the opportunity to get a certificate in adult education and instructional design,” says Jespersen. “That leads to using a lot of PowerPoints. You’re putting people through these long presentations. You’re educating them once a year on GMPs and habits in the plant. Then we shake our head and wonder why there's still a big gap between what was taught and actual behaviors exhibited in manufacturing plants.”
Because of this lack of responsibility, delivery, and verification, Jespersen became certified as an adult educator two years ago. This certificate is offered through The Institute for Performance and Learning and holds a high bar for professionals not only getting certified, but also maintaining this through ongoing CPD work. “I became a certified training and development professional (CTDP) because of my responsibilities at Maple Leaf Foods, making sure the company had and implemented an operational learning strategy,” says Jespersen. “I couldn’t do that without the formal competency to drive current ‘good’ or ‘accepted’ levels of learning. This includes a working knowledge of instructional design fit for purpose, implementation, and verifying learned skills are being demonstrated.”
I agree with her. Best practices and education are great. You can put them out there and show people desired outcomes all you want. But, actual learning doesn’t happen until concepts and behaviors are taught, demonstrated, and reliably repeated in real-life, manufacturing facility scenarios. But, how do you get there?
Jespersen believes a shift in the way we approach food safety training will be key. “The future offers us better understanding and utilization of peer-to-peer learning, supervisory coaching, and on-the-job training using new technology, such as, virtual reality and gamification,” says Jespersen. “As food safety professionals, we need to work closely with our colleagues in human resources to ensure the quality of learning programs and a systemic connection to HR systems. Lastly, we need more of those fantastic ‘operations champions’ who pave the way for effective training by ensuring time for all of our colleagues to turn into exemplary employees who own and defend food safety every day, everywhere.
About Lone Jespersen
Lone Jespersen, M. Sc. Food Science, is the Principal of Cultivate Food Safety, an organization dedicated to the pursuit of creating culture-enable success for food processors and manufacturers. Jespersen holds several food industry certifications, including a Six Sigma Black Belt and is a Third-Party Auditor for BRC Global Standard for Food Safety Issue 7. Prior to founding Cultivate Food Safety, Jespersen held several roles over the last decade with Maple Leaf Foods, including Director of Six Sigma, Director of Food Safety Strategy, and Director of Food Safety and Operations Learning. Jespersen can be reached via email at lone@uoguelph.com.