CURRENT ISSUE
| Cover Story |
| Columns |
| The Safe Zone: Training That Works |
| Column | |
| By Lee Biars | |
| Friday, 28 March 2008 | |
 When it comes to teaching food safety, everyone must be involved, from the back of the house to the front, including management and leadership. The key is to get them to care – not just for fear of losing their job, but because being a safe food handler is in the best interest of everyone involved in the food chain. I believe it is worth the effort at this point to feature the techniques I have seen and used over the years; which ones have proven effective and which do not seem to work at all. What Works Let’s start on a positive note and explore the training techniques that work, not just for food safety but also for any type of training in general. Get them involved – You must make your employees feel they are a part of something important. Your goal here is to build a culture that places a great importance on food safety as a concept. Because a manager will not always be there to catch them doing something wrong, you want your line-level staff policing each other. If a line cook sends out a piece of undercooked chicken, you want another line cook to point it out and have it cooked more. The best way to build this type of culture is to “program” your staff by touching on food safety-related issues on a daily basis. During each menu meeting or staff gathering, stress the importance of food safety and why it is important to the success of the establishment, and subsequently to their jobs. If you can build a bridge and establish a connection between handling food properly and how much money goes into their pockets, they will begin to see things your way and internalize the relationship between safety and success. Train all staff, front and back of the house – Many restaurants make the mistake of training only managers and chefs in food safety because they feel the leaders will then pass down their knowledge to line level employees. This almost never happens. You must make sure everyone on your staff receives some type of structured food safety training, even hosts and cleaning personnel (they carry germs, too). Food safety educators make this manageable through the use of both online training programs and repeated on-site training. Keep an eye on the headlines – Every time a foodservice establishment is shut down because of a food-borne illness incident, make it a point to share it with your staff. No one enjoys looking for a new job, so this might be enough to motivate your staff to do the right thing. Pop quizzes – Every now and then, surprise your staff with a food safety quiz. Once everyone is done, go over each question in depth so the concepts will sink in. If you wish, turn it into a rewards-based contest where employees that achieve a high or perfect score are compensated or recognized for their knowledge and awareness. Make an example out of someone – I hesitate to recommend this tactic because some would consider it unethical, but it can be very effective at times. When you find that one of your employees repeats the same mistakes over and over, send them home and/or suspend them for a couple of shifts. After you do this, make sure the entire staff knows why the person was suspended and that everyone needs to monitor their own actions. This might be just what you need to let them know you and all managers take food safety seriously. Be careful with this one, though, because it can sometimes hurt morale. If your staff is already suffering discontent, this could push them over the edge so I would advise against this strategy in some situations. What Doesn’t Work I have touched on what is effective in terms of food safety training; now let’s look at the methods I have found to be ineffective. Posters – Many foodservice operators think all they need to do is tape a poster on the wall that shows how to wash your hands or the different meat temperatures, and their employees’ actions will then align with the posted information. This is possibly the most passive way of teaching, and without any type of follow-up, this manner of “training” is thoroughly pointless. Again, a reason “why” has to be established if you expect for your employees to change a behavior. Videos/DVDs – There are many companies that produce food safety videos or DVDs that are meant to teach employees proper food safety practices. Although these training materials send the right message and cover proper procedures, this type of training is one-sided and typically not engaging. Instead of having actors talk at your employees, you should choose a training method that is more engaging and involves the student in the training process, such as requiring the student to perform activities and/or answer questions. Textbooks/workbooks – Let’s face it: Food safety is not an interesting topic to many, and placing the information in textbook form doesn’t help matters. If your employees are not tied to the benefit or importance of what they are learning, there is no intrinsic value for them to internalize or demonstrate the behaviors they are learning. What you want to do is have your employees put the food safety principles they are learning into action, and it is not easy for most people to assimilate information from a textbook into their real-life. In the Middle I have hit on many of the ways operators choose to teach food safety to their employees in terms of what works and what doesn’t, but one of the ways that can fit into either category is a classroom-based seminar. The reason for this is that the effectiveness of the training almost always relies on the mood and skill of the instructor. A good instructor will keep your employees engaged and the information will sink in. Conversely, a weak instructor will not hold their attention and you will have likely wasted time and money on the seminar. If you choose to go this route, make sure your instructor knows what he or she is doing. Also, ensure that the training is repeated on a quarterly basis or as often as is necessary to make sure the information is getting through to all of your employees. A Head Start There are many different ways of going about implementing food safety training in your establishment. Although what I have noted may guide you to a solution, most of you will have to use trial and error to deduce the methods that truly get through to your employees, and those that don’t work at all. Use this article as a jumping off point to determine which methods have a better chance at working, but don’t be afraid to get creative and try new things. No one knows your staff better than you, so you should seek out the training methods you feel would give your employees the greatest motivation and translate to the behaviors and practices you want to see. Lee Biars is the director of industry relations for Safe Food Solutions. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or www.safefoodsolutions.com. |
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