9 replies to this topic

[Rassmutten]

Hello everyone:  I am putting together my PowerPoint for SQF Refresher Training 2026. I have a lot of years in food safety and consider myself to be pretty creative, but I have to say I am running out of ideas on how to hold attention for three hours. I have a reputation for being the person that teaches and holds attention by making it enjoyable rather than just spout out a bunch of rules. I can't let them down this year! We have come so far. I need fresh ideas and strategy. I am up for anything. I am even up for games I can get them to play that will get them out of their seat and keep them from falling asleep. I am up for giving out gift cards and other prizes.

 

I have managed to turn the SQF culture here around in the two years I have been here. They used to ignore it and be scared to report anything thinking it was telling on their coworkers. Now they see it as protecting the company and customer which will lead to better opportunities for them. They see fining violations as a challenge and actually fun because I taught them it is like looking for Easter Eggs. You know they are out there and you are going to find it before the next person. We have a "Poker Chip" program here at my facility. If you find a violation and tell me about it, I will give you a poker chip worth five bucks in our canteen. I have people making serious side hustle money with those poker chips. The poker chips are also taken into account when their yearly review comes up and is figured into their raise. Incentive is a wonderful thing. It isn't just the Poker Chips though, when I give one, I put it in an envelope along with a letter on company letterhead explaining why the find they had was such a good catch. I have it handed out by HR to make it as official as possible. Example: Someone found an ant on a pallet. I could have just given them a chip, instead, I made a production out of it. I wrote a detailed letter about how they may have just saved the company an enormous shipping cost and reputational cost by reporting the ant. I detail how the company receiving our product would have every right to return the shipment for just one ant on a pallet even if it was dead. The reaction has been amazing. I get hugs from people on the floor for recognizing them. I hear they hang the letter on the refrigerators at home. I'm glad to do it and the outcome have garnered us a 99 out of 100 on our last audit. They were ecstatic and we had a very large party along with shirts that say.... SQF IS A TEAM SPORT AND NOBODY BEATS US. Then on the back is the audit score of 99 as if it were a football jersey. 

 

I told you all that in case you all need ideas too. After all the above my "idea arsenal" is low. My creative spirit is thin. I really need ideas ya'll.  This is a call to arms to help each other build the best cultures.

 

Thank you in advance.

Edited by Rassmutten, 06 February 2026 - 02:35 PM.

[GMO]

Why are you doing the retraining? I'm guessing it's a compliance requirement? What about if you get your team to go out and find the answers themselves for you rather than sit in a room for 3 hours then all present back? Perhaps you can split them into teams and get them to train the rest of you in a section each? Give some prizes for best team?

 

I always think you really know a topic if you can teach it. So if you have some folk who have been there a while, that might stretch them a bit more.

[TimG]

I used to run long (3-5 hour) training days at the first food facility I was compliance manager at.  It was a holdover from the previous manager. 1 day training, they even scheduled a super light day and had half staff work doubles, just for training..

The place I'm at now does 20-30 minute plant meetings once a month. Same day every time; second Wed of the month. We do 5-15 minute slide for QFS and 5-10 minute slide for workplace safety, and then a bit for announcements from the owner. It's great!! It has been an eye opener on just how antiquated LONG (>1 hour) training sessions are.

 

All that to say, my suggestion is more frequent but much shorter training sessions. 

[jfrey123]

Sounds like you have some awesome tools and time to implement such ideas Rassmutten, wish I had that type of support lol.

 

My only suggestion is to break your presentation down into smaller segments.  3 hours straight for SQF refresher training...  Are you teaching the code to all employees or is this the retraining of your own QMS to all?  Either way, you can easily change it up by breaking it into more digestible chunks.

[mm.stf]

We’re not GFSI, only HACCP certified, but this year I did the refresher as a quiz game using Slido (it’s free!).

 

I created questions based on real situations from our reality, covering each PRP, GMP principles, and others. Each question had a timer to be answered, and you control when to move on to the next one. After the reveal for each answer, we discussed as a group why the answer was X and not Z.

 

The top three on the ranking received a coffee voucher for the café near us. They said they had a great time doing the quiz, and it made people reflect on the points we were discussing.

 

Some people here might say they don’t like games or may not find it “professional” enough, but it works well for our reality. Our staff is quite young (around 23–29 years old) and are in the country on temporary visas. This is not their “career,” so whatever works for them to learn Quality and Food Safety, I’m happy to do or try.

[SHQuality]

I wasn't there personally, but I heard about a training where the trainer set up simulated situations to see if people would spot the issues. The trainer specifically focused on safety, so they had a wrench lying on a scaffold (it's not just video gamers who forget to look up), someone walking around without the proper protective gear, things blocking emergency exits, and so on.

 

If you can do a simulation like this safely, it is great. Training will stick much better when you do it on the floor instead of sitting in a room for hours trying to ingest a PowerPoint presentation.

[GMO]

A really daft question. Do you need to retrain? Or do you need to check your team are still competent? The latter might be a better place to start. Find out whether your team are following what they should and understand why (a combination of observation and a quiz maybe?) Then target your training to any gaps.

[kcowan]

Great to hear of your accomplishments and creative ideas, Rassmutten.

 

Here is a grab bag of ideas to liven up training sessions, some small, some more ambitious:

1. Create a game, break them up into teams and have them compete against each other.
2. Share stories that apply to the content being taught, and ask for their stories. 
3. Ask them to dream up scenarios related to what you're teaching and invite the group to discuss how to best handle those scenarios. 
4. If you're showing slides, call on people at random to read the bullet points on the slides, then ask for a comment or at least a paraphrase. Keeps everyone a little more alert. 
5. Offer food, but make it low-carb or risk some sleepyheads.
6. Teach ergonomics or have them stand up and move around after they eat, or any time attention starts to flag. 
7. There are lots of suggestions in the other responses to chunk up the training into smaller increments. One way to do that is to draw inspiration from construction sites, where they do stand-up toolbox talks at the beginning of every shift during which a different chunk of training is delivered each time. 
8. Frame training as a collaboration session, where you're soliciting ideas to improve safety and quality. Then use suggestions given as teaching moments wherever you can. (And be alert to the great ideas you might hear!)
9. Use a whiteboard to write, draw, or diagram right in front of them. It's a lot more lively than looking at a static slide. (If you're on a projector, you could use a free no-login online one like https://excalidraw.com/ which I learned about on this forum.) 
10. If you can, memorize everyone's names at the beginning of the session (use mnemonics to help). Make a show of filling out their names on a seating chart, read them aloud off the chart, then turn it over and say "Let's see how many names I remember." They love it when you remember most of them. Then during the session. use their names frequently to call on them or ask them questions. (Needless to say, don't do this if you have a poor memory for names!) If you learn and use their names, they don't feel like faceless non-entities corralled into a room.
    
    Hope some of these ideas are useful. 

[TimG]

Hrmm..can't tell if that's an ai chatbot or not.

Pretty soon it's going to all be ai chatbots in the forums:(

[kcowan]

Replying to TimG: Good morning, Tim- I'm not a chatbot at all. i'm a real, live human lady. You're right, forums like reddit are getting full of ai slop already but so far this forum seems to have legit people posting. Including me :)