8 replies to this topic

[Tea.S]

Hi colleagues from all over the world ,

 

I'm reading the forum since I started working in the quality department of my current job, almost 2 years and that's very interesting reading your experiences and it's precious since i'm a QA junior.

 

I work in a small popcorn company, BRC certified, with the same employees working from years.

I do in- house training about the HACCP, food safety, our procedures, etc.etc and I am looking for new topics to talk with the staff which is bored to listen always the same things..

 

What do you talk with your staff?

How often do you update your courses?

How do you catch their attention?

 

I am curious to read all your suggestions and things you want to share!!

 

Thank you in advance.

 

Tea

 

 

[jfrey123]

"The beatings will continue until food safety culture improves."

 

Joking aside, if I'm using a powerpoint, I'll find images with bad examples of GMP and openly mock them to the group.  That helps the refresher trainings be less boring to an extent, but honestly if you've got so many og's on staff who are up to snuff then they should just know that refreshers are part of the gig and roll with you on them.

[Baohan88]

Every training, I include the real-time findings when QC goes on-site to check for GHP or GMP (which findings repeat 3 times or above). Next is the regulatory, maybe they are operation staff so some people think they don't need to know about the regulation of food saftey of other country, but I still training for them to gain them other knowledge (so when customer have requirement, they can easily understand why customer want it), or when some information upadate (like how to clean more efficiently, hygiene design, some accidents happened around the world,etc).

 

But there is one part that I always repeat is the regulation of my company, I repeat many times so they can learn it by heart and won't forget it. Therefore, I think updating or not isn't important, the most important thing is that after we train, staff can clearly understand why we want them to do this and act based on the requirement.

[MDaleDDF]

"The beatings will continue until food safety culture improves."

 

I'm literally going to hang a sign that says this jfrey.....lmfao

[Lynx42]

"The beatings will continue until food safety culture improves."

 

Joking aside, if I'm using a powerpoint, I'll find images with bad examples of GMP and openly mock them to the group.  That helps the refresher trainings be less boring to an extent, but honestly if you've got so many og's on staff who are up to snuff then they should just know that refreshers are part of the gig and roll with you on them.

 

A picture is worth a thousand words.  I do this also and mention they are lucky I do not know exactly who did it so they can tell the class why they thought it was a good idea.  

 

With groups that have been here longer, I usually ask them what are key food safety points regarding <<insert topic here>> and if they hit all the buttons I will pull up the slide and let them see how they did, highlighting anything they may have missed.  They are usually the ones who get 100% on the tests.  I pull up pictures mentioned above and stress the importance of reporting these things if they can't take care of it themselves.

 

With groups that have not done these classes multiple times I focus on the why do we do it this way and what will happen if we don't do it this way.  For Food Defense and Food Fraud I pull up examples.  Isopropyl alcohol being sold as vodka seems to hit differently than corn syrup in honey or canola oil in olive oil. 

[liberator]

I recall a company I'd audited had a very good food safety training program. They made it very practicable and used a real-life situation to reinforce the various aspects of food safety. It wasn't something that could be done in a few hours. It was very hands on; I think they took at least half a day to run the program. They got their staff to cook/bake a simple biscuit. The plan required a HACCP assessment of the process, ingredient specifications, procedure (recipe) CCP's, the works. They discussed each step and why each step was important and the impact to the final product if missed. Something I'd have loved to try but I'm at the end of my time in QA so have missed the opportunity, but I still love to educate those that want to know about food safety and culture.

 

There was another company that had a picture of a baby girl with her mum, and a slogan along the lines of, "They are why we need to care about food safety."

[GMO]

I know one company who asks people to go out and find out themselves about certain topics then come back and discuss as a group. I think it's quite interesting because especially for refreshers, it mixes it up a bit. Another idea could be to get a team to look through things like CCP procedures and make them better. How to communicate the purpose of the CCP, how to ensure it's always done properly. You could make it scenario based, almost like a mock crisis scenario but factory based. Imagine all of this happens, you're behind on plan, the machine is dirty and your supervisor is telling you to crack on anyway, how do you react?

 

Of course you'd have to make it all certification friendly but I think we rely too much on a signature on a document to prove someone is competent and it proves no such thing. For a start the ability to regurgitate information even when a test is involved is not the same skill as actually using that knowledge.

[jfrey123]

A picture is worth a thousand words.  I do this also and mention they are lucky I do not know exactly who did it so they can tell the class why they thought it was a good idea.  

 

Indeed on the photos.  So another reason why I mentioned photos:  I moved into a supplier approval role with my corporation just shy of two years ago (we do fresh cut fruit and veg).  Almost immediately we had a supplier's packinghouse's fail an audit and we were notified.  I worked with the supplier and wanted to see evidence of the corrective actions they implemented after the recert audit:

• One finding was no smocks/ppe for packaging line employees.  Their corrective action was to buy plastic one time use aprons along with plastic sleeves, and they proudly showed an employee wearing the new equipment...  Directly over a winter parka they brought from home that included faux fur sticking out from every angle behind the plastic apron.
• Another finding was for not checking titration of their equipment sanitizer.  They provided photos of the newly acquired titration strips along with photos of the strips being used and showing correct color...  But the employee photographing themselves doing these checks was the QA manager with easily 1.25" acrylic false fingernails performing the check right near the packaging line.

The CB for this packing house had zero issues approving the corrective actions with those photos.  I on the other hand asked my Procurement team to find produce elsewhere...

[GMO]

A little off topic but I have to admit to one utter failure. When training team members in the induction training, one once fell asleep. Yes. Really.

 

To be fair I was booked in to deliver training after they'd just done an 8 hour morning shift but still. Nothing is more depressing than delivering training and realising someone is actually snoring.

 

So do consider the timing...