The Power of Role-Based Training: Aligning Learning to Food Safety Responsibilities

Kristie Grzywinski: Okay, let's go ahead and get started. Hello and thank you so much for being here with us today. The Power of Role-Based Training: Aligning Learning to Food Safety Responsibilities. Hello, my name is Kristie Grzywinski and I'm a technical director here at SQFI. Let's go ahead and go to the next slide. Before we begin, I'd like to present our antitrust statement. as we do for every webinar conversations regarding price fixing, boycotting, dividing up of trade markets is to be avoided. And if you notice the conversation, whether it is us our speakers or in the chat is heading in that direction, please speak up and we will do the same. All right, next slide. Hello again. This is me, Kristie. I'm a technical director here at SQFI and along with me I have my favorite person on the planet somebody I have worked with for years and years literally as long as I have a long time and okay we can go into that at another time Laura Dunn Nelson and she is now with WorkForge global food safety consultant culture strategies group I love that title for WorkForge and we're thrilled to have WorkForge as a partner. And I notice I don't have my introduction to WorkForge here.

So Laura, when you introduce yourself, can you please do the overview of WorkForge? I am so sorry I did not pull that slide up. I am mortified. Okay, next slide. just know that they are a very valuable sponsor and they were at our March of 2026 this year's SQF conference and we are thrilled to have them as a partner. so we're going to have a great discussion for you here today. I promise you're going to get a lot out of this. We're going to talk about food safety culture. I'm going to kick it off with SQF Edition 10. I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of those requirements related to training and then Laura is going to take it away from there. Today's workforce realities and how role-based learning build safer, more capable teams. I'm fascinated by this topic. So I emphasize that topic that name role-based training because it's not something that we typically talk about use that term but it's something that we are doing that we focus on in the code and that's where I'm going to kick it off and kind of touch on it but Laura is going to dive into it and she has some great examples of where this pertains and how it has had a tremendous impact on these sites.

So, why workforce development is a food safety strategy. she's, like I said, she's going to talk about these real results and then we're going to talk about action items. And, as we go along, please feel free to chat in. There's a little chat icon at the bottom of the screen below this slide that you can click on. Chat in your questions as we go along and Laura and I will address those at the end. Next slide. All right, go ahead. Next slide, CL Co Coup. all right. Here's me kicking this off. And let's take a look at some of the important requirements in SQF edition 10. Now, let's start with my favorite. I'm glad that we have this one right up front. Well, not new to edition 10. And I have right here I have Edition 9 and I have edition 10. It's not new. I have it highlighted and I will show you that to you. verification of training has been put in the spotlight for Edition 10 and rightfully so, but it's not new. there has been a new requirement added, but it's it's been put in place to emphasize. So, let me talk about that. We're looking at two requirements in SQF Edition 10. I have it right here in my hand. Element 2.9.1.4 is exactly the same as what it was in Edition 9.

And let me go ahead and just read it. this is the one I'm looking at. Verification that the trainee is competent to complete the required task. That's exactly the same in Edition 9, Edition 10, and probably in addition 8 before that. So, what was added in Edition 10 is element 2912 and a sentence in 2.9.1.2 that says a documented assessment shall be included as part of the training. So, let's discuss what does this mean? So doing the training very important you all are doing the training. What is important is verifying competency. It's not verifying that the training took place. That's fine. You can do that. You're like, "Yep, I sent that person out to do some on the job training or some shadowing." sure. It's verifying the competency and it's truly where the focus needs to be and that's why we added an additional requirement within Edition 10. So while the requirement for documenting that verification of training took place that's in 2914 was there what was added is for the site to identify what sort of verification you plan to do. That's what was added to 2912. This makes the verification intentional.

So it kind of makes you the site think about how you intend to verify the competency or verify that the individual is able to do what you taught them to do. So we're verifying competence is a fancy way of saying can and will the employee do what you train them to do. So we say verifying competency. So you're supposed to determine the competencies and verify that they're competent. What we're saying is identify what the person needs to do, what that employee needs to do for their role for food safety. Then once you do that training, you either show them, you teach them, you have them read a policy, then you go in and you verify that. All that means is you're going in and you're saying are they doing it right? Did they do what I told them to do? Did they do what the policy said? did they do what the online training to do? So that's verifying competence in a fancy way of saying that. So, will they continue to do it next week, 6 months, and will they continue to do what you trained them to do after you've trained them on new policies? And now that they have a new thing to focus on, I think of something real fast.

And of course, I'm probably well past my time to hand it over to Laura, but I think of something we have to do in my job. I don't work in a plant. In my job, I have to do that. the security training for your computer. And so the phishing schemes and the smishing and one of the things that they taught us in a little online course that everyone in the organization at SQFI had to take is lock your computer if you get up and walk away. And so every six months we have a new training and a new thing and you're worrying about smishing and is Leslie Sar sending me emails asking her to send her millions of dollars for my personal account. Well, in the process of learning those new things, I forgot about that policy, that requirement to lock my computer when I walk away until somebody reminded me of it. So, I wish I as a training professional, I wish they had refresher training because they kept adding all these shiny new things and I completely forgot about that. Right? So, that's what we're talking about is being intentional with your verification and that's the new requirement that was added to Edition 10. and I probably could talk about this slide forever.

We'll just skip past the rest of my notes here and we'll go to the next slide. Okay, thanks for that because I think I'll touch on the rest of this as we go along. your workforce is your first line of defense for food safety. Not your equipment, not your technology, not even your HACCP plan, which is something Laura and I were talking about as we were waiting to come on the screen. It's your people. You could have fancy new equipment designed to support your food safety system, but if the individual doesn't use it correctly or it's not clean correctly or implemented correctly, put together correctly, then by these individuals then you have a gap there. So where I'm not pointing the finger, I'm just saying this is an opportunity. We never want to point a finger at an individual. We want to look at the larger system and say, how can we make sure these individuals have what they need through the training that we provide. So, a well-trained line operator can catch foreign material contamination before it leaves the line. A trained maintenance technician knows how to use food-grade lubricants correctly, right?

Because you taught them and you verified, you watched them do it. a trained supervisor knows when to stop production and investigate. Training isn't just about checking a box for your audit. It's a critical investment in protecting consumers and protecting your brand. So, employee focused role-based training. It reduces your product defects and rework costs. It prevents contamination incidents and it empowers your line operators to identify problems and solve them before they become a crisis. Right? You give them the knowledge and then you go and you verify that with them. You're like, "Show me what you learned." Or you go back and hey, I know you were in training last week. Tell me a little bit about how you put those food-grade lubricants on this new piece of equipment. so it builds their confidence in you in your workforce. When people know what they're doing and why it matters, they take ownership of food safety. Next slide. Food safety culture implementation. I'll go through this one fast because I have no idea. I did not start my timer. and Edition 10, you may have heard requires implementation of food safety culture assessment plan. Right?

So you got your food safety but your assessment of how your continuous improvement is doing, how your plan is predicting, how you are supporting that positive food safety culture. The plan must cover four things and you've read that in the code we're talking about in Edition 10 2.1.1.3. One of those buckets of course is training and having training for all personnel including site management and how your food safety culture assessment plan drives continuous improvement. And again training plays a huge role in building a positive food safety culture. But training doesn't create your culture. Culture requires your leadership commitment systems accountability. So, how are you going to measure the effectiveness of training against your food safety culture plan? Real fast, you're going to do a who, what, when, where, why, how. so who is responsible for assessing training? maybe a floor supervisor who then reports back to the practitioner. What describe what they're assessing in this plan, in this assessment plan. What are they assessing and how are they verifying? We kind of just talked about that. And then when were they when are they gonna assess?

Like I said, are you gonna do that right after training? Sure. Of course, you want to see that they're doing it correctly, but you want to see that they continue to do it correctly next week, two weeks from now, six months. So you describe that and I saw a little question pop up about refresher training. I haven't been able to look at those, but that's your refresher training. you're determining are they doing what they're supposed to do? And if they're not, how are you going to how are you going to realign them? Is that a full-blown training course? Maybe. Depends. could be some coaching. could be some, shadowing with a older person to say, "Hey, let's just let's just do this again together." and then who, what, when, where, and how will they assess? Again, that depends upon the activity upon the training and we talked a little bit about that. So, document how you will train your assessors in your food safety culture plan. So, you're going to want to put that in your plan. How are you going to assess the assessor? Let make sure that they're trained up.

And again, you absolutely cannot have a positive food safety culture without effective training. It's the foundation. It really is. training builds awareness, creates ownership, establish accountabilities at all levels. Next slide. This one's a quick one. I'm just going to say every person, everyone I there's nothing else to say. Everyone needs training. It just depends upon who they are and what they do with regards to your food safety system. And that's what role-based training is all about. every person needs appropriate training and food safety culture doesn't depend on one part department. so honestly with that slide I'll just say everybody require and that's really what Laura is here to talk about. And then the last one la next slide my last slide. I want to talk real quickly and again this is something I could talk about forever. Feel free to reach out to me at trainingsqfi.com if you want a little bit more details. How do you actually build a training program? Step one is to conduct a training needs assessment. That's what we call as instructional designers a training needs assessment. And essentially it's like what do you have? What do you need them to do?

You're going to write down per role what do they need to do. And once you've identified those needs, those food safety needs, you're going to identify the gaps. Okay, so we hired this person. They know how to do X, Y, and Z, but this is important. This is something new that they don't know. We want to do that training. So you're looking at it by role. So 2.9.1, start by looking at your needs by role. What does the line operator need to know versus a maintenance technician versus a supervisor or a practitioner? These are the competencies. Look at it by shift, your night shifts. are they getting the same training? Do they have the same people they can shadow? No. So, you want to make sure it's consistent. And so, that's where that verification becomes very important. Evaluate by language. can't say this enough. This is really where I spend a lot of my time here in this role is making sure that we have the tools, the right tools in the right languages. So, you're going to want to do in your assessment, make sure you determine what do you need to have translated, how can you convey this concept with photos, with images, with demonstrations.

How can you in address the language gap? walk your production floor. What languages do you hear? Do your training materials match your workforce? And then consider the experience levels. New hires need different training than existing folks. look at your audit findings. What issues keep coming up? you want to eliminate those. Get down to that root cause and eliminate it. Step two is match it all out. map it all out by role from new hire to refresher from supervisors to operators and that's 2.9.1.2 and then identify any opportunities for cross-training and identify specialized competencies by role. So it's a map of your competencies a map of what each role needs to do. step three is once your needs, step three is developing the train the tailored training plan. And I want to emphasize that it should be tailored by the role. and it has to work for your production environment, whether you're in on a production floor in a plant or whether you're literally out with the plants, or with the chickens. Okay? It has to work. it can't just be out of a box. It can't just be what you did last year. take a look and identify those gaps and close the gaps.

The key is making the training fit your operation and not disrupt operation. Very important. Short, frequent, practical training sessions work better than long classroom days that take people off the floor. Think about where you where those people are literally on the floor and what you can do to train them. what opportunities there are. Step four, we talked about this at the beginning. Verify. This is 2.9.1.2. Again, determine how you will assess competence. How you will determine employees can perform the task you taught them. so you're being intentional. you're going to say, "we taught this person how to disassemble this piece of equipment." So, you're going to want to watch them disassemble it, and not just one time, maybe another time. Or you're going to talk to them as you're standing there washing your hands with them, and you're going to say, "Hey, you did that training last week, and you're going to go through ask them a specific question about that." Think of those opportunities. And here's the principle to remember. Competency equals knowledge plus skills plus the ability to apply both on the production floor.

And all three components are necessary. So you're looking for knowledge, skills, and abilities. and that equals confidence. Okay, Laura, take it away.

Laura Dunn Nelson: Gosh, Kristie, you've got it set up so nicely. I love all of that and I love those recommendations. So, thank you. Just a quick thank you to and it's a pleasure to be speaking with you, co-presenting today. I'd like to thank WorkForge for inviting me to speak. for those of you not familiar with WorkForge, they are an amazing company. They develop individuals really who power the food industry, right? And they do that by building a really resilient workforce, one skill at a time. So, it's exactly what you're talking about, Kristie, as far as the role-based, skill building, competencies, and then delivering on those behaviors and they work really walks people through from hire to retire, which I love. and they support those employees at every step of the stage of their career providing those continuous learning opportunities and in career building. they support professional growth which we know Kristie from our global training survey. That's one of the big characteristics of a above and beyond training program is offering those professional development.

We'll talk about more of that in just a moment. and really they WorkForge does such a great job at investing in people and supporting companies to do that. So thank you WorkForge for the invitation. So yeah, let's go to today's workforce reality. So Kristie, you just laid out what we need to do. Turns out it's a little harder to do than we might have might hope for. So let's look at and I think part of this is one thing we need to be aware of the challenges right what we were experiencing in the workforce 5 years ago is not certainly not what we're experiencing now and so we have to understand some of those pressures better. We know we have upwards of 40% turnover in our plants. such a challenge for us to keep consistent behaviors on the platform when we've got this constant churn of new employees, right? So, that's that's a big challenge. baby boomers they're retiring at a very rapid clip, 11,000 a day if you can believe such.

And so Kristie, the first thing we think of is those people that know when the film gets stuck and jammed, how you undo the film and how you tweak this and turn this on. those that kind of knowledge repository is walking out the door every day. so what are we doing to capture that knowledge so that we can keep equipment up and running and all the things all that knowledge that they have. the manufacturing is a hot topic. It's it's increasing. So we're in a competitive gap to try to get employees. 2.1 million gap to be precise is estimated on the since 2030. So, we're going to have trouble finding employees. So, we've got to figure out creative ways to recruit and hire and retain. That's going to be absolutely critical.

And then I think it's unique really in the food industry that think about Kristie as you walked into that first plant and you had to they said you needed steel-toe boots, you needed a beard, you needed all kinds of PPE, frocks, you can't wear jewelry. there's a lot of requirements that all of a sudden people are like I'm not sure I signed up for this right so it's it's a hurdle to even get someone through that kind of experience and those expectations and honestly I don't think we do a good job explaining why we have to go through all of those things we just say here's your frock you need to wear here's your hairnet you need to put your hair underneath this is the proper way Why? Why? Why do we have to do it that way? Anyway, let's go to the next slide. So, millennials and Gen Z's, they are reshaping our workforce. They're our largest share of the plant of our plant workforce now. They have expectations that we're not used to, frankly. So, they want and they expect growth in their job. They want mentorship and coaching.

They welcome that. they want to be developed for new roles, new skills, and they're not there just for a paycheck. I can remember my dad, he worked for Lockheed, and he was telling me he was so happy he was going to get his 20-year pin the next year, right? And we're not we're not worried about those 20-year pins at this point. people are really trying to just, get ahead, learn new skills, become, more valuable and to the company and hopefully, make more money. They're certainly digital natives and they're more so and rely on that more than any of the other prior generations. And so that has some characteristics that we need to take advantage of. we go to the next slide. If we talk about the how they learn, I think this is absolutely critical. over 75% prefer video-based training. So Kristie, I'm going to reference our global training survey again that you were a kind sponsor of yet again this year. But in that we have 50% of the respondents says we're handing them an SOP to read. That's how we're training people. And so the question I have is how is that being received from these the majority of our workforce?

One is it in a language you talked about how important language is. Is it even at an education level? is it a job task or, is it written at such a high level that it's it's not even a training document? And yet, that's 50% of the 3,000 respondents said that's how we're we're delivering training. So, yeah, definitely. I would love to know, I like I love to challenge things like this and say, "Okay, so when you verified the that training, right, you gave handed them a procedure and when you went out there to verify that they were performing that per procedure, what did you see?" like I want to ask I want to ask that. That's those non-native English speakers, for example, . Yeah. or I'm just going to tell you, we have lots of policies and procedures required by us of GFSI. I went in to review one to inform something that I was putting together. I'm like, I don't even know what this is saying, . So the higher level, that's where that verification comes in. It is, it underscores the importance absolutely of that.

Laura Dunn Nelson: I think this other stat, 43% they want self-directed training. So again, a pretty big change from us scheduling training, bringing people in. They want training that they can access themselves and drive their own training, right, experience. And so that's a big shift, right, for us. And again over 85% really welcome that on the job training. They love that coaching. They love the doing the kinesthetic side of learning. And I think career growth again is a top factor the top factor for a job for those 18- to 34-year-olds. Now think about that. How many of us have really distinct career paths within our plants? it's it's it's, maybe from a frontline to a supervisor. So, the other challenge we have, Kristie, is the retention of these folks, right? So, if we don't give them career pathing, if they're not getting coaching and mentoring, quite frankly, they're they're likely to leave. And we see that they're they're going to make a decision within 60 days.

So, we have a short amount of time to really provide the learning experience and the recognition and the coaching that they need to really say, "Look, here we're a great company to work for and we're going to deliver on your needs in addition to you helping us deliver on ours." So, they do expect that role-based career paths. they do expect they're more likely to for an employer to apply to those people that social media says yeah this is a great place to work or in conversely if there's some bad reps out there then those folks are likely to not join your company and I think really a challenge here and this is important for when we analyze skills base 70 what is it 77% of Gen Z's workers face situations that they didn't have the knowledge right to that they needed and so here's here's somebody that we've kind of setting people up for failure so that's absolutely not good and they're not going to stay if we're not delivering on the training that they need to do a job successfully So all right if we go to the next slide. So let's talk about role-based learning and how that builds this capability of the team.

So if we go next so it's interesting again on the global training survey and if anybody's interested in receiving this survey please reach out happy to share. There's such great news. It's a benchmark of a global benchmark of training. So, if you're wondering, am I doing enough training or what's everybody else doing? How are people solving these problems? Or anybody else having these kind of problems? This is a great study to dig into. But, struggling with role-based specific job specific training is in the top five of our training challenges. And so, we recognize that, right? it's it's not simple and it's probably something that you may have not done your program doesn't represent right now. If we go to the next slide, the people that do and again we're going to reference this survey. the people that said yes, we go above and beyond in our training program.

The question about 20% of the respondents said that's they do and one of the characteristics is they have role-based training and we slice and dice the data to say okay so what is that delivering well it turns out it delivers a lot of great value 12 times more likely to maintain strong SOP adherence voila they're following our procedures right 10 times more likely to have engaged, motivated employees. So obviously Kristie, if we're engaged, if they understand the their mission, the what we're expecting of them, they're going to deliver on the behaviors we're looking for, right, during those important assessments. And then 109 more likely to drive productivity gains. So, not only do we get our food safety reducing some risk and food safety by aligning those employee behaviors, we're going to deliver some value to operations also. So, let's go to the next slide. If we go I think and Kristie you also emphasized this we're moving from the knowledge transfer to applying that knowledge on the plant floor away from the classroom away from somebody sharing that as a hey watch me and I'll show you how to do it.

Now you do it right and now you apply it and then this is where that culture thing comes up. gee speak up right if you see something so some risk some potential issue some non-compliance for heaven's sake speak up and that's that robust culture we're all pursuing. if we go to the next slide, this is a slide Kristie, you and I talked about, how we still have those plants out there that bring in everybody for the big Saturday training or the Saturday refresher and they're going to get the lockout tagout refresher. They're going to get the GMP refreshers, slip, trips, and falls. Yes. Slips, trips. Yeah. Everything. It's just it's it's the kitchen sink. Everybody gets that. Now we can check that off. It's we've we've now done that big refresher. And turns out that's not a great way to remind people of knowledge. We that's it's just too much, right?

And I would imagine Kristie with all these percentages and things we're we're sharing tonight today that a large portion of people will hang up from this call and go and not remember 10% of it right in within the hour and that's devastating however but that's well thankfully they'll have the slides but right now the recording yes it's what our it's what our it's our reality, right? So, we cannot just rely on this one and done thing, right? And throw the kitchen sink at everybody. That's where that role-based training is. What's specific to those people? What do they have to know to do their job? and that's really where that role specific training really shines in delivering again the compliance that we're looking for and the support from our food safety program. If we go to the next slide, so let's talk about workforce development as a strategy, a food safety strategy. So I think again, as people are looking at maybe needing some resources to really focus on role-based training and implementing that what where can you go to get some ideas for how this is going to return some investment money?

Well, we know that chronic turnover is a chronic inexperience on your floor. newbies make more mistakes. It's just clear. terrifying. That's terrifying, right? so how do you Laura, tell us how do we prevent this? Yeah. So, we've got to reduce re we've got to retain employees. We've got to return and it goes back to who is our audience? What's their preferred learning styles and let's train them up specifically and give them some paths for advancement? And we'll see we'll see some fabulous examples in just a moment. Also, this disengaged teams, they just miss things, if they're thinking about, having to go to the grocery store that when they get off work and oh my gosh, babysitter call, the baby's sick, but all these things I if they're disengaged, often times they're just going to miss something. how many times have you been on the plant floor that said, gee, we trained you on this. I just forgot, right? Or I don't remember. And they feel if the if they feel that their supervisor doesn't care, if the person next to them doesn't care, why should I care, ? Exactly. Exactly.

If they're not, everybody has a life outside the plant floor, . But what how do you keep them focused on the task and ensuring their safety and the safety of the product produced? So you want those engaged employees. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And that brings up that whole supervisor modeling takes us down a different culture path there. But yes, very good point. and then I think it's clear retention. If you retain skilled trained people, it's improved food safety culture. There is a dependency there. Great. If we go to the next slide, and this is just reinforcing that, right? So when we have more tenured employees, we don't have that rotating revolving door of new employees. We have time to do trick Christy the validations of behaviors we have over time, right? Yes. So if they're not doing the same training every day because you have a new batch of people. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And I have people saying, Laura, we're just we're lucky to get the orientation training out to people. it's they're leaving us and there is no time for refresh.

they're just so think about, what do we need to shift in and invest in our training programs that will start to speak to the needs of our employees? What do they want? What do they need for us to retain those? And I think it's it's clear that beyond them not making mistakes, they're learning how to optimize our operations and new folks just doesn't have those skill sets or that experience. We go to the next you just taught them how to fill out their time card, like you haven't gotten to the food safety yet, right? Yeah. How do you get past where the break room is? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yes. So, many of you are probably thinking, my gosh, Laura, you've you and Chris, you've covered a lot of ground and there's a lot of requirements you're you're asking us to do infuse our program, our training program with some perhaps some new things, right? some role BL understanding the competencies needed per role and creating role-based training specific training and execute on some validations and assessments of that training in some form or fashion. Right?

So there's some there's some tasks that you may not be fully aligned or automated on. So probably you're interested in how other people are doing it. So I'm delighted to be able to share two results. One is Palermo's pizza. And I'm I'm sure most of us have had one of those delicious, tasty little pizzas. I love those. And Wendy Buchelle is the chief people officer. I don't know about you, Kristie, but when I see that I'm thinking, "Oh, this company really invests in people." I don't know just that. I hope so. Yeah, maybe the title. Yeah, here's a quote from her. When training is easy to access and career paths are clear, employees don't just stay, they thrive. Wow. Okay. I can see it. So the thing about Wendy is she has had a vision, right, of what she wanted to do on behalf of Palermo's. So, she wanted a clear career path for everyone. She recognized that in order to retain these Gen Y, Gen Z millennials, we've got to have a career path. and she had a lofty goal. I think be an employer of choice in their market.

They had a very tight market and they wanted to make sure that, they were first of choice if somebody was looking for a job that they would come to Palermo's. That's I love that inspiration. Yeah. Right. Right. Make it a desirable place to work. Yeah. Exactly. And then she needed in order to see these vision play out, she needed to structure the learning and development with that easy access. So again, think about a difference between pushing the training out to more pulling, hey, here's your here's how you, your next training, library of courses to get to the next step and qualify for this next position, right? And so she that was her vision and she reached out to WorkForge as the partner to help facilitate that knowing that the traditional paper and signum sheets and all of that didn't really help address and provide that access to that training that you might have. So look at these results and I'm just blown away at these results and 700 job roles created. Okay. Correlating with training that automated so for onboarding. So what do by that? So my understanding I'm so curious. Go ahead. Yes.

So they mapped out they did the mapping that you specifically called out Kristie to understand what the roles were that needed to be and then they when new roles are having to be filled they and so when onboarding happens they automatically get into their job ro slant right to their specific training and so the it just amazing job on that. upfront work, of course, to get that all set up, right? It's the mapping. It's the well thought out. What are we what are those skill sets that we're looking for, right? So, be intentional. Be intentional about it. You like, okay, I love it. I like the analogy, Kristie, of, we talked about HACCP and we talked about here's what HACCP is. This is what CCPs are critical control points. This is what Well, what if we really drill down to hey you Kristie have the a role your job is to take product temperatures and you need to do that every two hours. You need to document this on this sheet and here's how you do it. Here's why you do it. And let's let's talk about some scenarios. If the product is out of temp, what do you do? Right?

And really drilling down specifically on that expected skill that we're asking that person to have. Much different than just a generic HACCP training course, right? So, yeah, fantastic, results. 83% retention rate. They're definitely keeping their employees. that's great. And of course, my question is, how is that breakdown by role? Is there particular roles that you see a lot of overturn? Is this all the supervisors? like I would like to see a little bit of breakdown, but 83%, I'll take it. Yeah. Well, it's better than that. the average that other companies are doing. And I love So, second shift apparently was talk about a little bit of a window. Second shift was really hard to get people to stay. Second shift. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, now they have a wait list. A wait list for second. Everybody wants Yeah. So, they Okay. What does that mean? So they got people trained ready to for those equipment, those roles to run those specific equipment to execute those all those tasks. They've got people trained up ready to go when a position comes open. Amazing.

And they eliminated the need for temporary staff and dependence on overtime, which well that's fantastic. That's a cost savings, . So it's a huge cost savings. Plus, we talked about, temporary employees, that a lot of times we kind of take our foot off the brake on training those folks because we know they're not going to stay. We might give them sort of a truncated training and that's wash your hands. That's where mistakes happen. Honestly, truly, it is a weak link. It's a gap. you relying on temporary staff and that's why I'm assuming you're highlighting it here on this slide because it's it's very important. That's fantastic. I believe I am on board. I it is good to see. Okay. So, you and I are preaching, be intentional with your training. Here's some nice evidence to say that a company that was intentional a pizza place. Amazing, isn't it? Let's go to the next one because you if you found that one interesting, you'll also love Prestige. So here Grant Prinslo and he's a director of HR for them and he too had a vision. So I'm not sure if you're aware, but they're a pork producer production.

I was just gonna ask and I was trying not to Google it while you're talking. I'm so glad you said that. Yeah. And they're so interesting. fascinating company. they're owned by I think 235 farmers. Okay. So, just a really great company. And So Grant had also a vision. He wanted training to drive performance. That was a big need for him. and here's that retain critical institutional knowledge. He was having some people leave, right? And taking all that knowledge out the door. So, he needed a way to capture that and then increase the talent pool to hire from. So, he really wanted to work on recruiting. Yeah. Okay. Okay. The amazing thing. So again he had a reduction in turnover and certainly a big increase three times increase in training engagement. So now people are raising their hand going I want a training. What's my next step? What's my next fantastic? Hey I want to learn that's my dream Laura somebody who develops training Kristie more of your training please like I know. Isn't that the utopia? Yeah.

Exactly. and then streamlining that compliance and the audit readiness so that the he can prove out that training and the validation and make sure that the food safety protocols and procedures that all of that is baked into that those learning plans and those learning paths of training. So another example of role-based training it's not only possible but it's based on all the results and all the things we've shared it's really we're at a point where if we want to keep people if we want engaged folks if we want to have SOP compliance some of those things we really have to invest in role based ro specific training. Yeah.

Kristie Grzywinski: What I like about these two examples, Laura, is and we have, all these folks on here and I'm getting the vibe. They're like, "Okay, I see what you're saying, but is it worth it?" And, it's a lot of work upfront. am I going to do look at every role that we have and identify every training that needs to be done instead of doing like we talked about here's the canned GMP here's the canned fill out your time sheet and doing all this work ahead of time does it pay off and the it's nice to see some anecdotes that show us yeah it's worth it really it does pay off it does indeed and I think if you're thinking if you haven't explored digitizing your training, I think that might be a start too because you do need some efficiencies and some leverage of technology.

Kristie Grzywinski: Talk a little bit about that, Laura, because there's a question that was in that question that came up. So, talk a little bit about that like what are you talking about in ter in terms of digitizing and what are some of the those benefits? you can just touch on real fast because I saw that question come up.

Laura Dunn Nelson: Oh, thanks Kristie. Yeah, I didn't see that. So it's really, it's a it's a it's a shift from the paper-based sign-in sheets, which as an auditor, I could never read the names of any of those sign-in sheets. They'd say, "Yeah, Laura, there's his name." And I'm like, "I that's a scribble. I don't know what that name is." Right. But, and then transferring the data into Excel and really now we're now we're needing to have a column for assessments. It's it's it's clunky. If we're doing it paper-based, it's going to be clunky and it is going to be harder. Can it be done? Sure. But it is daunting if you try to approach it from that point of view. But there are some really innovative training platforms technology that automates this to a point where again it's available easy access of training to those employees. So it's it's it's allowing those employees to log in take their training and it's captured for that.

So as they're meeting the all the skills for that particular assignment then now they're qualified and moving forward and there's the some companies are just super innovative in how they're creating those efficiencies and in allowing people to do these kind of monumental tasks that we're talking about otherwise monumental if you had to do it paper and pen right so okay admin in those. So yeah, and work clearly offers that and go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, I so I think if you ha if you haven't looked at technology platforms in a while or you just haven't had time to I think there's there's some there's some impetus to do that especially if you're trying to tackle this. Yeah.

Kristie Grzywinski: Yeah. There's those, learning pathways. If you're using an LMS, you have the opportunity to create a learning pathway. And Laura knows I'm very big about the learning pathways. Yes, you do. Like I, So thinking about all the training that needs to be done for this role. Okay. You've got a line operator, they need, okay, I keep going GMP, of course, everybody needs a G. So you have these courses and you're like, they need this, and this. So you put it in their learning pathway and now they can log in. Now it doesn't all have to be online, . So you're not committing yourself to doing all the training online. You are not. Yeah.

Laura Dunn Nelson: And that's the thing and I'm trying to address some of the questions that I'm seeing coming up as I'm saying this. Not all the training has to be you're not committing to that. And not all topics need to be done so formally, and so we talked about supervisors, standups, Kristie, there's and again these technologies support that, right? So there's so what you want to do is you want to do it digest the training however it's delivered in a way that is compelling and delivers the behaviors you want but you also need to document it and so that's where that technology comes into play so documenting the assessments documenting those standups yes documenting the easily and the observations the assessments so you get the total ecosystem of that training and reinforcement. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kristie Grzywinski: An LMS can be a great support system, you can put into it depending on the system that you have. So, you might have formal online training for certain topics. You might have and somebody brought up videos, like I can't recall what the question was. Yeah. If you like I love the idea of doing a video because you're taking a picture of what's going on. Let's say like is this the correct practice, and maybe you have somebody on your line doing something off shift, doing it incorrectly, and you're like identify with you can make a video and people are saying, "Hey, that's our plant. That's that's Bob. he works on the, I think that's such a great opportunity. So, you can have a formal online course, maybe a package you bought from an organization. You can create your own videos. You can pop an assessment in there and now all that's being documented automatically and you can also include assessments, other verifications in there as well. Go ahead.

Laura Dunn Nelson: Validation, you can schedule it, right? You talked about every 10 days, every 30 days, 60, 90, a refresher, six months. Yeah. Refreshers. Yeah. Refresher or recognition, validation of, do they still are they still paying attention, right? Are they still following our procedures? Yeah.

Kristie Grzywinski: Yes. Yes. Okay. So, I've been trying to Thanks, C. I was just going to say, so we have like two minutes left and I see that folks have to leave. I we've seen a couple of people kind of drop off. Laura and I will continue. We'll try to address some of these questions, but I was also trying to weave it into what Laura was talking about. Laura, are you done with your slides before I dive into the so if you had a couple more? If we go to the to our resource because I think people are looking guys this one. So yeah, the here's some resources if you're wanting to kind of do some self assessment. These are the these if you will just take a quick picture of these. You'll get these. And I think this is where do a readiness assessment. There's a guide that comes with this. There's also this ROI cost cal calculator because I know a lot of questions. I don't know if we got one, Kristie, on how do I get more resources? this seems like a lot. What do I do? Well, it turns out if you do this well, you actually can save full-time equivalents because now you've taken away from that all that admin timing. So, anyway, the ROI calculator will help you.

And yeah, so take advantage of that. And I know you have a really important slide, Christine.

Kristie Grzywinski: Yeah, let's go to that one real fast and then we'll go back to your slide with the QR codes because people will have to go back to So, let me do this one real fast. Yeah, we're going to keep going. If you have to drop off, go ahead. Not you, Laura. Actually, you do. you probably have to, but we'll we'll answer a couple of these questions and they'll be recorded. So, everyone's going to get a copy of the recording. you can hop back in and hear us answering these couple of questions that you might have popped into the chat. So anyway, real fast, SQF Unites, mark your calendar for March 23-25. We will be in Tucson, Arizona. This is an amazing resort. Don't tell your boss that, but tell them you absolutely have to be here because we will be talking about Edition 10. We're still working on when that implementation date will be and you will certainly get a lot of information at SQF Unites 2027 about implementation of Edition 10. Okay. So take a quick shot screenshot of that or take a picture with your camera. Now C if you can go back to this.

Yeah, I want to leave this up here so that folks can do these QR codes while we answer these couple of questions. Okay. So, a couple of questions about documentation. So, I'll let you do the documentation one and I'll do the other question about training, about verification. So Laura, the question was, "What training documentation is required for an audit?" So, I can tell you, tell I'll start out by saying folks, look in the code. Look at the code. What this I'm holding up the code is what's required. Says 2.9.1.4 says, "Training record shall be maintained and include." So, look at that verse. Nope. Can't get it up on the screen. Okay. But Laura, I want you to talk about this because I think what they're thinking what and kind of I am too. You have all these individuals who have now this role-based specific training rather than just throwing everybody into the GMP training and saying yes everybody went here. So how do you document that? It seems overwhelming is the impression that I'm getting. So I would like for you to talk about that a little bit.

Laura Dunn Nelson: Yeah. Well, and I can certainly appreciate that feeling. yeah. But when you're allowing employees to go in and take training and complete that training and it in the system the LMS automatically recognize that successful completion where you're really taking the pressure off of any sort of facilitator training facilitator or even the employee because it's it's all part of that process. So it you're going to be able to the employee by going through the process of training and hitting final right after a quiz or whatever then that event is logged into that LMS. it's as simple as that.

And so that now that is part of their registar u their training history and then you can see how what where they are to completion for their lesson plan that particular plan or path and so yeah it's there's an automation there that I think if you're if you haven't again if you haven't seen some of these technologies in place it's it's well worth a 45-minute demo to reach out and see some of these things because unless you see just the ease clearly how would Wendy manage 700 different learning paths and track that it would be overwhelming really several people's full-time job to do that paper and pen but if you have a system that does that automatically for each user each learner and then you can have all kinds of reports coming out of where people are. Think about Kristie if you had, a position, somebody leaving, one of your stars leaving, and you needed to backfill that thing, being able to go in and see who is ready, who has those skill sets already to go into that just smooth and seamlessly, right?

So that I think so there's all kinds of documentation that allows for that more assistance in operations even but we're worried about do they have the food safety chops right do they know what we're expecting them to do and so that's baked into that those that skill set right that's a fantastic answer that's fantastic yeah the those electronic documentation systems very helpful. again, you're doing a little bit of work up ahead of time, but honestly, you're a small plant, even you're a large plant, you don't have a fancy system. you can do this on a spreadsheet. you just make it official. So, people are asking, "What do I need to provide to the auditor?" Well, look in the code is your first step. And then, think of it as the auditor is not going to start at 2.1.1 and go through the code to 11.8.1. that's not what they're going to do. They're looking at your programs. They're looking at your systems.

They're going to say, "Okay, you had a failure here. who was respons who are the employees that were on the shift what was the product what was the day code you think of all the programs that let and that's a great way of doing an internal assessment internal audit or doing a spot check of your systems find a product and do what they call the trace back right and that's going to be part that's part of Edition 10 so who was on the line at that what were they trained on? So, think of it that way. That is really how the auditor is going to be looking at it. this product was produced on this day. I have the lot code. who was working that day? What was the training that they had? So, think of it like that. in I'm just talking focused on training. Those are the training. Do they have the training? Yeah. Did they get assessed? Right. And show me that information, right? Yes. And a couple clicks on an LMS. Yay. more challenging is those big gigantic binders with all the information, but it can be done, right? And that's exactly that, you have to be prepared.

An auditor could also don't you think Christy out in the plant as they're walking around identify someone and then say I'd like to look at their training right they're in this role they're doing this important task for food safety maybe it's weights and measures maybe whatever it is temperature so let's see what training let's I want to make sure that they have the training to accurately execute on that and then they could come back and say hey I Christy was out there. She was taking temperatures. Can I see her training? So yes, there's a number of different ways, unfortunat. But I think making sure that you have an organized system that can an provide those answers is really the key. And in internal I love your idea about internal audits. Baking that in

Laura Dunn Nelson: Yeah. to an internal audit. A lot of times we're all we don't training is really kind of not part of our internal audit all the time but great idea.

Kristie Grzywinski: Yeah and Erin I hope we're getting down to what you are asking about. No that I hope the heck that auditor is not going to ask somebody to take apart that. Okay. All right. they're they should not be I asking an employee to take apart a piece of equipment that sounds very unreasonable.

Laura Dunn Nelson: No. Think about the auditor is there assessing these systems and I'm pointing to the code and how do your employees fit into that? How do they know that this is what they're supposed to do, right? that's what they're looking for.

Kristie Grzywinski: Okay, I hope that I'm helping. I'm gonna do one more question and then I'll let you go, Laura. And I'll let the rest of the folks go and do what they need to do today. Laura and I could talk about training. We could we've been doing we have before. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. you want to talk to us, please feel free. And that's why I said training@sqfi.com. Easiest way to get a hold of me. Okay. So, I had a question and I said I was gonna going to ask it. Oh, Diana, you asked, "If you have a limited methods for communication for employees, no computers, most don't speak English. How do you get that training across?" I don't know. You tell me, Laura, not Laura, but, Diana, how are you doing this? But I will ask you, Laura, since I put you on the ringer, I think don't get hung up. Don't get hung up on be creative, I think, is what I'm trying to say. Be creative. Laura, give me some of your best tips for this.

Laura Dunn Nelson: You who? That was Diana. Diana asked that question. If you have methods, you're not alone out there, right? It's it's fancy systems. Gosh, some of these plants have like upwards of 20 different languages spoke. it is it can be a little intimidating. Yeah, it can be. because anyway so some of the creative things so I'm videos can be the special sauce you can have kiosk that have those sort of available upon demand. you can show them from an iPad maybe in positioned in key areas in the plant. Yeah. I know WorkForge supports QR codes. So you come by, you take a snapshot of a particular piece of equipment and all of a sudden the just in time training comes Oh, I love that. I don't think I've ever heard of that, Laura. Yeah. So there's a number of things that you can do. now, the language thing. most everybody has different languages that they offer in training and they can convert that. AI might be your favorite tool in some training translation if you have some particular training that you're you're focused on and you need to address. But again these technology systems offer that also.

So, yeah, it's definitely not an easy thing. I think a lot of that is to keep it simple. you don't want a lot of words on a sheet of paper. You don't want it on the on an e-learning course. You need images so that it translates across languages and it's very easy to see. I've seen Kristie some people do a here's what look what wrong looks like with the big red X yes right looks like correct looks like with the big green check mark and so most people despite languages can look at that and say okay I get it that's what I need to do right so there's there's workarounds and I'd suggest finding a training partner that can really help you with those kind of challenges.

Kristie Grzywinski: Definitely.

Kristie Grzywinski: Definitely. I think honestly if you look at the chat, Laura, you'll see Diana answered her own question. She's doing it right. This is Diana. She said she's using lots of pictures, quizzes, do hands-on assessments for metal detection. Yeah. Show showell do. Remember we did that. You're the show tell do. you show them and then they show you that they know how to do it. That's your verification. using AI to translate. what I would say it depends on the topic. Hand washing easy. Metal detection you could definitely show and a little bit more complex or depending upon the role, right? Yeah. you're getting into complex topics or something is like, this is where we had issues. we don't want to have a bigger issue and have our name in the paper. Then you're you're pulling out the AI translation. You find and we can help you find a local person find you at SQF Unites. Somebody can help you with the translations or verify the translations validate the validate AI does not there it's it's not perfect. So definitely we need to go into all of it with when we use it as a need to verify and asking the good prompts and all of those things.

It's interesting. yeah, it can be definite a definite tool, but w eyes wide open for sure. Yes. Okay, Laura, thank you. Thank you and WorkForge for this wonderful session. I hope those that joined us today at our peak, we had about 111. I know some people had to go back to their desk. I had to go back to the plant floor. Laura, I know you need to go. thank you so much for this. And as co coup put in the chat, you will have the recording and you will have the slides tomorrow. Coup will have those out to you. Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Laura Dunn Nelson: Thanks Kristie. And thanks everybody. Appreciate y'all showing up.