As per the report of WHO, the worldwide prevalence of food-borne diseases is hard to measure. However, it has been claimed that in 2005 the death toll from infections caused by contaminated food and water was as high as 1.8 million. According to other studies, food and waterborne diseases are the primary causes of illness and high mortality rates in many developing countries.
From the most developed country to the least developed, FBDS cases are reported from every part of the world. The majority of these diseases result from the ingestion of contaminated food. Improper food handling practices, poor sanitation and food safety regulations, weak regulatory systems are some of the other leading causes of foodborne diseases.
All these statistics highlight the importance of training and educating food handlers on best practices to maintain proper food safety. Furthermore, SITXFSA001 certification course by CFT, offers food safety training that employees can complete on a regular basis to help establish yourself as a company that is concerned about the health and well-being of its customers. Thus, providing food safety training to your employees not only allows you to contribute to making this world a much safer place but also improves your brand image.
So, if you, too, are planning to train your food-handlers, this article is for you. Here is a list of the top 5 ways to improve your food safety training.
Make The Best Use Of Technology
Nowadays, many organisations are adopting online training and development platforms. Tools like learning management systems allow businesses to train their employees in an interactive, fun and cost-effective manner. These tools come with features such as stimulation, gamification elements, branching scenarios, etc that allow trainees to have real-life experiences and understand how their actions affect the real world.
Another major advantage of using online training platforms is easy accessibility. Using these tools, your employees can access the course material from anywhere, anytime as long as they have internet access. This feature is particularly useful during this pandemic as now your employees can complete their training from the comfort and safety of their own homes.
Currently, the market is full of LMS like HSI that offer comprehensive and scalable training solutions for the food and beverage industry, among many others. So explore your options and choose the one that best fits your needs.
Make Your Training More Engaging
The first step towards improving the effectiveness of any kind of training programme is to make it engaging. The learning objectives will be achieved only if your employees are engaged in the programme. Forcing your employees to complete the course or training programme is only going to have a negative effect. It will increase their stress and refrain them from fully understanding the importance of the discussion taking place. Thus, you need to keep your employees engaged and motivate them to participate voluntarily.
This can be achieved by rewarding the employees that show desirable behaviour. The rewards could either be monetary or non-monetary such as colourful badges, branded t-shirts, etc. This recognition will motivate other employees to perform well in the training as well.
Include Microlearning
Researches have proved that we retain better if instead of trying to capture large chunks of information in one go, we focus on capturing small chunks of information on a regular basis. Thus, you should include the micro-learning model in your training programmes. It involves dividing complex and lengthy topics into bite-sized modules that are easy to consume. The aim is to convey the topic in the simplest way possible so that employees can grasp it quickly. This ensures a constant flow of information without overburdening the learner, leading to an increased level of knowledge retention.
Stay Updated
Last but not the least, keep updating your learning objectives and training programmes. You should try to include all the prevailing industry trends that are focused on improving food safety. This will ensure that your employees stay up-to-date with the required standards.
Conclusion
Ensuring high standards of food safety is an ethical as well as moral responsibility. Thus, we hope that you take the above-mentioned pointers into consideration and offer effective training to assist your employees in upholding the required standards.
