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Foodborne illness outbreaks are no joke. Just ask any brand that endures an outbreak among customers... and the national media feeding frenzy that ensues when that outbreak hits the news.
When training is engaging, entertaining, and memorable, it significantly lowers the risk that your restaurant will be the next foodborne illness headline in the national news. You can breathe new life into food safety training that makes training more impactful with these seven tips.
1. Find a Solution that Makes Food Safety Training Mobile
Mobile training increases participation, because your employees can learn from anywhere at their convenience, whether they’re at work or at home.
To maximize for mobile, look for online training apps with these capabilities:
- Partnerships with compliance training course providers for easy and cost-effective deployment of content across stores.
- Responsive design tools that automatically adjust the layout and orientation-based on different mobile devices — smartphones, laptops, or tablets.
- Conduct surveys and polls to learn on which devices employees prefer accessing online training.
- Create accessibility reports to save time and money by narrowing your list of mobile learning breakpoints.
2.Track and Document Employees’ Online Training Certifications
Are all your employees compliant with state food safety regulations? A food safety training program is not complete without documented certification. This ensures that staff members have proper safety training and licenses to serve food in compliance with the law. Restaurants need to track certification compliance across all locations and manage employee certification renewal dates.
Make it easy on yourself by deploying a learning management system with these training certification management capabilities:
- Track, organize, and report on training participation, certification, achievements and compliance for each employee.
- Receive 30/60/90-day notices when employees need to retake their certification courses and assign training dates.
- Set up certification criteria based on profile requirements to include all relevant employees.
3. Reward Employees to Motivate and Encourage Training
In a perfect world, employees would consume training modules with gusto. But really, they often need a gentle nudge. Enter cool rewards that supercharge their motivation and make it impossible to resist the lure of learning. And employees will change their behavior for a desirable reward — and bragging rights.
Ideas for rewarding your team include:
- Badges to recognize key accomplishments
- Gift certificates for hitting milestones
- Branded t-shirts, hats, koozies, etc.
- Employee of the week or month recognition
4. Track the Food Safety Workflow with Task Lists
To be effective, executing food safety practices needs to follow a prescribed workflow. Training employees to perform their jobs according to a specific task list that upholds food safety standards will help reinforce the specific level of detail needed to meet standards.
Learning management systems like Clarifi Talent Development features on-the-job checklists as part of courses. Users build courses to include on the job checklists to take knowledge team members gained in the training and use it on the job.
5. Don’t Just Train Employees — Develop Them
Continuous learning opportunities help keep employees from feeling stagnant, bored, or stuck in their careers. Restaurants can leverage all employee training programs, including food safety, to inspire staff members to cross train for other positions and move up in the organization. The right employee training program will support employee advancement by tracking the skills they gain along their training path.
What’s more, managers can create personalized learning paths for individual employees to acquire the skills and knowledge they need for their preferred job. Helping them move forward creates a win-win for everyone.
6.Have a Plan for the Safety of Customers with Allergies
Allergen training laws are making their way across the U.S. — and the right online training program can help your establishment stay ahead of the trends, such as creating courses that ensure staff members understand your menus! With the right training application, you can establish a food allergy protocol, and build courses and quizzes that train all team members to follow it.
Easily upload your own branded content or utilize third-party content to ensure your staff knows what to do to protect guests with food allergies.
7. Well Done! Brag About Your Employee Training Success
You’ve worked hard to create the best possible food safety training program for your staff. Don’t let your Herculean efforts go unseen. Create reports to share with upper-level management that show training data, including how many courses you created, how many team members participated in the training program, and how many achieved full compliance.
Learn more about how Clarifi Talent Development can help breath new life into your food safety training program
