Sargento Foods Wins 2020 Food Quality & Safety Award

He adds that the company works on a lot of relationship building and strategic partnerships with its suppliers. “Obviously, we do an audit with them on product formulation and specifications, but what might separate us from other companies is that we have a personal relationship with many of our suppliers. We’ll share information that we’ve discovered because we do not believe food safety is a competitive advantage. We rise together as an industry and the more best practices we can share, the better off we will be,” he says.

Employee Training

Training is another important aspect for food safety at Sargento Foods, says Krishna. He says the company spends a lot of time and energy to build the right skill sets and technical awareness across the organization. “When you work in food safety and quality, you have to work collaboratively with other groups,” he says. “One of the things you need to do is be able to influence groups.”

Weber says the company has been using the Alchemy learning management system geared toward food and employee safety for a number of years. More recently, it incorporated that software into its SAP base learning management system. “That really helped enhance our training for our employees,” says Weber. “We have a one-stop shop where they can go into something we call ‘My Learning,’ and all their training is in that one spot.”

Weber says the training approach also enhances Sargento Foods’ reporting capabilities so that the company can track what courses employees have taken. “We really worked on tailoring our training to specific roles and responsibilities in the organization,” she says. In the past, the company had more PowerPoint-based training and offered courses less frequently than it does now. The combined Alchemy and SAP education platform lets it offer more micro-learning options so it can focus in on a specific course; for example, process technicians would receive general food safety refresher training but also very specific training on critical control points, preventive controls, and their work area. “Providing this more detailed training to the employees to make the right decisions and choices really helps enhance our safety,” says Weber. While there is an area with computers at the company, the pandemic has caused more e-learning than is typical. A few of the sessions are more hands-on or classroom-type sessions.

Beyond the more basic training, Kremer says the company is in its third year of providing Six Sigma Yellow Belt continuous improvement training to employees, which she says helps provide some foundational understanding of tools for continuous improvement. “It really helps with new skills within our employee base,” she adds. “It’s about the engagement and involvement of our workforce.” Weber says that the programs help Sargento Foods to better track who has received training and who still needs it. Since 2016, the company has offered additional training through a third party on preventive controls, which is based on the company’s food safety plans.

Krishna says there is always room for improvement, and the company plans to continue to invest in food quality and safety technology and education, as it has done since 1953. “Excellence in food safety and quality isn’t a destination,” he says. “It’s a journey.”

We couldn’t agree more.