Supervisors Critical in Retail Food Safety

The International Association for Food Protection is developing a program on how to change the corporate culture, Dr. Linton says. “The goal is to put the operations that we know are doing a really good job…together to talk about how they’ve done this in their corporate culture.” Ultimately, this would be a jumping off point for other organizations.

Training, especially food manager certification, is still an important part of the corporate culture, Linton notes. The hands-on training done in the establishment may be even more important, he says.

Brian A. Nummer, PhD, extension food safety specialist and assistant professor of nutrition and food science at Utah State University in Logan, agrees that hands-on training is critical. “When I teach my food safety manager class, I teach managers that they must have hands-on training with their employees and that practice makes perfect.”

Other Motivational Tools

Education is not the only way to motivate, Dr. Linton says. Many companies have encouraged their employees to follow safe food handling practices by offering job-related opportunities and financial incentives, as well as team rewards and recognition. “I’ve seen some companies that have been completely transformed by very easy incentives of just providing recognition for a job well done in the focus on food safety,” he says.

Providing pictorial information on safe food handling practices in the establishment is also effective, Dr. Linton says. Posters reinforce the lessons learned in training. For example, training employees on how to use a three-compartment sink may yield limited results. “But if you train [employees] and provide a picture that is right by the three-compartment sink that shows them how to use it properly, they will probably use it correctly.” Providing these posters in multiple languages yields the greatest results, he says. Videos comparing proper versus improper behaviors are another good motivator, says Dr. Nummer, who is also the director of the Retail-Foodservice Safety Consortium.

According to Dr. Linton, companies are looking for new ways to train and motivate employees. Instead of a traditional classroom setting, these companies are opting for customized training in an electronic format. “Almost in the form of a video game,” Dr. Linton says.

Obstacles to Compliance

There are a few obstacles to employee compliance with safe food handling practices. “The biggest challenge for the operators is high turnover,” Dr. Arendt says. “It’s almost like a revolving door in some operations. … Therefore, you have new employees coming in all of the time. There might not be adequate training provided for these new employees.”

Another challenge is changing any core behavioral practices that the employee has when he or she enters the workplace, Dr. Linton says. “People aren’t taught at home and at school about safe food handling practices. And then we have this expectation that when they start their first job at 16 years old, they know what to do and they know why they’re doing it.”

Often, employees know how to follow safe food handling practices, but they do not know why they should. “The ‘why’ is critical, because if you don’t tell people why, then they don’t want to do it,” Dr. Linton says. “You’ve got to tell them how and you’ve got to tell them why.”

An employee’s attitude can be a hurdle, Dr. Nummer says. “Some employees have subjective norms that are counter-productive. For example, ‘I never cook hamburger this way at home. Why should I at work?’ Thus, motivation can be difficult.

“The major difficulty in behavior-based food safety is the reliance on ‘trust only what you can verify,’” Dr. Nummer continues. “Behavior assessments are paramount to a behavior-based food safety system.” Currently, the best way of assessing behavior is observation, which can be difficult for a manager who is short on time. “Research is needed into behavior assessment methods long before we can really determine if any interventions are working,” Dr. Nummer says.