 Food safety training is never one-and-done, but you don’t want to have to review content because the same mistakes happen repeatedly. Food safety and training expert Brita Ball advises operators to consider the purpose of their training, including what they want staff to think, feel and do as a result of it. For example, a senior manager focused on the impact of food safety on the business may respond to a case study about the consequences of a food safety mistake, while a frontline employee may respond better to quick, inspiring lessons delivered in pre-shift team huddles over the course of several weeks or months. Then make the reinforcement of each lesson easy and positive – through signage and other prompts in your facility, consistent results tracking, and positive reinforcement through rewards.
 Your staff’s time is precious. When it comes to food safety, you want to be able to make the most of the time they put into it. It can help to deliver content in a mix of contexts – through classroom-style instruction and on-the-job training – and ensure the training material is best suited to those contexts. As The Rail reports, theoretical training – such as HACCP training or any training that needs to happen over an extended period – is best saved for the classroom. Brief demos of cleaning tasks or temperature measurement are best retained when presented on the job, where staff can observe the task in the context of their shift. Looking at your current training program, is the content delivered in the way it’s most likely to be absorbed and retained?
 The pandemic brought about a number of direct and indirect challenges to food safety in restaurants. It ushered in new regulations, as well as increased staff absence and turnover, which have added a new wrinkle to food safety – and have made ongoing training all the more important. Despite that, many managers of quick-service restaurants have had to cancel or delay employee training, according to a survey of quick-service operations in the U.S. and other countries by the National Sanitation Foundation International. The research found that a lack of immediately available training, as well as inconsistent quality of courses, have had a detrimental impact on food safety. Has your food safety training been delayed or compromised in recent months? As you consider functions to automate or outsource, where might you make food safety less dependent on having staff on hand to provide training? What repetitive tasks and training could you automate or delegate to video aides to ensure they don’t fall through the cracks?
 Where are your operation’s biggest slip-ups when it comes to food safety? Improving upon them may simply be a case of making the right behaviors more visible, obvious and easy to carry out. Wherever possible, bring food safety tasks out into the open, so everyone on staff can see others doing them – or be forced to ask if they are in doubt about what they need to do. It creates some positive peer pressure to replicate those efforts across the team. Line up your stations in the order in which tasks should be completed so your team doesn’t have to think about what comes next – ensure the next step is right in front of them.
 Food safety is not a one-and-done exercise but something that requires ongoing reinforcement. That can feel like a chore if your team finds the training repetitive, or if they believe some of the more meticulous aspects of food safety regulation are overkill. Get beyond this resistance by explaining the why – and the personal stories – behind the tasks and training you assign. Why do the current regulations exist? What problems can they prevent? Consult food safety trainers for a list of concrete examples of when food safety protocols failed – and how small mistakes in following protocol can become substantial problems.
 Does it actually reflect the team you currently have and the functions it serves? In a recent food safety webinar for foodservice professionals, the majority of attendees surveyed said that while they have a food safety plan, their plan doesn’t flex based on who at the company is involved and what their functions are. At a time when responsibilities are shifting and you’re likely having to complete more tasks with fewer people, it’s important to view your food safety plan through that lens. Where do you need to make adjustments to your team’s responsibilities to ensure you’re not letting food safety slip?
 It's unlikely that anyone on your team comes to work looking to do something wrong. But mistakes happen, and when they occur because staff assume they know how to complete a task but aren’t doing it correctly, it can be difficult to get them to adjust. One example is handwashing – even though it might seem like common sense, it’s often done inadequately and the consequences to your food safety can be significant. You can reinforce a learning culture by starting with the assumption that no one knows the proper protocols for what they’re about to be taught. Have regular reviews of what your team needs to know, identify key food safety metrics to reach, and clarify that assessments of their performance will be tied to these metrics. Bring in some targeted coaching to help reinforce areas where metrics aren’t measuring up.
 Is your message getting across when it comes to enforcing food safety practices in your restaurant? It may not be. Perhaps you have staff from a different culture who don’t yet have the English-language proficiency to fully understand your training as it is currently delivered. Even staff who don’t face a language barrier at work might have been raised with different views on whether a food is safe when kept unrefrigerated or when it is necessary to wash hands. Tasks that are perceived in different ways are likely to be completed differently as a result. Conducting ongoing training and, just as importantly, taking care to assume nothing about a person’s knowledge, can help you uncover surprising gaps in your food safety culture.
 More than one-third of work-related injuries happen during people’s first year on the job — and the most insurance claims from first-year workers (53 percent) come from the restaurant industry. That’s according to the 2022 Injury Impact Report from Travelers, which examined 1.5 million workers’ compensation claims over a four-year period. Keep this in mind as you onboard and train new staff, particularly as other important concerns like Covid regulations, food safety and staffing vie for attention in restaurant kitchens. At a time when so many restaurants are stretched for resources, ensure you at least take stock of what basic knowledge and support people need to prevent injury before they begin work.
 Even if you have the best food safety procedures in place for your operation, some obstacles may be standing in the way of your achieving the results you want. Perhaps the problem stems from inconvenient locations for hand sinks, insufficient tools to carry out kitchen tasks, or language barriers getting in the way of clear communication. Perhaps due to the high rate of employee turnover in the industry, you’re having to move more seasoned staff to tasks like food preparation and serving while assigning new workers to cleaning and sanitation duties even if they haven’t had adequate training. According to Steritech, there is a direct correlation between manager turnover and the quality of line-worker training and the overall performance of a store. (The improvement only levels off once a manager has been on the job for 10 years.) That makes it especially important to prioritize the training and retention of new managers who can spot errors early and ensure key sanitation efforts don’t slip.
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