Third-party training resources provide opportunities for growth and efficiency
KANSAS CITY, MO — In bakery manufacturing, training is essential. Capital investments are made with things like efficiency and ROI top of mind, but it’s important to remain cognizant of the workers who are not only running the equipment but also have the potential to grow within the company.
During the American Society of Baking’s virtual BakingTECH conference, held Feb. 16-18, Cari Rasmussen, food safety specialist for Commercial Food Sanitation, an Intralox company, shared insight into how bakeries can tap external resources to enhance current internal training programs and ultimately achieve training goals.
Rasmussen noted that, while education focuses on understanding and training focuses on performance, both are equally important. “It’s important that workers know what to do in order to perform their job,” she said. “This is likely an essential part of our training goals; however, it’s becoming increasingly important that employees understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.”
The purpose of training can fall into several buckets, including onboarding, auditing requirements, and evolution of skills or operations.
“The events of this past year have brought a lot of change to how we work safely, whether in the manufacturing environment or our offices,” Rasmussen said. “Employees needed to be trained to understand new protocols, new communication systems and changing expectations. The jobs haven’t changed, but how jobs are executed may have evolved.”
When executed properly, training becomes an important element of continuous improvement and is essential to keep up in a changing environment. So, why can training programs be so hard to maintain?
Rasmussen highlighted a handful of reasons, including time constraints, staff turnover and a lack of resources. According to a Global Food Safety Training Survey from Intertek Alchemy, just under a third of respondents cited the use of external resources such as online learning, onsite training with an outside instructor, or external training offsite.
