In every work environment, identification of employees’ training needs and making plans to address those needs is an essential part of the HR management function. A work environment that grows its workers ensures that they can develop the capacity to also grow the company through innovation and increased productivity. In a manufacturing environment such as in the current organization, one of the essential areas of employee knowledge and skills is in maintaining good manufacturing practices and ensuring the company products are safe for human consumption. In the enterprise in question, the staff members are trained in good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and food safety, which are the foundation areas for compliance with various food safety management system requirements. Nonetheless, changes in the work force necessitate the continuous training and re-training of employees in the mentioned areas to foster sustained improvement in productivity and efficiency. The production employees in the organization need to be trained in GMPs and food safety practices, and the ensuing paper presents a training plan that will be used for this activity in the current year for 20 production employees, and may also be adopted for subsequent years with little to no modifications.
Training Needs Identification
The organization has different categories of employees working in different environments. The employees include the field workers, whose objective is to develop and maintain relationships with suppliers; the finance teams, which are responsible for handling all organizational finance transactions and keeping custody of the company’s assets; and the marketing team responsible for creating awareness of the firm’s products to the potential customers. The enterprise also has a sales team that drives the actual sales transactions. The production team deals with the conversion of raw materials into finished products and accounts for all the materials used in the conversion process. As such, the GMPs and the food safety training components are most relevant for the production team, which is required to implement the practices therein (ECA Foundation, 1). For this reason, the training plan was developed specifically with the production team as the targeted recipients. The current population is roughly 17 people across 3 sections in the production area. The production managers will also be trained, bringing the number of trainees to 20 people.
The need for effective GMPs implementation in the workplace is the driving factor for this training needs assessment. According to Tamboli and More, GMPs address aspects of quality control and production, to ensure that goods are manufactured using consistent methods and that they are controlled to the required quality standards (2). Similarly, food safety management practices ensure that the food products marketed by a company are free of any hazards whether physical, chemical, biological, or allergens. Where there is risk of such hazards, particularly allergens, the consumers have to be made aware of them to prevent them from consuming products that would be harmful to their health. Through this training, the employees will be made aware of these needs and benefits so that they understand the importance of the training and participate actively in the actual implementation process.
Detailed Time Breakdown
The training will be broken down into two areas. The first will be the GMPs training, which is expected to run for the first day. The second onewill be the food safety training, which will run for one day. Under the GMPs training, the specifics to be covered will include: development of a GMP compliant facility, basic requirements for complaint facilities, gap analysis and risk assessment for GMP compliance, documentation requirements under GMPs, and protection of in process and finished products from risks. Each of these areas has detailed subsets that are aimed at informing the staffs and actual execution of the recommended GMPs. The total time to be spent on GMPs training will be 7 hours from 8:00 am to 5 pm with breaks. The Table 1 below gives a detailed time breakdown for the GMPs training on day 1.
| Activity | Time |
| Introduction to GMPs and GMP compliant facility | 8.00 – 9.00 am |
| Basic requirements of a GMP compliant facility | 9:00 – 9:45 am |
| Break | 9:45 – 10:00 am |
| Gap analysis and risk assessment | 10:00 –12:30 pm |
| Lunch | 12:30 – 1:30 pm |
| Gap analysis and risk assessment part 2 | 1:30 – 2:00 pm |
| Break | 2:00 – 2:15 pm |
| Documentation practices in GMP compliance | 2:15 – 3:00 pm |
| GMPs implementation plan development | 3:00 – 4:30 pm |
| Implications of GMPs on food safety | 4:30- 5:00 pm |
Table 1: GMPs Training Activities
For the second day of the training, the objective will be to deliver knowledge on food safety practices. According to 22000-Tools, Hazard Analysis, and Critical Control Points(HACCP) principles form the most basic training on food safety management practices (3). Some of the areas covered under a conventional HACCP training are hazard analysis, identification of critical control points, establishing critical control points and matching monitoring procedures, establishing control procedures and documentation practices. Additionally, HACCP requires that food safety management systems to encompass a food safety plan built in alignment with organizational manufacturing practices. In this regard, the Table 2 provides a breakdown of the time to be spent on the food safety training.
| Activity | Time |
| Introduction to food safety and HACCP principles | 8.00 – 9.00 am |
| Food safety hazards categorization | 9:00 – 9:45 am |
| Break | 9:45 – 10:00 am |
| Hazard analysis in the organization | 10:00 – 12:30 pm |
| Lunch | 12:30 – 1:30 pm |
| Critical control points and the respective monitoring practices | 1:30 – 2:00 pm |
| Break | 2:00 – 2:15 pm |
| HACCP compliant documentation | 2:15 – 3:00 pm |
| Food safety builder | 3:00 – 5:00 pm |
Table 2: Food Safety Training Activities
From these two breakdowns, training the employees on the basics of both GMPs and food safety is possible. However, a more comprehensive training program would cover several other areas including the specific documentation requirements, and all the seven principles of food safety from the HACCP perspective among others, and would take more time to execute.
Training Methods and Agenda
For the training, a face to face approach, which gives an opportunity for more intensive interactions between the trainer and the trainees, thus building capacity in areas that require further discussionis preferred to an online training one. The mentioned method also gives the trainees a good opportunity for peer to peer discussions. Various training aids will be used for this purpose. Moreover, different organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Authority (FAO), International Standards Organization (ISO), and the World Food Program (WFP), provide training resources for GMPs as well as for food safety management, some of which will be used during the training. The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) also has excellent resources, which will be among those selected for the training (ISPE, 4). Furthermore, be practical activities will be scheduled for both phases of the training. For the GMPs, practical application activities will be on GMPs gap analysis and risk assessment as well as on building the GMP plan for the company. On the other hand, when it comes to the food safety training,the practical application will be in the hazard analysis and food safety builder phases. Each of these areas is a prerequisite for practical application of GMPs and food safety trainings at the workplace.
Training Budget
The training is expected to run for two days. The GMPs training will be conducted on the first day while the food safety’s on the second and third days. Additionally, the budget was developed with the consideration to reduce expenses as much as possible given that most of the team members had previously been trained and that this particular training will be more like a refresher. The budget for this exercise is as shown in Table 3.
| Activity | Rate | Cost |
| Consultancy fee (Trainer) | $120 per hour for 8 hrs a day + meals | $2,000 |
| Trainer accommodation and transport | $ 350 per night for 2 nights | $ 700 |
| Training materials (books, pens, e.t.c.) | $ 1500 | $1,500 |
| Staff lunches | $ 2.00 per person for 20 people, 2 days | $ 80 |
| Snacks | $ 1 per person for 20 people, 2 days | $ 40 |
| Total cost | $ 4,320 |
Table 3: Budget for the training program
Evaluation
The objective of the training would be to ensure that the employees can implement GMPs in production through practices such as maintaining hygienic environments in their different work places; focusing on clean as you go principles during day to day operations; and adherence to specific cleaning, waste management, material storage and returns handling procedures as recommended by (Abdellah, Noordin, and Ismail, 5). The staff will also be expected to identify the potential food safety hazards within the workplace and enact a clear food safety plan to address each of the identified hazards and communicate any allergens used in the manufacturing process when necessary. The firm already has clearly established standard operating procedures for both GMP and food safety practices. After the training, these procedures will be reviewed, updated when necessary, and approved for implementation. Therefore, the measure of training effectiveness will be based on the ability of the trained teams to achieve the desired objectives as guided by the standard operating procedures in place. There are also stipulations for daily, weekly, and even monthly GMP and food safety implementation reviews, which will be used to evaluate performance. The team managers will also play a crucial part in ensuring that the measures in which the employees are trained are adhered to.
Conclusion
GMPs and food safety are a crucial part of the conventional food manufacturing business. While such an enterprise may consist of several departments, the production department particularly needs a strong array of skills and abilities to implement the specific requirements for GMP and food safety systems. Accordingly, the proposed training plan aims at disseminating the relevant knowledge in these two key areas to a group of 20 production workers, with the objective of improving their execution proficiency. In the targeted group, most participants have prior training on food safety and GMPs so the current planned training will be a refresher to them. Indeed, the benefits of this particular training have been identified from previous literature including,enhancement of compliance with regulations such as environmental conservation requirements, food safety requirements, and energy conservation requirements. Based on this training plan, it will be possible to further identify the organizational gaps in GMPs as well as in food safety management, helping to subsequently put in place measures to cover these gaps and reduce the risks associated with them.
Sources
- EAC Foundation, 2019, GMP guidelines. https://www.gmp-compliance.org/guidelines/gmp-guidelines
- Firoj A. Tamboli and H.N. More. 2015. Good manufacturing practices (GMP): An overview. https://www.longdom.org/proceedings/good-manufacturing-practice-gmp-an-overview-5341.html
- 22000-Tools. 2019. What is HACCP? https://www.22000-tools.com/what-is-haccp.html
- International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE). 2019. Good manufacturing practice (GMP) resources. https://ispe.org/initiatives/regulatory-resources/gmp
- Abubaker Abdellah, Mohammed Ibrahim Noordin, and Wan Azman Wan Ismail. 2015. Importance and globalization status of good manufacturing practice (GMP) requirements for pharmaceutical excipients. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4310996/