How Improving Literacy Skills Can Improve Food Safety And Hygiene

Accuracy and the highest standards of hygiene are essential in all aspects of the food preparation business

. Food manufacturers operate in an environment of stringent controls and compliance requirements. Companies cant afford to make errors, and documentation requirements in regard to overseas markets are increasingly complex.

Getting staff committed to maintaining high hygiene standards and understanding what they need to do is more difficult if they dont have sufficient numeracy and literacy skills to understand instructions or calculate quantities accurately.

Just because an employee can read the newspaper doesnt mean that they can read a hazard notice. Many employees being asked to read and record numerical data relating to temperature or size or dates dont understand the measurement scales they are using. They need to clearly communicate with colleagues but they struggle to make themselves understood.

Around 260,000 (12%) of employed New Zealanders have considerable difficulties with workplace documents. Another 610,000 (28%) have problems with complex or unfamiliar information, especially when faced with changing demands. These figures include migrants who may have strong technical skills and qualifications, but who do not have English as a first language. It is hard to have a flexible or innovative workplace and to implement change when your employees literacy and communication skills are inadequate.

Effective performance today requires a complex mix of literacy and numeracy skills. They are needed for implementing production and job schedules; ensuring health and safety requirements are met; estimating quantity and weight, and measuring accurately; solving problems and contributing in team meetings.

Workplace literacy training involves working with companies to identify the gap between the literacy demands of the job and the literacy skills of the employees in that job. Literacy training programmes are developed to improve the literacy, language and numeracy skills of the employees using authentic workplace examples.

Because the literacy training is based on the tasks and procedures the employees use daily, the improved skills benefit both the company and employee.

Improving workplace literacy is crucial. People cant be expected to be able to understand how to operate systems or software if they cant read the technical documentation, if they dont understand the instructions they are given, or if they cant make themselves understood with their colleagues. The skills needed in workplaces are changing, and employees more and more need to be able to learn new skills and adapt to new work environments. Literacy and numeracy are part of the basic tool set all employees need to ensure they can meet their work demands.

by:Workbase

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