Andrew Thomson

Rather than revisiting why audits and traditional compliance training fall short, this article focuses on what actually improves food safety outcomes: how quality assurance professionals and frontline leaders can build better decision-making capabilities across the food supply chain.

When workforce capability receives limited attention, it raises broader questions about leadership commitment to protecting both employees and consumers. Building a strong food safety culture requires more than policies and audits; it requires sustained investment in the people responsible for providing safe food every day.

Once seen primarily as compliance enforcers, QA teams are now expected to be strategic business partners, shaping food safety culture, driving skills development, and leveraging risk and data analytics to enable continuous improvement.

To date, food safety training has emphasized compliance rather than prioritizing the end consumer. This approach has served its purpose, but it is time to (figuratively) bring the consumer into the training room and redesign food safety education and training with a sharper focus and impact.  

Proposed certification scheme updates, such as SQF Edition 10 and ISO 9001:2026, are shifting the focus from compliance to proactive, integrated food safety management. For quality assurance teams, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity: ensuring safe, compliant operations while influencing broader operational performance and workforce capability.

By prioritizing evaluation, a food business can ensure that training programs deliver real value to the employee and business while optimizing resources, driving growth, and promoting continuous improvement.

By examining global standards such as HACCP, GFSI, and SQF, this article explores the gaps in current competency assessments and the risks posed by these gaps. It also provides actionable strategies to empower frontline leaders and quality assurance teams to improve where necessary.

Quality assurance professionals and frontline leaders must ensure that food handlers learn and apply food safety principles on the job. Effective food safety training should be action-oriented, engaging, and designed to build competence.

Food businesses must shift from compliance to competence, embedding transition plans as a core requirement of a learning and development strategy.

In leading by example, fostering a workplace learning culture, and establishing clear pathways for skill development, frontline managers can empower and transform their teams.