When the busy season strikes, you need all the help you can get. But while temporary workers can fill staffing gaps, they also introduce new challenges for maintaining food safety. From training differences to a lack of food safety culture buy-in, these temporary employees may have shortcomings that don't fully reveal themselves until it's too late.
Taking a proactive approach to these challenges can help you avoid missteps that could lead to food safety incidents. Investing in training and resources for your seasonal workers upfront can help you maintain food safety, maximize their value, and save you a world of hurt in the long term.
Follow along as we highlight some common dilemmas of hiring seasonal workers in food manufacturing — and how you can prevent them.
The last several years have seen manufacturers across industries relying increasingly on temporary workers to meet labor demand, and the food and beverage sector is no exception. Whether due to employee shortages or an influx of seasonal demand, temporary workers are a necessary asset for many manufacturers looking to avoid falling behind.
However, there are risks to hiring seasonal workers that might outweigh the benefits if your team isn't prepared. Without the right skills, mindset, tools, and training, these workers can create food safety hazards such as:
Cross-contamination
Allergen cross-contact
Mislabeling
Improper sanitation or hygiene
These hazards, often caused by gaps in preparedness and oversight, can lead to recalls, regulatory intervention, endangerment of public health, legal action, and more, all of which can damage your finances, operations, and brand reputation.
The first step to avoiding these negative repercussions is ensuring your team, both permanent and temporary, understands how they can occur. The next step is outlining how to mitigate the risks that come with seasonal help and ensure temporary workers uphold high food safety standards.
Between information overload, turnover rates, and struggles with consistency, onboarding food safety employees effectively is always a challenge. Seasonal workers, though, are particularly tricky because of the additional time constraints of their hiring. Luckily, there are proactive steps you can take to support these temporary employees, boosting their value while minimizing their potential risk to your operations.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest hurdles of hiring temporary staff and practical strategies to overcome them:
One of the core issues with temporary workers is that they likely don’t have the same level of food safety knowledge as your permanent employees. This can be particularly true in specialized knowledge areas such as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) plans, allergen controls, and more.
These gaps in food safety awareness can expose your facility to greater risk, especially while processing a higher-than-average volume to keep up with seasonal demand.
Bringing your seasonal employees up to speed with your essential food safety policies quickly can fill in some of these gaps in expertise. You may not have the luxury of the same onboarding timeline you do with longer-term hires. Still, by providing targeted training that focuses on the crucial food safety protocols most seasonal workers struggle with, you can set them up for success from the jump. Prioritize key areas like personal hygiene, cleanliness and sanitation, cross-contact and cross-contamination prevention, and temperature controls.
Training for temporary employees should be straightforward, easy to understand, and made for everyone. Offering training materials in multiple languages can ensure a seamless onboarding process and minimize the learning curve for new employees. E-learning options can also help entry-level employees take advantage of training opportunities at their own pace — while allowing management to monitor their progress.
Even if seasonal workers have extensive food safety experience from working with other manufacturers, standard operating procedures (SOPs) may vary from one location to another. Depending on the products you manufacture, ingredients you house, your facility design, and many other factors, temporary employees may be unfamiliar with — or even confused by — your facility's unique requirements.
Often caused by a lack of communication and written documentation, this misalignment can lead to costly mistakes, employee frustration, and even potentially higher turnover rates among temporary employees. Without proper access to information, seasonal employees may make decisions based solely on previous experience rather than your facility’s SOPs, leading to mistakes that could cause a food safety incident.
New employees will undoubtedly learn your SOPs during onboarding, but since seasonal workers lack the luxury of time, it's important to reinforce protocols with additional access to educational materials and resources. The easier it is for seasonal employees to find the answers to their questions, the less likely they will be to make mistakes.
Like training materials, SOPs should be both easy to find and understand. Create educational tools that simplify complex SOPs into plain language; documentation that’s too complex could raise more questions than it answers.
Not every seasonal worker will have the same level of commitment to food safety as your permanent employees. Many may not understand the consequences of non-compliance or the importance of food safety protocols, and this lack of buy-in can impact how effectively they work.
Seasonal employees may also experience worker fatigue due to the high workload that comes with rapid onboarding, extensive training, and the demands of your busy season. Workers who feel stretched thin may have trouble executing food safety protocols as intended — leading to higher food safety risks.
Strengthening your existing team's food safety culture before hiring seasonal employees can encourage them to advocate for food safety once temporary team members hit the front lines. Your permanent employees can connect with seasonal workers about the value of food safety, help them understand the stakes at hand, and put the importance of food safety into perspective from a worker’s point of view.
Additionally, creating incentives for good behavior is one of the simplest ways management can increase temporary employee buy-in to your food safety policies and culture. For example, top performers may receive cash bonuses or gift cards for their adherence to food safety policies.
Some seasonal workers may have never worked in food safety before, and those who have may not have the same qualifications that your existing staff have likely obtained from years in the field. While this doesn't mean seasonal workers can't still be valuable to your operations, it does leave a substantial gap in skills that are vital to maximizing food safety.
It’s crucial to go into your onboarding process with all the facts; not knowing your temporary team's initial skillset ahead of time can leave you scrambling to fill in knowledge gaps in the eleventh hour.
Include a skills assessment as part of the hiring process. Not only will this requirement help you identify candidates with the experience best suited to your operations, but it can also allow your onboarding team the time to account for blind spots and adjust training materials accordingly.
If you find yourself short of seasonal workers with the skills you require or looking to fill particular roles that require specialized expertise, consider outsourcing with AIB International’s Assign an Expert service for help safely navigating your busiest season.
Hiring temporary workers is a solid strategy for handling seasonal demand, but without the right food safety qualifications, knowledge, and understanding, these seasonal helpers could become your biggest food safety risk. Filling these gaps is easy with the help of self-guided food safety essentials training from AIB International. This online course provides ready-made educational resources to quickly get your entry-level seasonal workers up to speed.