Training Effectiveness: The Case of Quality and Food Safety Training at ABC Company

In light of the evidence on ineffectiveness of existing quality and food safety trainings at the ABC company, this study explored the reasons and possible actions for improving the effectiveness of the training programs. The study was designed to cover the entire training process of quality and food safety in a 360 degrees evaluation with the use of the Kirkpatrick’s training evaluation model. The data were gathered from the trainees, trainers, department heads and the human resource department by means of a questionnaire survey and structured interviews. The study covered 65 respondents altogether. The results show the existence of significant gaps in all the steps of the training process of quality and food safety. The gaps are lying in the processes of training needs identification, establishing the training objectives, selecting the training methods, arranging the trainings and evaluating the performances of the trained people. These deficiencies were triggered by the non-availability of a comprehensive training management protocol in ABC Company. It is implied that the identification of training and development as a subsystem would reduce the ineffectiveness of the quality and food safety trainings of the company.


Introduction
Sustainability of a firm in the food industry is usually challenged due to the fast-moving nature of products and easy entry of new product options. As such, becoming the market leader and maintaining the leadership position are both hard for a firm in the food industry.
However, any organization can gain the superiority over the market leader by redefining the market through improving the quality of the goods or services by becoming the quality leader in the eyes of the customer (De Feo & Juran, 2010). This is an experienced reality in the food industry as in all other industries.
The human factor which involves in the food manufacturing process plays a major role in assuring and maintaining the attained quality of a product. Thus, people are the most important factor in assuring quality of products and services, and managing the human factor has a significant impact on the quality performance of an organization (Daud, Jamaludin, & Ramanr, 2012). The top performing companies attempt to assure a strong quality culture with every employee those who understand the importance of quality and work to improve it (Spindelndreier & Lesmeister, 2012). The need of encouraging employees to develop the awareness about achieving the set quality objectives in the food industry has been highlighted in the previous studies. As stated by Antic and Bogetic (2015), expanding the awareness of the quality of products among employees should be above all other responsibilities of the management.
The case of a Sri Lankan company (pseudonym: ABC Company) has opened up the avenue for probing into the human involvement in the quality of its products. The ABC Company is engaged in manufacturing of highly perishable food products. In the organization, as per the 2018/19 budget, the total number of employees is 425. Being a manufacturer of highly perishable food products, achieving the higher quality and food safety standards and maintaining the same are highly significant matters in the entire manufacturing process of this company.
With all the improved and updated systems implemented to assure the quality and food safety, maintaining, updating and improving the systems according to the industry standards have been managed by people in the organization.
During the past few years, some of the monitored quality and food safety indicators of ABC Company have not indicated the improvements on its own measures and some further deteriorations could be observed in the results. During the informal discussion conducted among the senior managers of ABC Company, the major concern raised about this issue was about the return on investment on the training of the plant employees on the quality and food safety. The training programs of quality and food safety covers the employees in all the departments to assure the compliances related to the quality and safety of the food products. However, it was noted that the measurable indicators do not reflect the improving attitudes towards the expected product quality and food safety. However, surprisingly, the GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) audit score has been low and declining in the company. In addition to this, the number of process non-conformities reported is on the rise and the trend of the customer complaints is also increasing. Most significantly, the increase of manufacturing volume does not justify the increase of these numbers. The Table 1 below depicts some of the quality indicators.  (Year 2015(Year /16, 2016(Year /17, 2017 Thus, despite the efforts made by the ABC Company to conduct quality and food safety training programs in the recent past, the deterioration of the quality and food safety indicators has led to a puzzle which needs to be addressed immediately. At this backdrop, there is a reasonable concern about the effectiveness of the quality assurance training programs conducted by the ABC Company for its plant employees.
Accordingly, the research questions addressed in this study are two-fold:

Quality and food safety
Quality and food safety are two major global concerns connected with various areas of everyday life as well as a special concern for the food manufacturing companies. Food safety has been defined as the handling, preparing and storing food in a way to minimize a possible risk of individuals becoming sick from food-borne illnesses (Santacruz, 2016, p.1). Thus, both quality and food safety are equally important in the food industry, as the quality assures the meeting of customer preference and the food safety assures the safe food to the customer.
It is essential for a food manufacturing company to maintain the quality of their products and follow the standard food safety principals in order to become the best marketer in the industry. In order for a company to do so it is an adequate necessity to conduct training programs to enhance the productivity and the effectiveness of both executives and the non-executives of the company. There are research findings that adequate food safety training for all employees can have a positive impact on health inspection scores and on some food safety behaviors (Rowell et al. 2013, p. 2). As per Rowell et al. (2013), the basic hygiene requirements such as hand washing are considered in relation to the food safety, while the employee training and implementation are essential in preventing food-borne illness. They further suggest that these trainings do not only improve employee knowledge, but also provide employees the needed behavior-based learning to change their actions. Although the quality and food safety management are the system driven processes, the people who manage these processes should have been well developed to change their attitudes towards quality and food safety. The quality is explained as an attitude. The attitudes are adopted and not innate, and at the same time, attitudes not born but learned (Dewsnap, n.d.). Hence, attitudes towards the quality should be enhanced in the human factor in an organization. Training plays a major role in this regard.

Training for quality of food safety
As elaborated by Gaungoo and Jeewon (2013), "Training of managers, supervisors and all people who can influence the safety of food is essential to reduce the unacceptable high levels of food poisoning" (p. 2). Training is not only for acquiring knowledge. It is about sharpening the skills, changing the behavior to do the things better or differently than that of the same was performed. "Business concepts-human resources" (n.d.) notes that training and development are a subsystem of an organization which maintains the improvement of the performance of individuals and groups of the organization. It identifies training as an educational process which sharpens the skills, knowledge, and changes the attitudes required in developing the employees.
As stated by Armstrong (2009), training involves "the application of formal processes to impart knowledge and help people to acquire the skills necessary for them to perform their jobs satisfactorily" (p. 665).
According to Spindelndreier and Lesmeister (2012), training is intended to modify or develop knowledge, skills and attitude through learning experiences and to achieve effective performance in an activity or range of activities. Training can be offered as skill development for individuals and groups with an ultimate requirement to modify their attitudes.
By conducting effective training programs, organizations can evaluate the growth of its employees' efficiency and the quality of its products or services. It also provides the organization with the ability to survive, especially with the hard competition of the days. In general, training is a typical process to provide employees with new skills or improve their knowledge to a higher stage in order to enhance the behavioral change to alter the culture of the organization to achieve the set goals.

Types of Training and learning
There are two main types of trainings that should be considered in organizations (Spilsbury, 1995). They are on-the-job training and offthe-job training. As explained by Spilsbury (1995), in on-the-job trainings, employees learn in an environment in which they will need to practice the knowledge, skills competencies that are needed for employees to perform a specific job within the workplace and work environment. On-the-job training uses the regular or existing workplace tools, machines, documents, equipment, knowledge, and skills necessary for an employee to learn to effectively perform his or her job. The offthe-job training is the training method where the employees learn their job roles away from the actual work floor. The off-job trainings are performed in a separate venue which is out of the work place in the same organization or outside. In these trainings the practice approaches may be limited.
In addition to these, the initial categorization of learning at workplace is identified as informal learning and formal learning (Armstrong, 2009 Formal learning is a planned and systematic learning process. It makes use of structured training programs consisting of instruction and practice that may be conducted on or off the job. Formal learning and developmental activities may be used such as action learning, coaching, mentoring and outdoor learning. Both the quality and food safety trainings can be formal or informal and on-the-job or off-the-job. Training cycle Spilsbury (1995) suggested that the training should not be considered as a static event or a liner process but as a cyclical process. Accordingly, the information about the effectiveness is fed-back into the design of the training program. For this reason, the training process was called the 'training cycle'. "The Training Cycle consists of a series of steps which lead to a training event being undertaken: evaluation provides feedback which links back to the initial stages of training design" (Spilsbury, 1995, p. 19). Thus, the training cycle is designed before the training program is conducted and continues after the program has been completed. The figure 1 below illustrates the five stages of the Training Cycle.

Figure 1: Training cycle
Source: Adopted from Biech, (n.d.) The steps of the training cycle can be explained as below (Donald Kirkpatrick's Learning Evaluation Model 1959;Review and Contextual Material).
1. Identify training needs -Conduct an assessment and analyze the data, to identify specific areas of needs for the training. The content for the training and the method of training should be developed.

Establish objectives -State exactly what the training should
accomplish. It can be either or both learning/performance objective and training objective.

Select Training methods -Decide on the suitable methods
accordingly to the needs and objectives.

Conduct and deliver Training -Conduct with adequate
preparation with professional trainers and good presentation skills.
Be more of a facilitator than an instructor. The steps of the training cycle have been explained differently in various studies. However, the five-step training cycle is commonly used.

Training effectiveness
Bramley (1997) defined training effectiveness as "a measure that examines the degree to which training improved the employee's knowledge, skill, and behavioral pattern within the organization as a result of the training" (p. 20). The effectiveness of training can be fundamentally measured by evaluating the employee's performance within a selected period of time after the training is conducted (Morrison & Hammon, 2000). Chong (2006) stated that the evaluation of training effectiveness is usually connected to measuring the change occurred which ultimately leads to performance (p. 1). Thus, in a synthesized view, Bramley (1997), Chong (2006) and Morrison and Hammon (2000) depict that the measurement of training effectiveness includes gain of skills or knowledge, changing the behavioral pattern or performances of the people trained. Therefore, each step of the training cycle (Spilsbury, 1995) should be evaluated and assured to achieve the above result which is expected from the trained employees. Another major aspect of transfer of knowledge was pointed by Kjeldsen (2006) highlighting the requirement of examining the level of newly acquired knowledge, skills or behaviour retained in a longer period of time.
Kraiger, Ford, and Salas (n.d.) also argued that the performances shown by trainees after a training at a particular level in the short run may differ substantially in the long run.

Evaluating the training effectiveness
Measuring or evaluating the effectiveness of training of an organization could bring several benefits. When the training session is planned, it should start with a list of specific learning objectives which should be the starting point for the measurement. Depending on the objectives and depending on whether it intended any changes in knowledge, skills, or attitudes, the learning can be measured ("Kirkpatrick's Four-Level Training Evaluation Model," n.d.). Evaluating the training effectiveness is a difficult and costly task. Before setting up structures to measure the training effectiveness, it is required to make sure whether there is a serious interest in training because the benefits of conducting evaluations can be substantially outweigh the cost incurred for it (Spilsbury, 1995). Evaluating the training outcomes in the absence of an evaluation of the full process of the training cycle, is also cost effective, however, this approach does not provide the full picture of the effectiveness of the entire training process.

The training evaluation cycle
The five-steps training evaluation cycle, presented by Kirkpatrick, has been well used in the existing literature ("Manual on Training Evaluation," n.d.). This process can be briefed as below:

Identify the Purposes of Evaluation.
Before developing evaluation systems, the purposes of evaluation must be determined.

Select Evaluation Method
The commonly used evaluation model is Kirkpatrick's four levels of training evaluating program.

Design Evaluation Tools
Various evaluation tools can be selected depending on the purposes and methods of evaluation such as questionnaire, interviews, focus group discussions etc.,

Collect Data
It should be decided who, when and how the data are collected.

Analyze and Report Results
This step includes the analysis of collected data for arriving at evaluation results and reporting them to the required parties.

Models of training evaluation
The most popular and widely used training evaluation model is the Kirkpatrick Model. This model has been introduced by Donald Kirkpatrick in 1950. It has been undergone some modifications and refinements in the past (Telania, 2004). The four primary levels of evaluation are illustrated in the Figure 2 below. The four main levels are defined as follows (Kirkpatrick's Four-Level Training Evaluation Model, n.d.).

Reaction
This level measures how the people being trained and reacted to the training. It is considered that whether the people who were trained feel that the training was a valuable experience, feel good about the instructor, the topic, the material, its presentation, and the venue.
Measuring the reaction helps understand how well the training was received by the audience. It also helps to improve the training for future trainees.

Learning
At level 2, it measures what the trainees have learned and how much has their knowledge increased as a result of the training.

Behavior
At this level, it evaluates how far trainees have changed their behavior, based on the training they received. Specifically, this looks at how trainees apply the information.

Results
At this level, the final results of the training are analyzed.
The level three of the Kirkpatrick Model does not totally depends on the first two levels of measurement. Employees may not apply what they learned however it does not mean that the training failed at levels 1 and

Conceptual framework of the study
As informed by the literature review, the training cycle can be used as the model for evaluating the full process of the quality and food safety training at the ABC Company. Accordingly, the Kirkpatrick's training evaluation model is adopted as the conceptual framework of the present study. Thus, different evaluation levels explained in the Kirkpatrick's training evaluation model were incorporated in this conceptual framework in order to check the identified dimensions in the 360-degree analysis.

Methods
Adopting a deductive approach and following a predetermined framework based on the literature review, the study objectives were achieved in a qualitative inquiry. The exploration covered existing training process at the case organization in a 360 degrees perspective which encapsulates the entire training process of the quality and food safety trainings, covering all major parties who involved in the process.

Figure 4: Dimensions (parties) involved in the training process
The data were gathered through a questionnaire survey conducted for trainees and a structured interviews conducted with the trainers, human resource (HR) department and the heads of line departments (manufacturing and quality assurance). The questionnaire in English language was adopted for the trainee executives and the questionnaire in Sinhala language (translation) was used for the trainee non-executives.
The respondents of the study included the trainees, trainers, the HR executive, and the heads of line (manufacturing and quality assurance) departments. Accordingly, a sample of forty (40) out of the nighty (90) trainees in the non-executive grade were conveniently selected as the sample for collecting data through the questionnaire survey while all the nineteen (19) executives participated in the same trainings were considered to collect the data through the same questionnaire. (Twentytwo trainees who attended the same training were casual workers and they were not available in the carder currently). The external trainers

Human Resources 360⁰ Evaluation
Trainers Trainees those who conducted the external quality and food safety trainings and the internal trainer who conducted the internal trainings were interviewed. (The other internal trainer who conducted trainings in these training programs has left the company). The Human Resource (HR) executive who is responsible for the training process, and the heads of the two line departments (manufacturing and quality assurance) to which trainees belong were also interviewed.
The primary data were gathered through the questionnaire survey from the trainees and on one-on-one semi-structured interviews held with the rest of the respondents in the four dimensions of the training process.
The semi-structured interviews were adopted in order to maintain the uniformity in the data gathering process. Interviews with the internal trainer, departmental management and HR executive were recorded and transcribed for in-depth reviewing and analyzing with the permission of the respondents. The names of the respondents being omitted to ensure the anonymity. Prior approvals were obtained from the interviewees and the appointments sought in order to carry out the interviews. The administration of the interviews was performed by the researchers with the support of an assistant. A summary of the data collection protocol is presented in the Table 2 below.

Why quality and food safety training of the company has been ineffective
The analysis of data on the reasons why quality and food safety training of the company has been ineffective have been analyzed below in line with the four dimensions (trainee, trainer, heads of departments and HR executive).

Dimension of trainees -Executives
Two of the nineteen (19)

Number of respondents Questions
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neither Agree nor Disagree Agree Strongly Agree From among the non-executives, 92.6% either agree or strongly agree that they are implementing what they have learned though the trainings.
The other significant factor with this non-executive trainee group is, 22.2% of the participants were either disagree or neutral in accepting that the most of the trainings are not difficult for them to make a 6--learning. It means that 22.2% of non-executive participants had experienced difficulties in learning what was taught to them.
Comparatively, the non-executives have implemented what they have learned greater than that of executives did. However, it was found that the non-executives believe that the reason behind the implementation of what they learned is, the training itself together with the support of coworkers and their immediate supervisor. Hence, the outcome of these trainings initiates the basic attitude required for the quality and food safety assurances.
The trainer does not agree that the participants joined the training programs with an enthusiasm. Further, the actual number of the participants was lower than that of the expected/ planned numbers.
Further, the trainer emphasized several times that the trainees participated in the programs since they were asked to do so and also to

Dimension of HR department
The HR executive who is responsible for the trainings of ABC Company was interviewed. The comments from the HR executive cover the entire training process of ABC Company and however, common for the quality and food safety trainings as well. Only a single private Training Institute, has been deployed for the quality and food safety trainings for the period covered in this research.
Being the accreditation body of the quality and food safety system certification of the ABC company, this Training Institute has been selected for conducting external trainings. The training evaluation process is being managed and that has been done through the departmental managements and through a questionnaire organized by HRD. As per the HR executive, the casual workers have become a major concern in quality and food safety related trainings.

Dimension of heads of departments (manufacturing and quality assurance)
The heads of the two-manufacturing departments and the department of quality assurance were interviewed for obtaining relevant data.

Manufacturing departments
The production manager-01, head of one of the two manufacturing

Quality assurance department
The quality assurance manager (QAM) who was the internal trainer for quality and food safety was interviewed as the department head of QA.
QAM's comments as the department head could be cross verified since he was the internal trainer as well.
The process of identifying the training needs and nominating trainees explained by the head of QA was the same as mentioned by the other heads of departments. However, the QA manager uses a different process to evaluate the training effectiveness while monitoring the employees during the operations. The QA team participates mainly in quality and food safety related trainings and after the external trainings, the QAM checks the training materials, discussed with the participants and ask them to teach back what they learned.
Although, the QAM is the internal trainer, as well as a head of department, he accepts that the training effectiveness is low. As a department head, the QAM's comment was "How much we train the people on quality and food safety, many of them do not comply with basic hygiene norms".
QAM remarked that it is not about the knowledge or skills of them towards the job, but it is about their attitudes, poor awareness of the quality and food safety risks and negligence which causes for the low effectiveness of the quality and food safety trainings. QAM further emphasized, "Even so much they are trained, they don't want to change their behaviors, and they still continue the same behavior as usual".
While proposing the repeat and refresh trainings, the QAM emphasized the requirement of a proper system for identifying the training needs and the training evaluation. Furthermore, the QAM indicated that the recording of the negligence and violation of quality norms done by employees as well as paying attention to such negative aspects at the annual employee evaluation are required.
In summary, although some comments revealed in the interviews are commonly related to the overall training programs, the major essence of

Possible actions to improve the training effectiveness
The analysis of data on possible actions to improve the training effectiveness from the four dimensions (Trainee, trainer, heads of departments and HR executive) are presented in the section follows.

Dimension of trainees -Executives
The

Dimension of trainees -Non-executives
The non-executives of the Company have brought to the notice some of the improvements needed in the existing training system as to (

Dimension of HR department
As per the HR executives of the Company, there are several improvements to be made in the existing trainings system. As revealed by them, (a) the training effectiveness should be linked to the related KPIs, (b) grouping employees with similar training needs by the line departments so that tailor-made training programs can be arranged for them and (c) employee turnover intention to be identified in advance before recommending them for training programs.

Dimension of heads of departments
In proposing to improve the effectiveness of the quality and food safety trainings, the requirement of conducting the follow up and refresh trainings were proposed. The major deficiency which the manager highlighted was, though some effectiveness of the trainings were observed after coming back from the trainings, in the long runs those employees come back to normal and he believes, through encouragement, follow ups and refresh trainings, the effectiveness of the trainings can be improved. Minimizing the classroom training up to 40% and redesigning the internal quality and food safety trainings to include 60% of practical and relevant training aspects is the major requirement which was proposed by the production manager-02 to improve the effectiveness of the training.

Discussion of findings
As per the trainees' comments, their team members and the supervisors supported them to implement the learnings. As explained by Telania (2004) Kraiger, Ford, and Salas (n.d.) that most of the training performances will not be visible in the short run.
The non-existence of the refresh trainings which was highlighted by all four types of respondents may be another reason for the failure of the long-term sustainability of the behavioral changes which are expected through the trainings. The trainings programs of quality and food safety are not capable of changing the attitudes of employees to value the quality and food safety requirements and improve the quality and food safety indictors since the non-availability of the trainings designed on the behavioral base to change their attitudes. Rowell et al. (2013) suggested that "It is important that these training materials not only improve employee knowledge, but also provide employees the needed behavior-based learning to change their action" (p.385).
The gaps identified in the training process during the study are not Since the inability of complying with a standard process like the training cycle, it has not allowed to identify the specific requirement of having a separate plan for training the casual workers to mitigate the risk of untrained casual worker in the shop floor which becomes of paramount importance because of the frequent refreshing of the casual carder.
Though it appears that the budget restrictions as a major bottle neck in arranging the external trainings, the setting of the comprehensive processes such as training needs identification, evaluation of training effectiveness and build the capable internal trainers will not be restricted by the budgets and it can contribute to implement and continue the basic and essential quality and food safety internal training such as GMP and Hygiene trainings. The high turnover of the trained employees may limit the training effectiveness of the quality and foods safety which should be addressed separately.

Concluding remarks
The study found that the effectiveness of quality and food safety trainings are not adequate, hence, the quality and food safety training process at ABC Company does not deliver the intended results. The driving force of the entire training cycle and process of any organization is the HR department. However, the responsibility of employee training at the HR department of this Company has been limited to the preparation of annual training calendar and its mere execution. In addition to this, the Company has not identified the training and development as a subsystem of the entire organizational system in order to achieve the improvement of the performances of individuals sharpening of skills, knowledge, changing the attitudes and gaining more knowledge to enhance the performance of the employees which eventually helps the company improvement.